Ladies and Gentlemen, Dr. Larry Niven

Several Slashdot staff people are major Larry Niven fans, so we feel he needs no introduction. You asked. He answered. Enough said. Read and enjoy.

1) Fallen Angels, Baen Free Library, and RMS
by Robotech_Master

Your collaborative novel Fallen Angels is available in the Baen Free Library. What prompted you to make it available there?

Have its paper sales picked up since you posted it there? (Assuming it's still in print to be sold.) Might you consider making some of your other works available that way?

Also, Fallen Angels features a couple of references to one of the ultimate ubergeeks of the Linux world, Richard M. Stallman. Who was responsible for that? (I'm guessing it would have been Pournelle.) Are there any amusing stories associated with those appearances?

Niven:

Jim Baen's theory is that putting a work on the net will sell more paper copies. Paper books are easier to read and carry around. I thought it worth testing. So did my collaborators.

I don't have figures on whether it worked: raised the sales of Fallen Angels. I'll have to ask Jim Baen. If the theory holds, sure I'll make more stuff available. Long ago I gave away Net rights to certain short works, "Man of Steel/Woman of Kleenex" and "Down in Flames".

Richard Stallman must have ben put in by Jerry or Mike, not by me. We all did some research into science fiction fans; I introduced Mike Flynn to several on the West Coast, and he found his own in the East. Most of the characters in the book are real people suitably altered.

2) Is Science Fiction healthy?
by technoCon

Lots of folks love SF: Today there's a cable network and a nauseating volume of Star Trek reruns. Computer graphics makes it feasible to put a movie into any imaginable setting. Technology is being deployed so quickly that Vernor Vinge's singularity comes to mind. Technological progress is moving so fast it is hard to anticipate it.

NASA is dinking around in LEO: Boldly going where John Glenn has gone four decades before. I don't know who said it: The future just ain't what it used to be.

The Sputnik generation is graying: When I was a lad, I watched moon shots. It captured my imagination. I read any book that had a rocket on its cover. I'm late forties and will be dead of cancer soon.

Writers are moving out of SF: William Gibson's latest novel has high geek content, but none of the science isn't already deployed. Same for Neal Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_: good story with high geek content, but nothing beyond the current state of the art. And I've seen guys who once wrote Hard Science Fiction branching out to Fantasy.

Publishing is corporatized: The huge bookstores I haunt have SF sections that are overcrowded with Fantasy and StarTrek, StarWars, Babylon5 & (insert corporate franchise here) serials.

It looks to me as if Science Fiction is in trouble, or it may be sick, or it may be dead and doesn't know it yet.

What is your assessment of SF's health and which of these considerations do you think most significant?

Niven:

We were a tiny, despised cluster of the socially inept when I first found other science fiction fans. Today we have a hell of a lot more respect, success, and money. The field is healthy.

Yes, good SF writers veer into fantasy and mainstream. I do it too. It's a break, a vacation. Don't let it disturb you.

As for the rest--do you see the media invading the science fiction field? It's the other way around. We've fully corrupted them; it only remains to educate them too.

But we ourselves are not moving into space.

Note: we're learning about the universe at an amazing rate. We're exploring the planets. We've got everything we hoped for, except that human beings aren't going and aliens don't seem to be waiting. I don't know what to do about that, except to show the dream to as many minds as I can reach.

Most of my friends are convinced that NASA is the great roadblock. I have my doubts. We persuaded Goldin that all he had to do was fire two levels of NASA bureaucrats and...he managed it, and magic didn't happen. Maybe what we're up against is the universe.

3) Intersection of SciFi and Gaming
by Shadow Wrought

What do you think of video games as a future outlet for original SciFi universes? Do you think that the interactive environments games provide will appeal to writers who would otherwise create movies or shorts?

Niven:

I love it. Any new market (such as video games) opens more options for creativity, and more money. Games and movie/tv and books will feed into each other. Mind you, that's hard on the novices: competition is going to get fiercer yet.

4) Cautionary tales?
by J. Random Software

You've built worlds with uncommonly dystopian elements, such as Plateau's long tyranny over a disarmed populace, organlegging, all-out war with ruthless aliens, and suppression of dangerous technology. Have you intended any of these to be cautions about likely (or even inevitable) events, or just interesting to think about?

Niven:

Sure, they're all intended as warnings. Nevertheless--what I've been serving up through most of my career are the dark sides of bright futures.

Organlegging, including State executions for organs, is the dark side of longevity, advanced medical techniques.

Disarmed populace and suppression of dangerous technology seem inevitable. Be warned.

War with aliens seems less likely, except that an enemy is always alien to some extent.

Plateau was fairyland with a single flaw.

5) Favorite book?
by emarkp

Of the work you've written, does one title in particular have a special place in your heart? Douglas Adams once said that his book "Last Chance to See" was the one book he'd hope that people read if they only read one of his books. Is there one book of yours you'd like people to have read?

Similarly, if I were to introduce someone to your books, which one would you suggest I give him first?

Niven:

What book you give depends on who you're giving it to. To a mundane, give LUCIFER'S HAMMER. To a scientist, give THE INTEGRAL TREES. To someone who already wants to write, or to know about Niven, give N-SPACE or PLAYGROUNDS OF THE MIND or the forthcoming SCATTERBRAIN. Fantasy fans and Angelinos get THE BURNING CITY. If I had to bet my reputation it would be on RINGWORLD.

6) Intelligence and Wisdom
by Kostya

Could you comment on the difference between intelligence and wisdom? You seem to hint at some ideas in Ringworld Throne when Wu chooses to depose the Vampire Protector because he was not wise enough.

In these Pak Protectors, we have unbelievably intelligent and clever beings, but wisdom does not seem implied. What are your thoughts on wisdom, and what points were you trying to make? Considering the audience for most of your books (geeks, "smart folk"), it's an interesting point to include.

Side question: where did you come up with the idea of the Pak, especially as human ancestors? It has to be one of the more original conjectures about effects of old age that I have ever read :-)

Niven:

My father and stepmother got us into a night class in hominid development. From what I learned, and one initial assumption, I extrapolated protectors. The assumption was, every symptom of aging is a stunted version of something intended to make us better able to defend our descendants.

Fans have pointed out developments even I missed. Thus: We breeders have a stunted sense of smell because our protector forms would otherwise be obeying their noses, rejecting outsider mates for their breeders, causing inbreeding.

The original (Pak) protectors are still too reflexive: they've got intelligence but not wisdom.

Intelligence is a tool or tool set. Wisdom is what you do with that. I've met people who specialized their intelligence, who never developed a life. I know yoga students like that too.

I've written at length about wisdom and intelligence because I didn't have a short answer.

7) What do you read?
by caesar-auf-nihil

Mr. Niven,

I'm always curious about what authors read for either inspiration, or what they find to be good literature. What books (science fiction or otherwise) have influenced your work, or do you find to be delightful reads. Any favorite authors?

Thank you for your time.

Niven:

THE WIZARD OF OZ seems to have inspired me as a child.

Today I read a lot of science fiction, and I take friends' advice for what else pops up. I loved CRYPTONOMICON. I read everything by Tim Powers and Terry Pratchett and a lot of Connie Willis. Some really good hard SF writers have popped up, and I read them: John Barnes, Bruce Sterling, Stephen Baxter. Barbara Hambly's detective fiction. Patrick O'Brian's sea stories, courtesy of John Hertz.

8) Why is there no religion in Known Space
by Adam Rightmann

I know most SF writers aren't big on religion, but religion occupies a very large space in your collaboration with Pournelle, "The Mote in God's Eye", yet is conspicously lacking in Known Space. Is the religion in "Mote" all Jerry's doing?

