Talk:Larry Niven

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Contents

[edit] Needs an Early Life Section

Most wiki bio articles have them. This one doesn't. How did he grow up? Formative experiences? Unless perhaps he is a replicant, we need to know.

Sean7phil 05:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collections section

The "Collections" section only lists those currently in print. Can I add ones out of print, such as "All the Myriad Ways"? It'd also be nice to see which short stories are in each. --zandperl 01:24, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

By all means add those titles, they're pretty significant. I'm not sure if listing the tables of contents would be a good idea, on the other hand; the lists would get really long. Perhaps a separate article might be in order? Bryan 06:33, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Anyone have any info on Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex to add here?--Keeves 17:38, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Integral Trees series

I added two of Niven's books called The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring. Does anyone in which universe these belong? I found conflicting evidence. Some say "State" universe [1] while others say "Known Space" [2]. I made a separate series for the two, not knowing where else to put them.

"The Descent of Ansansi" is said to be in the Dreamworld universe but not part of the series. [3] Verification of this would be good. Liblamb 01:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm positive it's not Known Space. I forget the details, but I'm sure the few facts you learn about where the smoke ring humans came from confirms that it isn't Known Space. 'State' universe is an interesting idea I'd not considered. I think it's possible, but I'll have to check the collection! Coyote-37 11:05, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Integral Trees is definitely State universe. One of the main characters, the shipboard AI, is Kendy the Checker, as in Checker for the State. The only other State universe work I can think of off hand is A World Out of Time. (Which also has a Checker shipboard AI ... also named Kendy?)
Also, I can confirm that Descent of Anansi fits in the Dreampark universe, though I don't think it's ever made explicit. Oath of Fealty also fits the same universe; I think that novel might actually mention Dreampark, or perhaps vice versa. dbenbenn | talk 23:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography reorganization

Here are a couple problems I see with the Bibliography section.

  1. Niven didn't actually contribute any text to Man-Kzin Wars V, VI, VII, or X. Perhaps we should have a note for each of the Man-Kzin books saying what Niven contributed.
  2. Some of the novels are just collections. The article doesn't give any indication that Three Books of Known Space is just World of Ptavvs, A Gift from Earth, and Tales of Known Space in one cover.
  3. Perhaps for each collection we should include a list of what stories it collects?

Unfortunately, all my books are inaccessible right now (I'm moving). Perhaps I'll try to address the above points later. dbenbenn | talk 23:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

1) See my Kzin Wars note below (or, on the gripping hand, I should have caught this before I added that), and Integral trees above. 2) This problem seems to be particularly aggravated with Niven and his publishers. There are many forms of republication such as the regurgitation of The Children's Hour, or mixed old and new of N-Space and Scatterbrain. Consider the bibliography on his own site, and how complicated it is. If this is not deferred to as authoritative, and only important works, or those with entries in wikipedia are listed, then this link ought to at least replace the cheesy bibliography given in the external links section. --Belg4mit 08:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Mentioning bibliography reorganization, the categories are confusing. E.g., there is considerable overlap between "Known Space" and "Collections", and if memory serves some collections contained mixes of Known Space, other SF, and fantasy. I support the idea above of listing the stories with each collection. Kcarlin 21:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of "Niven"

Does anybody know how Larry Niven pronounces his last name? I work on the Spoken Wikipedia project and ran across a reference to him when I was recording another article. I'm guessing it rhymes with "given," but I wouldn't be surprised if it's "NYE-ven." Ckamaeleon 01:52, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

It rhymes with "given." Jeffskal 00:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Halo 2/Rainbow Mars

"Niven's idea of a beanstalk sucking dry a planet (see Rainbow Mars) seems to be copied in the animated movie Kaena: The Prophecy and also in the game Halo 2 by game company Bungie."

