{"id":2327,"date":"2005-06-01T01:56:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T06:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2327"},"modified":"2010-04-20T22:55:09","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T03:55:09","slug":"book-report-n-space-by-larry-niven-1990","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/06\/01\/book-report-n-space-by-larry-niven-1990\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: N-Space by Larry Niven (1990)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I bought this book<\/a> last summer for $4.95 because I didn’t think I was getting enough science fiction in my diet and because I think Ringworld<\/i> was one of the best science fiction novels I’ve read (and Lucifer’s Hammer<\/i>\/<\/i>Footfall<\/i> wasn’t a bad novel, either). So I felt safe buying a collection of Larry Niven short stories. So comfortable, I bought the follow-up collection, Playgrounds of the Mind<\/i>, at the same time. At $10 for the pair, it was like a penny a page.<\/p>\n

The book begins with an introduction by Tom Clancy, who was quite the hot writer at the time. The book collects not only short stories, but also: novel excerpts (which I skipped); introductions to the short stories that provided insight into the science fiction writer’s life of conventions, collabaration, and research; and nonfiction detritus including reminisces about colloquia and assorted musings. In short, it’s a book I’d like to collect someday.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I found the collection long and daunting. The nonfiction bits really didn’t add much to the stories, and since I bought the book because I am a fan of Larry Niven’s writing and not Larry Niven, I thought they watered the pieces down quite a bit. Some of the stories run fairly long, too, so it wasn’t like a normal collection of stories which allow for quick bits of reading in short time frames. Granted, that flaw simply fits into what I was looking for and is not inherent within the book.<\/p>\n

It’s a good enough collection, with evocative, imaginitive riffs with enough hard science to back them up. But I won’t read Playgrounds of the Mind<\/i> immediately.<\/p>\n

One interesting note about the colloquium I mentioned above: it took place in 1980-1981, and it involved a number of scientists, space-thinkers, and science fiction writers putting together a policy paper to submit to the Reagan administration. 1980. The Shuttle program was coming online, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century<\/i> and Battlestar Galactica<\/i> (okay, BSG1980, which never happened as far as I am concerned) were just going off the air, and man had walked on the moon less than ten years before. It pains me how little we’ve progressed since then, and if I could go back in time to tell them how little the space program and space exploration would progress in the next quarter century, they would probably think I was an agent of an increasingly desperate Soviet Union determined to sap their morale.<\/p>\n

Where has that societal optimism gone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought this book last summer for $4.95 because I didn’t think I was getting enough science fiction in my diet and because I think Ringworld was one of the best science fiction novels I’ve read (and Lucifer’s Hammer\/Footfall wasn’t a bad novel, either). So I felt safe buying a collection of Larry Niven short […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6238,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions\/6238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}