Niven:

Yes, it is. I'm not comfortable speculating on the development of new and established religions. The Kdaptist heresy was a joke. INFERNO was a compulsion: I'd read Dante's INFERNO and my mind wouldn't let go of it, and I sucked Jerry into it too. My motives weren't religious, they were a storyteller's.

9) Crossing my fingers
by Demona

Was your cease-and-desist regarding Elf Sternberg's "The Only Fair Game" motivated more by a personal aversion to the content, or a desire to retain control over "your universe"? How does this jibe with your statement in Ringworld Engineers that "If you want more Known Space stories, you'll have to write them yourself"?

Niven:

I couldn't remember "The Only Fair Game", so I used your link.

I don't buy its premise. An older species won't have human versatility in sex: sexual responses will be all hard wired. Kzinti females won't be soft and unresponsive, either. You die if you make that mistake.

I probably issued a cease-and-desist when the story was described to me as violating my copyright. It does that, of course, and I notice the "desist" had no effect.

Once upon a time there was a gaming article that blew away the punch lines of several Man-Kzin War stories. I asked that it not be published. In that case too, I acted to protect my copyrights and my authors.

More generally--"If you want more Known Space stories" was intended as an invitation to daydream, not to violate my copyrights and steal my ideas. Turning such dreams into stories is only done under restricted circumstances and with permission.

But these dreams can make my morning. I love it when someone sees an implication I missed. (I get these via email, usually, or as Man-Kzin War stories.) And after all, there are things I can't copyright or patent or trademark. "Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld, but I didn't invent spin gravity.

10) Movie Jealousy?
by spun

David Brin has been forthright concerning his jealousy over bad SF being made into movies while his work is not. With the exception of 'Forbidden Planet' I have yet to see a science fiction movie that draws me in the way a good Sci-Fi book does.

I also think that your works would make excellent movies. Brin's work would probably play well in Europe, where people seem to prefer a little more ambiguity in their movies. It probably wouldn't do well here. Now, I'm not saying your writing isn't of the same caliber as Brin's work, but it is a little more accesible to the common man, and therefore seems well suited to be made into a blockbuster that would do well in the states. My questions: 1.) Are you at all jealous that lesser talents get to have their work seen by millions on the silver screen? 2.) Have you been approached by any producers regarding screenplays of your work? 3.) Would you even want to have your works made into movies?

That said, I just have to say thank you for providing me with so much quality entertainment! I grew up reading your stories from the time I was ten. In my esteem, you are one of the best well rounded Sci Fi authors out there. Your work has great characters, fantastic settings, believable science, and lots of action. Thanks again.

Niven:

Sure I'm jealous, and angry. I've waited too long to take my family to a movie made from my works, and now my mother's gotten to old to go. I'm glad to see Brin's "The Postman" on the big screen. I like his message. But I'd like to see Harry the Mailman, from "Lucifer's Hammer", up there too.

And sure I've sold rights and options, and written a Star Trek cartoon and sold an Outer Limits episode, but it's not the same as walking into a theater. Movies cost a lot more than options do.

Yes, I would like to see my works made into movies. All of them. Short stories as well as novels. Why not? A movie doesn't ruin a book; the book is still there, unchanged, and may even see a larger audience. See Vince Gerardis of Created By, my agent, if you've just won a lottery.

Comments

Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Tailhook]

Amen. Put that in your NASA/Military Industrial Complex conspiracy pipe and smoke it. The Universe has no compelling reason to cater to whims and dreams of mortals. There is no "grass roots" road to space. Get over it.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[TopShelf]

And frankly, until there is something that would truly require human study and analysis, we just won't see any strong drive to send a manned mission out of orbit anytime soon. The improved capabilities of orbiting telescopes and robotic exploration have pretty much eliminated the need for manned missions in the short- to medium-term. It's not that we're not exploring, we're just not sticking our (astronaut's) necks out.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[ChuckDivine]

You could be right. The human race has shown a weakness for impossible dreams. Consider, for example, ancient mythologies, or the "ideal" of modern communism. Myths about gods residing on Olympus and entering into the affairs of humans are clearly not true. Similarly, the notions of that contemporary mythology known as communism have been similarly discredited.

However, we do know that the NASA-aerospace industrial complex has many dysfunctional features. In some ways it's been getting worse over the years. Can current NASA problems be fixed? Reforms have been successfully made to other institutions.

Before we chuck out our dreams, perhaps we should consider changing the current approach to the problems. This could mean reform of the existing establishment, creating new ways out of whole cloth or some combination.

Goldin's efforts probably worsened the existing situation. It remains to be seen whether the impact of O'Keefe's reforms will be positive or negative.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Anonymous Coward]

Myths about gods residing on Olympus and entering into the affairs of humans are clearly not true.

Just keep telling yourself that, after Zeus and the other Olympians wake up from their nap and then give all of us a very stern talking to. All of this "one god" and "no gods, just cold uncaring universe" crap will do no good when we're dodging thunder bolts.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Tailhook]

Before we chuck out our dreams, perhaps we should consider changing the current approach to the problems

I don't wish for anyone to chuck out their dreams. I'd just like some of the anti-NASA zealots to put their dreams into perspective. The common Joe is convinced that NASA is a farce of waste and mismanagement. This isn't the case, but the perception gives leverage to forces that oppose NASA and, by extension, institutional exploration altogether.

There are two groups of anti-NASA. The first group hates NASA because they harbor vague notions about how to do it "right." They believe NASA, with it's big budget programs such as the Space Shuttle, is the reason that progress is slow. The second group hates NASA because NASA consumes resources that they would rather have for other, mostly "social", agendas. The problem is that when the first group sounds off, they give ammunition to the second group. I don't like this because I believe progress is slow because the task is hard, not because NASA sucks, and NASA doesn't need either group ankle-bitting it, much less both. Destroying NASA isn't going to create a better NASA, it's just going to get more food stamps bought.

Next year Cassini will reach Saturn. It will drop a probe onto the surface of Titan. We will learn more about Saturn than has ever been known. That which we learn will constitute the domain of knowledge about Saturn that anyone reading this will ever have the opportunity to know prior to death. Cassini is considered an old-fashioned "big budget" mission according to contemporary anti-NASA zealot thinking. Will there be more? God forbid!

Want something to dream of that you have a rational basis for suspecting may be feasible in your lifetime? Here are mine; detecting extra-terrestrial intelligent life and creating machine based non-human intelligence. The first is a matter of fate and possibly some luck. The second I consider an inevitability and I'm only left to wonder about timing. I too have my dreams. I just try a little harder to keep reality in perspective. The physics involved in space exploration precludes most of what our imaginations are capable of. This isn't NASA's fault so I figure it's best not to blame them for it.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[jthomas2]

That's a beautiful line and there is a lot of truth in it. In general the universe does not seem hospitable for intelligent life. Planetary scale stability required for the evolution of intelligent life seems to not be there. There doesn't seem to be anyone else out there - otherwise a) they would be here already b) we would notice their handiwork everywhere.

So where does that leave us? We have got to get out of here! If we don't - in a million years there will be no humans, if we do, in a million years humans will be everywhere. It will probably take us far longer to get out than the willy eyed futurists predict but it doesn't really matter because we have to think in terms of geological time. When time scales go to thousands and tens of thousands of years the probability of a civilization destroying event go to unity. If we don't, it might be another 5 billion years until something like us arises elsewhere.

And god damn, there is nothing more human than having impossible dreams.

-Jay

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[The Cornishman]

we're just not sticking our (astronaut's) necks out

Either that apostrophe is in the wrong place, or NASA has recruited a Pearson's Puppeteer. I think we should be told!

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Anonymous Coward]

Similarly, the notions of that contemporary mythology known as communism have been similarly discredited.

Huh? You have to stop listening to Rush while posting.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Tackhead]

> The improved capabilities of orbiting telescopes and robotic exploration [nasa.gov] have pretty much eliminated the need for manned missions in the short- to medium-term. It's not that we're not exploring, we're just not sticking our (astronaut's) necks out.