This sentence puzzled me; Rainbow Mars is one of the few Niven books I haven't read, but I've certainly played Halo 2 and I can't for the life of me work out what this refers to in the game. There's a space elevator in the game (as a piece of background detail) and there's a ringworld (more based on Iain M Banks' version of the idea than on Niven's ring). But there isn't a "beanstalk sucking a planet dry". Does anyone know what this refers to? Should this be amended? -K- 12:10, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

  • The "beanstalk" may be a reference to the Gravemind, the leader of the Flood. Although he's green and has a lot of tentacles I'm not sure you'd characterize him as "sucking the planet dry." Static Universe 21:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Resemblence?

Is it my imagination or does he look like Kelsey Grammar's older brother? Clarityfiend 03:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Writer infobox

I put in a Template:Infobox Writer at the top of the article. Gaheris 00:20, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ultraverse Comics

There appears to be no mention of Niven's involvement with the Ultraverse superhero universe he helped create in the mid 90s.

http://www.sequart.com/articles/index.php?article=646 Static Universe 20:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kzin Wars

Should all of the Man-Kzin wars books really be listed (with everything else)? They're "created by Larry Niven", but seem to have all been written by other authors. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Belg4mit (talk • contribs) 07:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Niven's Law

Why is Niven's Law singled out all by it's own? (Not that I don't enjoy this quote) And what is the source? Because in N-Space. If it is indeed the first I suggest this section be reworded to includ esomehting like:

 Over the course of his career Niven has added to this original law (now numbered 16)

--Belg4mit 08:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Halo & Niven

"Apparently, the video game titled Halo has used a lot of ideas from Ringworld. Items such as the Kzinti Blade, the Kzinti proper, and the Pierson's Puppeteers share relations with Energy Swords, Brutes, and Prophets respectively."

This is unencyclopaedic, not to mention a real stretch – the energy swords in Halo are generic sci-fi energy swords, as seen in thousands of films, books and television programmes. There's nothing to suggest they were taken from the kzinti blades seen in the Known Space books. The same goes for the Brutes and the Prophets – the Brutes are fearsome, imposing alien warriors, which is where their similarity to Kzinti begins and ends, and the Prophets are absolutely nothing like the Pierson's Puppeteers. I'll delete this, as it adds nothing to the article beyond one person's view of some vague similarities between the game and the book. In fact, that whole paragraph seems unencyclopaedic and vague. I've replaced it with something (hopefully) a bit more wikipedia.

-K- 15:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Science humour

I just wrote the page Science humour. The final section is "Humour in science fiction". I mentioned Adams, Asimov, etc. Could you please head over, and help develop the article? I've already mentioned Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex. Anthing else that would fit into the page? Cheers, samwaltz 18:35, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nivens part in the Star Wars program?

Its not mentioned at all right now. And I am not sure myself how to actually phrase it. But Niven played together with Jerry Pournelle a very important role in creating the idea of the Star Wars program in the cold war. Apparrently he had access to the President, wrote reports to him, was one of the Members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy in the 80's, and hosted Military meetings in his own house. This might have been historically his most influential role, even compared to his books. ([[Jerry Pournelle|Pournelle's page has some refs])]-Thomas 00:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

  • You'd need to find some independent sources that support the idea that Niven's contributions to this programme were significant. IIRC, Niven doesn't mention it much in his writing, and given that he is neither a scientist nor a military man, I would be surprised if he played more of a role than any of the hundreds of people who worked on the SDI programme.

-K- 15:06, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I've heard Jerry Pournelle talk about this at length. I haven't heard this from Niven. Based on my observations of them, seems likely to me that Pournelle would have done a lot of the talking at meetings. My understanding from Niven is that he doesn't think that matters of national security are entirely appropriate for public discussion; he gave his ideas and input in the meetings. Pournelle seems to like talking about a political agenda of what should be, while Niven seems to prefer to take credit for actual tangible accomplishments (and SDI/Star Wars doesn't have much tangible to show). Avt tor 16:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
The source you're looking for is N-Space, page 650, under the heading "Space". How you take it is up for debate; I've always heard a far more credible role for Edward Teller in this regard. However, it's equally likely that the same good idea came from many different sources; frustration with NASA was high, cold war tensions were peaking, and, as Niven puts it, "anything worth doing in space can be turned into a weapon."
Wellspring 02:41, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Influence

I wonder if the various bits about Niven's influence should be gathered under a single heading? e.g; megastructures (Halo), flash crowds, Kzinti (the archetypal bear-tiger bad guy everybody uses, or maybe we just see the non-existent similarity? Though some like Star Trek animated series are well-documented), and perhaps the less obvious stuff (Green Lantern, Star Wars) Eh?