For the most part, you're right, but for Mars, I respectfully disagree.

A freshman geology student with a pickaxe, a shovel, and an hour's worth of oxygen could teach us more about Martian history than any robotic sample return mission we have on the drawing board.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Galvatron]

Reforms have been successfully made to other institutions.

Other government institutions? Are you sure? Quite frankly, I can't think of any. From the Post Office to Social Security to the IRS to the Patent Office, every government institution I can think of just gets worse and more bloated year after year. I wish I could, but I honestly can't think of any governmental organization that has gotten better, aside from those which have been essentially totally dismembered (for example, the ICC).

That's really a depressing thought, actually. Please, someone give me a counter example.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[orkysoft]

There doesn't seem to be anyone else out there - otherwise a) they would be here already b) we would notice their handiwork everywhere.

What makes you say they would already be here? Maybe they're just as stuck on their planet as we are?

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Once&FutureRocketman]

You are so full of shit.

NASA is a victim of its past successes. When Kennedy decided to beat Russia to the moon, what was previously a small, tight research organization got given a blank check and a mandate. After we won the race, the mandate went away. This meant that NASA was a large organization that had grown to its full size too quickly, still possessing a fairly large budget but no clear impelling direction. It's hardly surprising that they fell into bureaucracy.

STS is a system that might has well have been designed for unreliability. Something like 30,000 people are involved in the refit of the orbiter between each mission. The main engines are partially disassembled, which means de-welding them, between each flight!

Space travel is expensive and dangerous. It is vastly more expensive and dangerous as a result of NASA's approach.

A large part of this is politics, and is not really NASA's fault (for whatever that's worth). They make important decisions (like who is going to build different parts of the Orbiter) for purely political reasons, because they need Congress' support. The STS system has major components manufacturered in something like 40 out of the 50 states, because they have to spread the federal dollars around. This is not the way to design a cheap, reliable solution.

Even doing all that, they can't count on their budget from year to year, which makes it almost impossible for them to undertake long-term projects with confidence.

No grassroots road, eh? Why not? It's a technical challenge, sure. But so far no entity other than NASA has had a real chance to attack the problem. Back a few years, there was a flurry of small private rocket companies, all of which collapsed after spending a few $million. They were successfully moving the technology forward, but were unable to raise the $100-200 million that was the rough budget for developing a new launch system: most investors just don't have that kind of vision.

$100-$200 million sounds like a lot, but consider this: NASA spent over $30 million just selecting the bloody launch site for the X-33, which ultimately never got built.

It is possible to build reliable rockets cheaply. It is even possible to mount them in piloted vehicles safely. It's been done. So don't tell us it is impossible.

I will agree with your statement insofar as a literal interpretation goes: there is no military/industrial conspiracy. It's just a bunch of people and bureaucrats all acting to protect their personal short-term interests. Most of them don't care any more about space than the Post Office employee cares about your mail. And given how bound up in bureaucracy NASA is, I can hardly blame them.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[divisionbyzero]

If we are trying to remove pilots from aircraft via UCAVs, then why would we not try to remove astronauts from space?

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[jo42]

With that attitude, we would have never of left the cave...

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[axlrosen]

Perhaps, but it'll cost us 100 or 1000 times more to get him there and back. Is it worth it?

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[ChuckDivine]

You might consider the U.S. military. The military was a real mess during the Vietnam war. After the war ended, it moved, somewhat successfully to a more professional and competent model. The draft was ended. The quality of personnel improved. Accomplishments increased.

It's true that not everything is rosy today with the military. But to deny that real, effective improvement has happened over the past few decades is, in my opinion, showing ignorance.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Selfbain]

The odds that there is another civilization nearby that is at the same technological level as we are is pretty remote. I would say that if they're out there, they're a thousand times more advanced or still banging rocks together.

There was a /. story a ways back about how the earth is getting quieter as our communication technology increases and that soon the earth will fall silent as we stop broadcasting our signals out into space. Perhaps this is why we can find no evidence of other life, we simply don't have the technology to detect it. Not only that, I would be willing to bet that any species that can survive long enough to make it into space would be fairly enlightened and peaceful, thus we must look like barbarians.

Perhaps they HAVE been here, took a good look at us and decided they'd check up on us when we've matured a bit more.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Galvatron]

Yeah, that's probably not a bad point. One minor issue though: the Selective Service was reinstated by Clinton. I had to register a few years ago. Hopefully they'll never actually call anyone up though.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[ChuckDivine]

The first group hates NASA because they harbor vague notions about how to do it "right." They believe NASA, with it's big budget programs such as the Space Shuttle, is the reason that progress is slow.

Some of us have more than vague ideas for improvements. Substantive proposals for reform have been made -- frequently by people who have real knowledge of what's going on in the field. One friend who still works at NASA complains about increasingly bureaucratic management getting in the way. Shifting back to a more flexible management style such as was once practiced isn't a vague proposal. Encouraging independence and the free flow of communications aren't vague proposals.

Yes, things revealed by this group can provide ammunition to the people who want to simply destroy NASA. But suppressing bad news isn't healthy for an organization in anything but the shortest term. People once assumed that totalitarian dictatorships would best open democracies because they didn't "waste time" on debate or allow "internal critics" to weaken the state. It turned out that the problems ignored were sufficient to weaken the totalitarian states.

NASA is far from a totalitarian state. But similar principles do apply. You can't solve problems until they are known and widely discussed. The more people who look at a problem, the more likely you'll find a solution.

Cassini is considered an old-fashioned "big budget" mission according to contemporary anti-NASA zealot thinking.

Yes, Cassini looks to be a success. And some of the "better, faster, cheaper" approaches have been notable failures. Goldin made severe mistakes. So did his predecessors. And I agree that the critics make some too. That's why I favor getting as many people involved as possible. Openness and flexibility are what we need -- not dogma of one variety or another.

Yes, physics does argue against things like Star Trek fantasies. That doesn't mean we're not able to do a wide variety of remarkable things in space. Physicists far better than I think things like space colonies and even travel to other stars are possible. Some even think them likely. The Fermi Paradox is still a debated topic. And, given that present day aerospace does have significant management problems, we don't need to invoke ideas that "physics is against it" to explain the failures that we see.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[evilpenguin]

Uh, Selective Service was reinstated by Carter, not Clinton. It was a response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. We also pulled out of the Olympics. That showed 'em.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[evilpenguin]

Oh, and selective service is NOT the same as the draft. During the Vietnam era, people were called up from the pool of Selective Service registrants by lottery.

No one has been drafted since Carter reactivated the Selective Service system. (Actually, since Nixon ended the draft and halted Selective Service registration).

You merely tell them where you live so they can find you if a draft is started.

If you point was to say something about which political party has called yound men to die, yes, Bush the Younger is breaking the pattern. Our major 20th Century wars have been mostly started under Democratic administrations.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Fishstick]

>Perhaps they HAVE been here, took a good look at us and decided they'd check up on us when we've matured a bit more

That kind of comment always remids me of this

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Anonymous Coward]

Zeus? Don't you mean Thor? Surely Mjollnir will strike them down for their failure to make the due sacrifices!

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[TerraFORM]

That 'something compelling' might just be a rogue asteroid.

Sure, it's a long shot, but IF IT DOES HAPPEN, we sure as heck need to be established somewhere else.

The longevity of the SPECIES is at stake, and methinks that alone is a pretty damn good reason.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Tailhook]

One friend who still works at NASA complains about increasingly bureaucratic management getting in the way.

Bureaucracy can keep metric and english from getting confused. Bureaucracy can prevent priority inversions inside the tiny kernels of remotely piloted vehicles. More bureaucracy might have gotten the lens ground right. It took a LOT of bureaucrats to organize the fix for that one.

Does "flexible" include ignoring launch parameters and blowing up manned vehicles? I watched that happen. Fuck flexible.

The hacker ethos does not apply to Space. Period.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[GregWebb]

How much would a one-way mission cost?

Seriously. I know I wouldn't but I'd put very good money that someone would be willing to trade the honour of being the first human in recorded history to set foot on another planet for it being a suicide mission.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[MrBlue VT]

Damn good idea. Some people may claim that it's not ethical, but who are we to impose our beliefs on a (sane) person who wants to do it.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Thud457]

Maybe they're dying of cancer.

Maybe being irradiated by making the trip would cure their cancer. errr.... then they'd change their mind.

Kind of like "The Ethics of Madness", once you leave Earth, you've committed yourself to a given plan of action.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[LordMyren]

Geological scale eh? I think a couple thousand more years might be in order before we start using not-out-of-the-womb-yet technology to start getting us off this parituclar ball of rock.

My guess is the first ships would probably be arriving at already settled planets, as technology increases the speed of transit, and given the gargantuan distances and times that will have to be covered.

Patience.
Myren

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[cybercuzco]

Im tired of people bitching about how were not going into space anymore. These things take time people! Youre not going to have star trek tomorrow, or the next day or maybe even in 3 centuries. The first real colony in the americas was nearly 100 years after columbus first set foot here, and there was alot more reason for people to come to america then there is for us to go to space now. We need the impetus to do it, and that means running out of more natural resources. Humans are lazy, they wont change their ways unless they are absolutely forced to. Look at how the steam engine was invented: Steam power was known about for millenia before the industrual revolution (see Heros Engine) but it was finally perfected because they needed a way to pump water out of the coal mines. They needed to do that because they were using more coal, they were using more coal because the english and most of europe had run out of trees. They had run out of trees because populations had grown and they needed to wood for housing and heating. Essentially we were forced to move to another fuel source, and this fuel source required new technology to gather it. Its amazing how innovative you can be when youre faced with being inventive or freezing to death in the winter. Space travel is no different. If we have 15 billion people on the planet in 50 years, I gaurentee we will be going into space. Not to send excess population there, but to bring back resources like power and minerals. All it takes on your part is a little patience for the population pressure to start pushing us outward again.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[LifesABeach]

maybe changing the uniform at nasa to a pink sun dress would be a good idea...

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[sgage]

Yes, Tailhook (and I see you're already modded up to 5, which gives me hope for /.

I instantly took that "maybe what we're up against..." quote and put it in my quote file for use the next time a "all we gotta do is privatize space and we'll all go to Mars next week" post comes up.

1) As you so nicely put it, The Universe has no compelling reason to cater to whims and dreams of mortals.

I'd add...

2) Nowhere is it written that The Universe in all Its glory should be completely comprehended by talking monkeys.

That said, it's fun to try ;-)

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[sgage]

"Physicists far better than I think things like space colonies and even travel to other stars are possible."

Of course they're possible. But not trivially so, and not next week. Does anyone remember Gerard K. O'Neill's space colony wet dreams in the 70's? He claimed that we could build these enormous self-contained colonies (we're talking 100's or 1000's of people), using mass-drivers to shoot lunar material into L-space, where it would be smelted into usable metals for building the damn things. All using technology that was "well understood". Why, we could do it in 10 years! (It's always 10 years).

It was total bullshit! Of the 100's of technological links in his chain, 99.99% were at best nacent technologies, especially in space.

Can we do it "some day"? Sure. But we don't even know how to produce food in space, much less build mass drivers and use native lunar/asteroidal material for any kind of useful construction. Of course, any experiments to learn how to do so on the ISS are caustically derided by the self-appointed experts on /. as a waste of time.

Well doods and babes, it's gonna take some time, so be patient.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[homebru]

Is it worth it?

If he can't get a job here with his college skills and winds up as a telemarketer, would it have been worth it?

Maybe the Golgafrinchams were on the track of a good idea; "Mars for Tele-marketers".

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Zachary Kessin]

While I'm sure we could find some poor slob to take a suicide mission, the question would be could we consider this an ethical thing to do. In truth we can get better value form a robot probe. TO send a human to Mars will be very expensive. Its a several year trip to get there and you need enough air food water etc to get there. The robot does not need food air etc.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Galvatron]

If you point was to say something about which political party has called yound men to die, yes, Bush the Younger is breaking the pattern.

No, I had no such point. I was merely saying that young men today are no more protected from a draft than they were in the Vietnam Era (actually less, the rules are more strict now, granting fewer exceptions for marriage or education). The only difference is that there's no war going on which needs that kind of manpower. I apologize for the Clinton/Carter mistake; I read the SS website back when I had to sign up, and I guess I'd just gotten those two C's mixed up in my head.

Oh, and selective service is NOT the same as the draft.

I realize that. But clearly there's not going to BE a draft unless we're engaged in a high casualty war. So to say that the military has improved because they're not currently drafting people is not true. If we start getting bogged down in Iraq, or wherever, I have no doubt the draft will pick right back up again.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[sketerpot]

Does "flexible" include ignoring launch parameters and blowing up manned vehicles? I watched that happen. Fuck flexible.

If you're referring to the Challenger explosion, then I should probably say that there were repeated objections from plenty of people saying that it was too cold to launch, but somewhere in the beauraucracy somebody decided that they would launch anyway for political reasons. The same beaureaucracy buried complaints about the shuttle safety which culminated in Columbia's disaster.

I think NASA should get back to research.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Oggust]

There are two groups of anti-NASA.

There's more groups than that.

There's those companies who were trying to get into space, but got killed in the regulatory/legal phase, and/or were actively lobbied against by NASA, for example. NASA does to this day charge a below-cost price (ie price-dumping, and by the government, no less!) for shuttle payloads, for example. That's not exactly making things easier for the competition is it?

Now, I'm not saying that all the various space ventures would have succededed, far from it, but the fact remains that NASA has killed some initiatives, seemingly to keep their monopoly, or because of institutional NIH, or something along those lines.

That means they spent some of their money (Taxpayer money!) on trying to keep others out of space. Civilian americans. And that's just plain wrong.

(Note that I'm talking (mostly at least) about pre-Goldin NASA here.)

/August.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[CAIMLAS]

What if they can cut costs by 30% by leaving him on Mars and only bringing the rocks back? Seems feasable to me - why not, the tech industry has been doing the basic same thing for a while now.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[fenix down]

beaureucracy != politics

Actually, it should be beaureucracy = !politics. At least that's what it's supposed to be.

Polititians want to do something flashy to get reelected, beaureucrats want to keep the machine running. Ideally they cancel each other out and everybody gets back to work.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[bluGill]

I can think of several reasons to call it ethical. The dieing of cancer that someone else mentioned is good. However in that case by the time you can get that person ready to go they will be dead, at least anyway I can look at it. First we need rockets that can go there, plus a space capsule that can support his life all the way there. The Moon was really too far to go in the small capsule they went in, and that was only a few days journey. Mars would be months or years, which means a lot more food to deal with, keeping the body in shape, dealing with medical issues, and so one. I think the biggest will be bordom, we are talking about months in a small place with nothing to do, enough to drive most people to scuicide.

However the above aside, I can think of several people who we could ethically send despite the time it would take. Anyone on death row for instance. If they really commited a crime, and have the acidemic qualifications we should send them to mars instead. Other charges that don't lead to death penalties count too. (those making child porn for instance, rapists)

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[DancingSword]

Integrity is opposed both by cracker-blood and by beaurocracy-blood.

...

Open/Moving Effectiveness is possible, IF the process AND the someones-involved AND the means are coherently open/moving and effective...

...

many have commented, over the years, on how increasing a 'unit' from 130 to 140 people, whether Hutterite (sp?) community or military group ( or Goretex company's units ) doesn't break the unitary meaning of the unit, yet...
increasing it from 148-158 breaks it into 2 ( or more ) factions, simply because of our hardwired brain/mind capability.