On a related note, I just stumbled across a series called "The Fleet" from the 80s edited by Drake which sounds a lot like the Man-Kzin wars. In fact, the used book I picked up vol. 3 includes a short by the man himself, and Chmee's cousin on the cover. --Belg4mit 17:50, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Work - Collaboration

I wrote this to add to the last section of Work, but I can't find the original source that put the idea in my head:

This stems, in part, from a contract clause for The Mote in God's Eye which prevented Niven and Pournelle from collaborating until a sequel had been written. The authors skirted this reqirement by bringing in third parties with which to collaborate including Barnes and Michael Flynn.

Note that the limitation was probably limited to a single publisher. --Belg4mit 14:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone find the article lacking in that there is no direct mention of LN's very successful collaborations with JP? Something must be done . . . .
—  Jim Dunning  talk  :  15:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
This is mentioned several times in the article. The short paragraph on this could be expanded, if someone thought it were important. Avt tor 21:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
No, it's mentioned once in an offhand manner (grep for Pournelle) --Belg4mit 23:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Themes

The article talks very little about the storylines of Niven's works. A number of them (RINGWORLD, RINGWORLD ENGINEERS, WORLD OUT OF TIME, INFERNO, DESTINY'S ROAD, MOTE IN GOD'S EYE) deal with the visit of an outsider to a society that is trapped in some crisis, and the efforts of the outsider to solve it. The catch (and I know this part is POV) is that Niven frequently gets bogged down in plot details, and the societies are often far more fascinating to me than the hero and his antics. It's like looking at a badly proportioned picture. In A WORLD OUT OF TIME, for example, I'd like to know more about the war between three Immortal races, not what what's-his-name had for dinner. CharlesTheBold 12:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Libertarian category

Why is Larry Niven listed in the "Libertarian science fiction writers" category? In the introduction to "Cloak of Anarchy" Niven clearly says he is not a libertarian. Has he had a change of heart since that story was written? -Father Inire 06:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, [this] is the edit that added the catagory; I've allready questioned him on his talk page about it. I say leave it there for the moment, until some evidence one way or the other comes up. I plan on adding as many in-text citations to this article as possible anyways, so hopefully I can add citation needed tags to anything that needs one. --Human.v2.0 14:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Turns out Niven is now a registered Libertarian: [4] -Father Inire 06:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Whilst I would be happy for the debate to end with the last point by Father Inire, I feel I should explain the categorisation, as its rationale is actually different to that given above (i.e. his own personal beliefs or political affiliation).
The categorisation is instead based upon writers of the genre of libertarian science fiction, without necessarily regarding the personal beliefs of the author. This is indicated by the explanatory note in Cat:Libertarian science fiction writers, and by the categorisation of that category itself (i.e. not being in Cat:Libertarians or other categories that are based upon political beliefs of those individuals). If this is deemed not sufficiently well-defined, there is a point in renaming the category to (say) 'Writers of libertarian science fiction', which would greatly clarify the situation.
Notwithstanding that case, Niven is clearly an author of libertarian science fiction (having, amongst other credentials in that field, having won the Prometheus Award for Fallen Angels). Hence, he belongs in that category as it currently stands. Bastin 08:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] website

larryniven.org is gone, does anyone know what happened? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.112.90.189 (talk) 19:48, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Back now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Views

Surely somewhere out there (Locus?) there is a summary of Pournelle's influence on Niven? Niven when talking with Pournelle says much more -er- striking things than either of them separately. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:59, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New photo

Just to let you all know, I have taken a recent photo of Mr. Niven and have put it on the Commons. See Image:Larry Niven Eaton 2008-05-17.png. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:57, 18 May 2008 (UTC)