NASA isn't within the ordered-unit capability of human-mind, and they apparently don't fractally divide theirself into complete/working units of the right size ( for human minds ).

...

It's also been known for ages that the realtime-process nature of communications defines whether a company/entity is functional, and whether it's getting functional or non-functional...

face-to-face works, phone works, IRC works, at the other extreme memos manufacture won't ( and won't-work ) into an entity's mode.

This is quite established, quite known, yet our unconscious ( or cultural ) addiction to .. The Authoritative Importance that our Glorious NonFuntion Derives for Us...

...

Also, the Single Leading Focus rule seems necessary ( also spoken as "Don't Confuse Management/Admin with Leading", and "Never Separate Responsibility from Authority or Diffuse Responsibility" )...
Skunkworks, Ferrari, that admiral guy ( US submarines ), Linux, BeOS, etc. show that Leading By Committee can't work as phenomenally decisively as can the alternative...

Someone's got to lead, and they've got to do so openly enough to be able to be aware, and determinedly enough to disallow inertia to 'lead' for 'em.

...

Try living in the nation's capital, and telling me that beaurocracy really does work...

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Art Tatum]

I think NASA should get back to research.

This is the sticking point for many who oppose NASA. The truth is, NASA is doing research. It's just not propulsion research.

Simply because they're not doing as much with new propulsion technology as they used to (when there was more to understand about rocketry) doesn't mean they're not doing anything. I think we've reaped many more practical benefits out of materials research done on the shuttle than we have in building better rockets.

But those who are livid with NASA for "losing its vision" are really just upset because they aren't seeing the high profile "exploration" missions that we saw in the 60s.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[quinkin]

Has anyone here read the book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character" by Richard Feynman?

The chapters on the Presidential Inquiry into the Challenger disaster delineate at length the culture of blame, mismanagement, and corruption that is rife within NASA. Not to denigrate the engineers who repeatedly tried to ensure that the expertise they were hired for was listened to.

So was his contribution to the investigation welcomed by those who had requested it? Hell no - instead he was vilified, censored and even threatened.

Does anyone expect the current inquiry to result in anything more productive than a scape-goat or two? I certainly don't.

Don't get me wrong here - I have the greatest respect for those men and women who make it all happen. I also appreciate the difficulty and danger of using controlled detonations to tear your self from the earths gravity well. But I believe that there needs to be culpability for those who put there own commercial interests in front of the safety of their crew (and the surrounding population).

I reiterate: NASA has some of the finest aerospace engineers in the world, unfortunately they also have an entrenched powerbase with a multitude of self-serving managers with undisclosed conflicts of interest. Does this sound like a good idea to you?

The power is in your hands - please don't let history repeat itself.

Q.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Stormy Henderson]

I can see it now...we spend $18.2 billion dollars to send a death-row inmate to Mars, and when he gets there, he says, "Screw you," and plays solitaire until his oxygen runs out.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[triptolemeus]

Brings up the question whether deathrow can be considered ethical for any modern nation. If you respect life, you just don't kill people. Animals kill, people shouldn't.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[bluGill]

Well some selection needs to be applied, though there is basicly nothing we could do to prevent it.

However I don't think it is likely. Remember I did'nt say just any inmate could qualify, someone who went through the effort to get a degree in geology (archiology, or any other program that would have some use for studing mars) is likely interested enough in the subject to at least spend some time doing it. No requirement but it increases the odds of getting something useful.

Remember after they arrive, they have spent months or years with nothing to do but play solitary, so they are likely bored with simple games. A shovel and a chance to study something they are interested in would be welcome relief from bordom.

If we do decide to do this, we need to get some money's worth. A couple days of O2 isn't enough to get anything done, if they really want to. So give them a few years. (I think food would be more a problem than O2, but whatever) Enough that they can get some real research done if they want to. Mars is big enough that even given the worst case they can't spoil significant quanity of the landscape on their own. (though a significant part could be)

Of course if mars has intelligent life we don't want to send anyone other than our most trusted "diplomats". (In quotes because modern diplomats get on my nerves and might be the worst people to send to other planets)

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Anonymous Coward]

But only if they did their hour of hammering in the right spot!

I fully agree that we have got to send geologists to Mars. I'd love to send them tomorrow. I'd love them to send ME tomorrow.

But to be cold and analytic, I think we have a lot more robotic exploring to do first. NASA was not only pushing the tech too hard in wanting to do sample return in the 2005-2010 time frame, but pushing our knowledge. For example, we've learned a hell of a lot about ice/water possibilities in just the last year or two.

I think it is a mistake to think we can do the detailed ground-work just as well by robots, but I'm coming to believe that spending another 10 or 20 years doing extremely detailed detailed remote sensing and really digesting the results -- years worth of work just for the existing datasets -- will result in much bigger payoff when we do send people.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[sketerpot]

Perhaps I should clarify what I was trying to say. A huge amount of NASA budget goes to space shuttle related costs. I think that people should support efforts to develop cheaper LEO launch solutions so that NASA can ditch the shuttles and divert the money to research that may not pay off soon, like the materials research you spoke of (I love materials research), which is what I think NASA should be doing---not fussing over orbital launch vehicles.

I'm sorrt for being ambiguous in my original comment.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Art Tatum]

Ah, I see, yes. I've heard so many people lately complaining about not having manned missions to Mars/Pluto/Zorak-16 and I thought maybe you were one of them.

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Kong the Medium]

Here, I volunteer! Finally a way to get my footprint in history, without killing anybody else but me!

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[pxpt]

If you translate space travel to an atmospheric flight analogy we are currently at the stage where we are flapping our arms trying to fly. Space travel is a hard problem to solve. You don't just whizz into space in a tin can hoping to get around by blasting rocket motors all over the place and live all cooped up for weeks on end - thats only ok for short duration/distances. REAL space travel (ie to the edge of our solar system and beyond) requires technology WAY beyond our present capabilities. A lot of people seem to have difficulty coming to terms with this.

I rate proper space travel harder that AI and how far have we got with that! I would say that we are probably a couple of hundred years away from being able to venture from our solar system. I may even be too optimistic with that timescale. But don't let this dishearten you too much - we all have to start somewhere. The secret is to keep bashing those rocks together guys!

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Kintanon]

" But we don't even know how to produce food in space, much less build mass drivers and use native lunar/asteroidal material for any kind of useful construction."

We don't? I don't see what the problem with growing food in space is. You just start the system on earth and launch it as a payload. A small ecosystem that can be expanded and, if carefully managed, produces plenty of food. Yeah it requires that the initial system be configured on earth, but I don't see how that's a problem. Launch a bunch of curved pipes, build a doughnut, spin that thing up to get some gravity on the walls and then move your soil+plants+animals in. Have one side always sunfacing and fully plated with solar panels to power lamps that provide a normal day/night cycle. It's certainly feasible isn't it?

Kintanon

Re:Maybe what we're up against is the universe

[Grog6]

Actually, there's this huge kegger going on in Valhalla;
It started just after the Alamo, and some boys from Tennessee (and Texas) are showing them how we party.
They should come up for air in a couple of centuries.

Thanks for the interview!

[eaddict]

I hope to see more authors here! Too bad PKD is dead. I guess I will have to live with "What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick" which is a great read!

Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[schon]

Joel Rosenberg put it best in "The Sleeping Dragon":

The difference between intelligence and wisdom is the difference between Edith Bunker and Richard Nixon.

Edith has high wisdom and low intelligence, and Nixon is the other way around.

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[revery]

Thanks for reminding of Joel Rosenberg and his excellent novels. They are some of the best fantasy I have ever read. It's been far too long since I've read them.

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[schon]

Thanks for reminding of Joel Rosenberg and his excellent novels.

You're very welcome!

They are some of the best fantasy I have ever read.

Agreed. He has an amazing talent for characterization. (Not to mention storytelling.)

It's been far too long since I've read them.

You should go back and re-read them.. I did recently, and they still hold up. you can start with The Sleeping Dragon, which is available at the Baen Free Library. (The Sleeping Dragon, The Sword and the Chain, and The Silver Crown have been re-released in one volume, entitled "The Guardians of the Flame")

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[revery]

I think I still have them. They were my first purchases from the science fiction book club when I was in the 9th or 10th grade. Let's see, that would be 90' or 91'. The SF book club also released them in the 3 book volume. I've read through "The Road to Ehvenor" (I hope I spelled that right, it's been a while since I've seen it.)

Has anyone read any of his later works?

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

My favourite DM explained it this way:

Intelligence: 'It's raining.'
Wisdom: 'I should get out of the rain.'

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[Jason Earl]

Speaking of Joel Rosenberg, he has also apparently been picked up by Baen. I just ordered "The Guardians of the Flame" as part of the February Baen ebook package, and am enjoying re-reading it.

If you own a PDA and haven't tried reading an ebook I would highly recommend Baen's website. It has a whole pile of good Science Fiction and Fantasy available in unencrypted formats available both for sale and "for free."

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

...or, Gary Gygax, from "The Player's Handbook".

"I have intelligence to know that smoking is bad, yet I do not have the wisdom to [try and] stop." ...or words to that effect.

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence

[Jamey]

Rosenberg is not just a fantasy writer - his Metzada Mercenary Corp stories (Not For Glory) tell of a hard-core military SciFi mercenary unit who would probably give Hammer's Slammers a run for their money.

Outer Limits

[Kallahar]

What was the Outer Limits episode he wrote?

Travis

Re:Outer Limits

[scowling]

"Inconstant Moon", from the more recent (90s) series. It starred Michael Gross and Joanna Gleason, and is considered one of the finest, if not *the* finest, episode of the series.

Re:Outer Limits

[WinPimp2K]

I was channel surfing and clicked over to this on it's opening scene. I saw the too-bright moon and instantly knew that whatever the darn show was, it was based on "Inconstant Moon" before they ever got to the title or opening credits.

While it was good for TV, it lost most of the humorous bits that made the actual story so much more enjoyable (and really nailed the main character for me). Since I had last read that story more than ten years earlier, I think it is safe to say it struck me as very good story.

Now if you want to have some fun, name the TV series that Niven's collaborator (Pournelle) wrote an episode for. I started laughing out loud when I saw "written by Jerry Pournelle" on the credits. Note that this was an episode he wrote, not an episode based on one of his stories. (Hint: it involved an improbably old Civil War veteran and his cannon)

Re:Outer Limits

[julesh]

I just asked myself "is that the episode where..." and found out, yes it was.

So as not to post a spoiler here, here's a link to a synopsis of the story...

http://www.tvtome.com/OuterLimits/season2.html#e p3 4

Re:Outer Limits

[travdaddy]

OK, now I'm intrigued, but I doubt I'll ever see the episode... how does it end? You might should put SPOILER warnings all over your reply! :D

Re:Outer Limits

[CadmannWeyland]

And "Inconstant Moon" was originally one of Niven's excellent short stories. For anyone new to Niven, I'd highly recommend picking up one of his short story collections (Such as "N-Space" or "Playgrounds of the Mind" which he mentions in the interview).

Great stuff....

Cadmann

Re:Outer Limits

[Gonarat]

I believe that was an episode in the first season of the original (1970's) Land Of The Lost. It had several big name writers during the first season. It was well written for a Kid's show, at least until the third season. The 1990's version IMHO sucked.

Re:Outer Limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the short story. It's in "Inconstant Moon" (and some other collections).

Re:Outer Limits

[travdaddy]

OK, didn't know it was a short story as well. Thanks!

Re:Outer Limits

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Not that you're a Niven fan or anything, eh, Cadmann Weyland?

Re:Outer Limits

[WinPimp2K]

You get the Ceegar! But I never thought of Pournelle as a "big name writer" back then (before Mote etc).

Re:Outer Limits

[jbuhler]

Yes, and the screen adaptation made it a whole 45 minutes (including commercials) before confusing "nova" with "supernova." Sigh.

Re:Outer Limits

[CadmannWeyland]

Actually I'm a Barnes and Pournelle fan and never read Niven. Why do you ask? ;-> Heh heh. Actually I adopted "Cadmann" as my "quake" name years ago and it stuck. And yes, "The Legacy of Heorot" by Nivens, Pournelle, and Barnes is one of my favorites.... Cadmann

Re:Who is this guy?

[DonkeyJimmy]

I didn't know either, but if you click the link to the old slashdot story it has a link to more info about him.

Good SF and bad movies...

[Jhon]

10) Movie Jealousy? by spun David Brin has been forthright concerning his jealousy over bad SF being made into movies while his work is not...

It's been my experience that GOOD sf books turn in to NASTY sf movies. Since David Brin's name was brought up, let's look at The Postman. In my opinion, it was a fantastic story which, once turned in to a movie made me feel like I'd been violated

Of course, it might have been entirely the fault of Kevin Costner...

- Jhon

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[meringuoid]

Compare and contrast the original Blade Runner with Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. The film massacred the book. The recent edited version was a lot better, but still cut out the whole religion and culture of the world; I suppose those couldn't realistically fit into a film.

Obviously the Niven book that would make the best big-budget effects monstrosity of a film would be Ringworld... but cast the wrong person as Louis and you face disaster. Making Speaker-to-Animals and Nessus look plausible would be a heck of a job, too. Compared to that, the CG involved in creating the ring, the flycycles and the flying buildings would be trivial.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[XavierFan]

Another example would be Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers...a classic sci-fi novel turned into a B movie.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Coz]

The effects are easy, nowadays... it still depends on the ability of the screenwriters, actors, and director to tell the story. Speaker and Nessus could be done, IMHO - they would probably be CGI, and it would be on a scale similar to Gollum in LOTR.

All that said, I still foamed at the mouth when I found out Verhoven had dropped the powered armor from Starship Troopers. He pretty much proved he couldn't direct, or select good actors, too.

I hope the Heinlein estate made good money off that monstrosity.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[stratjakt]

I disagree WRT Blade Runner. I think it was an incredible movie, even though it was altogether different from the book.

A good book is always going to be more cerebral than any movie made out of it. I prefer when a director/scriptwriter is inspired by the story and translates it into a good film, rather than trying to recreate the book page for page.

Kubricks "The Shining" is another good example. The movie tells an altogether different story than the novel, but both are excellent.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[ahodgson]

Ya but Blade Runner is still a classic, and one of the best SF films ever made. I agree the director's cut was much better though.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[wesmo]

You have to detatch the way your imagination depicts the the way any book, SF or otherwise, is written. The beauty of any novel is that, while the author is drawing an defining scenes and conversation, it is your mind that pieces it all together.

Each of us may read the same novel, but we will formulate our own mental picture.

Any movie will, perhaps, come close to what some of us imagined, but it will never be an exact copy of what we all imagined.

Personally, I have found that if you disconnect the novel from the movie, at least a little, you get to enjoy it more as a seperate story than as a carbon-copy-that-failed story.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[ChurchyardTX]

Another stinker: Contact. The movie of Sagan's book discarded the most interesting theme, that of God/Science and where they meet.

(In the book, she proves intelligent design of the universe. In the movie, she gets a goverment grant and a boyfriend. Hooray for Hollywood.)

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Xoro]

Starship Troopers...a classic sci-fi novel turned into a B movie

Heh. But Starship Troopers was a pretty good movie when they released it as "Aliens". And the whole mobile suit thing has certainly held its own in the visual medium...

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[banzai51]

Disclaimer: I haven't read the book.

You, and all who pan Troopers in the same manner, have missed the point. It was the point to make it a campy B movie. They were lampooning the conformist attitude and showing the effects of totalitarian rule. Intellect is marginalized unless it is directly controlled by the state. The mindless football stud is elevated to puppet-hero; a perfect vassal for the powers that be. A violent reaction to those who are different. I realize books tend to be much better and have more depth than movies, but jesus, did the entire geek community only see the surface reflection of this movie????

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Steve B]

Starship Troopers is a special case, as Verhoeven was going out of his way to misrepresent the concepts behind the novel.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[pjt48108]

My favorite neat book/bad sf movie is When World Collide. Mad props to George Pal and the movie company, but that movie really stunk after I read the book.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Starship Troopers was a great film - it really effectively skewered the horrible idiotic ideology and propoganda behind the book. The actors were ideal for the roles, and the directing was second-to-none. The only people who don't like it are those who were gulled by the book into believing fascism could be OK.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it was Heinlein who misrepresented fascism in the book. The film is the correct version of the story.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Rudolfo]

A review I read of Starship Troopers summed up the movie pretty well as "a parody of facist propaganda films."

If you take the movie as that, just sit back and enjoy it without worrying about how it deviated from the book.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[blaine]

The fact that you haven't read the book is the reason you can't understand why people don't like the movie.

I liked the movie, Starship Troopers. However, it had almost nothing to do with the book. A lot of the spirit and intent of Heinlein's work was entirely ignored, and the end message was in many ways contrary to the message that the book put forth.

Put simply, it wasn't Starship Troopers. It was a movie that had the name "Starship Troopers" just so it could rope in a few more people to see it. And that's a pretty shitty thing for a director to do, don't you think?

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[WatertonMan]

While I like a lot of Dick's writing, I think that _Blade Runner_ was far superior to the book. As with many writers, Dick's novels often are hit and miss. Lots of good ideas that often doesn't finish well. Further what works in a book doesn't always work in a movie (and vice versa).

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Azog]

Not just SF book-to-movie transitions suck. Most book-to-movie adaptations are disappointing. My theory is that directors, producers, and screenwriters just cannot help messing with the story. They have to "make it their own", or "put their creative stamp" on it, or show that they can be creative story tellers too, or something. And, inevitably, they take a great story, carefully crafted by a single author, and screw it up.

The most disappointing to me was LOTR: The Two Towers. It's an instructive case as to what happens to books when they become movies, even when the person in charge actually cares about the project. I think of Peter Jackson as Smeagol/Gollum now. His good side is (Smeagol voice) "Good Tolkien! I'll make the movie as much like the book as I can! And the bad side is (Gollum voice) "The movie is my precious! MINE! MINE! I can write a better story than Tolkien, gollum!

Anyway, I think something like that happens whenever a great story gets into the hands of a bunch of egotistical movie makers and Hollywood types.

I have to admit I'd love to see Cryptonomicon, Ringworld, A Fire Upon The Deep, Neuromancer, and dozens of other stories as movies, but only if they were done right.

But the lesson from The Lord Of The Rings is that will never happen.

Each of those great stories would be shortened, condensed, sliced, diced, and rewritten. The dialog would be altered, plotlines scrambled, characters changed, motives lost, and connections cut. Gratuituous romance, special effects, sex, and lowbrow humor would be added in an attempt to put back what had been lost from the cuts.

By the time it makes it to the screen, it's a ruined wreck, and anyone who loves the original story can only weep for what has been lost.

Better to just read the book again and let the movie play out inside my imagination.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[jnik]

Starship Troopers was a great film - it really effectively skewered the horrible idiotic ideology and propoganda behind the book. The actors were ideal for the roles, and the directing was second-to-none. The only people who don't like it are those who were gulled by the book into believing fascism could be OK.

Ah, yes, the "the movie skewered the book" crowd. Starship Troopers the movie did not lampoon the book. It did an excellent job of ripping on what the book was most definitively not about. Go read some of Heinlein's essays. Read "Take Back Your Government"--if you can find a copy (apparently the American people don't care enough about the idea of participating in government to buy such a book). Read what he says about ST. And then tell me it's a love song to fascism.

Too many people read Stranger in the 60's and said "Ooooh, here's a remarkable model of what the world should be!" and then dove back to his previous novel to face major disillusionment...because it didn't fit their narrow conception of what Heinlein should be writing. The Starship Troopers movie missed the point. Entirely. It's a little kid pointing at the fully-clothed emporer and saying "he's naked!"

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[jcast]

It was the point to make it a campy B movie. They were lampooning the conformist attitude and showing the effects of totalitarian rule. Intellect is marginalized unless it is directly controlled by the state. The mindless football stud is elevated to puppet-hero; a perfect vassal for the powers that be. A violent reaction to those who are different.

If that's the case, calling the result Starship Troopers is slandering Heinlein.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[jcast]

I realize this is how film majors always explain it but there're two problems: (1) they're largely projecting their psychology on others. Many of us don't picture the scenes in our heads as we read. (2) they're largely projecting their psychology on others. Many of us are already larger than supposing a movie has to look the same as the pictures in our heads. But the ideas it presents have to be the same as those from the book, otherwise it's a shitty adaptation.

In any case, if you want something that will be judged on its own, you should create something that can stand on its own not something that pretends to be the same as something else.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

The wise adult who gives the main character the best and most accurate moral guidance in the book of Starship Troopers specifically praises "the power of the rods and the axe". The rods and the axe are a symbol of ancient Roman power, known in Latin as the fasces, from which we derive the word "fascism". How much more direct a paean to fascism do you want?

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[cardshark2001]

Obviously the Niven book that would make the best big-budget effects monstrosity of a film would be Ringworld... but cast the wrong person as Louis and you face disaster. Making Speaker-to-Animals and Nessus look plausible would be a heck of a job, too. Compared to that, the CG involved in creating the ring, the flycycles and the flying buildings would be trivial

I always pictured Louis as David Carradine (the guy from "Kung-Fu"). Or maybe the other way around.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[mog]

Speaking of Starship Troopers.

Has any other fan of this movie noticed the gross similarities before the media in that movie, and CNN, Fox News, etc? I mean.. "SHOWDOWN IRAQ". Come on - today's media makes the war look like a movie trailer. Do you remember that scene in Starship Troopers "DO YOUR PART", with the kids squashing the bugs? Mirror that in people buying duct tape and plastic to "be prepared" in the event of terrorism. It freaks the hell out of me.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Steve B]

We are talking about the concepts behind the novel, not some concept you pulled out of your nether regions. Do try to keep up.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[kk5wa]

Bladerunner was to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" what Forrest Gump (the movie) was to Forrest Gump (the book). You had to ask yourself "how'd they get that movie from that book?"

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[jazman_777]

And, inevitably, they take a great story, carefully crafted by a single author, and screw it up.

There is an astoundingly _simple_ (not easy) solution to this: stick to the books. Bag all the movies.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[dalamcd]

My theory is that directors, producers, and screenwriters just cannot help messing with the story.

Have you ever tried?

I've read a lot and every now and then I think "That would make a great movie" after I set the book down. One time I actually started thinking about it, how I would do it, and I realized it would be impossible to really capture it.

The book was Raptor, by Gary Jennings (I think that was his name). The book was a historical fiction about... a hermaphrodite. It's a great story about how a young hermaphrodite gets kicked out of a monastery once its 'status' is found and goes on to meet and join with a future king of Rome. Thorn (the hermaphrodite) acts mostly male but dresses up as female (and has sex) for some parts of the book. It spans 40 years or so. He meets and sleeps with another hermaphrodite. Do you think that would translate well to screen?

You could take some bits from the beginning, a lot from the middle, and then hack the ending on there some how. You'd have to make Thorn male. I can think of at least one fairly central character that would have to be removed...

Or you could keep everything. The movie would be roughly 8 hours long and maybe half the people who'd read the book would see it. Almost everyone else wouldn't watch it, or would leave the theatre. Likely around the time Thorn gets kicked out of a nunnery (one of the other nuns thought his penis was a clitoris and she was defecient while Thorn wasn't--they're caught having sex). This is, or course, after a monk at the first monastery tried to bugger Thorn and discovers it's female. Confused yet?

While I imagine there are some books that can make the translation to screen without adaptation, it's nearly impossible for the majority of books out there. If I'd seen anything approaching the things found in Raptor (or in some of Heinlein's book--incest, for instance, wouldn't go down well), I would be pretty surprised. I imagine a lot of people would be wanting to burn the producers at the stake, as well.

dalamcd

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I have to admit I'd love to see Cryptonomicon, Ringworld, A Fire Upon The Deep, Neuromancer, and dozens of other stories as movies, but only if they were done right.

None of those books would make good movies. Movies and books are competely different art forms. It's like saying, "I have to admit I'd love to see Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a painting, but only if it was done right.

But the lesson from The Lord Of The Rings is that will never happen.

Actually, the lesson from The Lord of the Rings is that a good book has to be adapted in order to make it a good movie. Unless your idea of the perfect Lord of the Rings movie would have been forty-one hours of Tolkein himself sitting in a chair reading the book to you.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[miu]

While I like a lot of Dick's writing, I think that _Blade Runner_ was far superior to the book. As with many writers, Dick's novels often are hit and miss. Lots of good ideas that often doesn't finish well. Further what works in a book doesn't always work in a movie (and vice versa).

I like PKDs short stories a lot more than his novels. He was great at spinning out an idea and writing a very entertaining story around it. I've seen more than a couple of his ideas turned into full length novels, television shows, or movies. Too bad he so often failed to follow up on them himself, or tried to and failed.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Skip666Kent]

Agreed, wholeheartedly. I've always liked his ideas, but found his execution painfully dated and labor-intesive.

Blade Runner as a science fiction movie, is superb.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally someone else who gets that the movie was satire. Thank god. I agree -- it was awesome.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Azog]

Well, I have to agree that they would not make good movies, but only because most people wouldn't consider an 8 hour movie to be good no matter what. It isn't quite extreme as transitioning a symphony to a painting - after all, both books and movies have characters, plots, settings, dialog...

I agree that there needs to be an adaptation, and a paragraph-by-paragraph text to movie transformation would not work. I actually mostly liked the Lord Of The Rings - Fellowship Of The Ring. That was an adaptation - Jackson made cuts, but stuck to the story line. He was in his "Smeagol" mode.

But The Two Towers wasn't an adaptation, it was a rewrite. It should have been called: The Two Towers: A Movie Inspired By The Lord Of The Rings. Jackson went into "Gollum" mode made all sorts of totally unneeded changes in the plot, dialog, and characters. He didn't just make cuts, he added unnecessary stuff that wasn't even in the original books! The resulting "plot" doesn't even make sense. Bah.

I have to admit my idea of the perfect Lord Of The Rings movie would be to film almost every scene and with a minimum of adaptation, and almost no changes to the dialog. The significant change I'd make would be to film the "flashback" stuff (like most of the Council Of Elrond) and not just have Aragorn, Gandalf, Elrond, and the rest sitting around the table talking to each other, and present a lot of that before the real beginning of the book and Bilbo's Birthday party.

But it would be very long, too long for a movie. Perhaps it could be done as a TV series - one years worth of 1 hour episodes, one per week.

Anyway, unless it could be produced quite cheaply it would never be a commercial success, so I don't expect to see it in my lifetime.

To get back on topic (i.e. Niven, Ringworld, and movies...) I do think that most books would be better adapted to a 8 to 40 hour TV series than jammed into a 2 hour movie.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Restil]

Well, about the only things in common between Starship Troopers the movie, and the book was the title and a few of the character's names. They didn't even get all the genders right. I personally liked the movie for what it was, but it wasn't the same story as the book. At best, it was an entirely different story using the same universe, and had they written it and sold it on that basis, it probably wouldn't be sacrilege.

-Restil

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[elmegil]

Phil Dick saw the movie before his death, and strongly disagreed with your assessment of the movie and it's relationship to his book. Is the movie a clone of the book? No. Shouldn't have to be.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[kfg]

Not a movie trailer, but you're on the right track.

The first thought that popped into my head when I was the first "Countdown:Iraq" ad was:

"My good, they're going to be doing a "pregame" show of the war."

And that's exactly what it is. A pregame show, just like for the Superbowl or something.

Totally irrespective of the merits/demerits of the war itself the fact that we can, as a culture, promologate and tolerate such a thing is just mind boggling to me.

It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.

And it certainly makes some of the futures hypothesised by such as Heinlein, Niven and Huxley look that much more like prediction.

KFG

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Daetrin]

Do you remember that scene in Starship Troopers "DO YOUR PART", with the kids squashing the bugs? Mirror that in people buying duct tape and plastic to "be prepared" in the event of terrorism. It freaks the hell out of me.

Or people pouring out bottles of French wine in the streets because the French _dared_ to disagree with us about something! We helped them out in WWII! Don't they know we own their souls for the rest of eternity?

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[xmole]

I've watched the directors cut of the DVD, and the director says that kind of stuff is intentionally a satirical critique of some current military attitudes. The bad guy(s) in the movie aren't the bugs as much as the black-coat military intelligence guys like Doogie Howser. (I mean Neil Patrick Harris) Personally I thought the movie had good special effects and a dark, humorous storyline. I know I'm in a definite minority, though.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[joshsisk]

Bladerunner was a good movie on it's own merits. It is completely different from the book, however. It's really more "inspired by" than "based on."

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[joshsisk]

The only people who don't like it are those who were gulled by the book into believing fascism could be OK.

Or the people, like myself, who never read the book, but found the movie to be very, very boring.

I don't care if a movie skewers it's source material, or is trying to make a "statement". If it makes me fall asleep, I don't like it.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[1984]

The armor went because it would have been too expensive to equip to render it. Starship Troopers was rendered on Indigo 2s, Challenge XLs etc. Would have taken a long time to have every soldier wearing a complicated rendered suit.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[chris411]

I was told that while the movie was being promoted and the actors were being interviewed, they were totally clueless or confused by questions about the satirical aspects of Starship Troopers. And it wasn't because they didn't understand what satire means. It was because, in their mind, they played it totally straight.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[chris411]

I have to admit my idea of the perfect Lord Of The Rings movie would be to film almost every scene and with a minimum of adaptation, and almost no changes to the dialog.

It sounds to me like you're less a fan of Tolkien, and more a fan of accuracy. A recreation of every scene in Lord of the Rings? Preposterous!

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[HuguesT]

In the book she finds a pattern in Pi (the number) that proves intelligent design of the Universe.

That bit killed the book for me. Pi is a universal number, it contains all the patterns that you want. Moreover God could not change the value of Pi even if He wanted to. (let Pi be three. Right).

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[obnoximoron]

I haven't Niven's book, but the media scenes in the movie were apparently intended to purposefully resemble real-life mainstream American media.
Listen to the director Verhoven talking about the state, the media, and Chomsky's influence on him in the director's commentary in the Starship Troopers DVD.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Compare and contrast the original Blade Runner with Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep.

While we're at it, compare either of them with the bood Blade Runner - by Alan E. Norse, I believe.

The latter was an EXCELLENT "what if" yarn:

- Suppose the Powers That Be decide medical treatment is an evolutionary dead end, due to the survival and reproduction of disease-susceptable people leading to the human race falling behind in the evolutionary war with the bugs.

- Suppose they pass a law: You can't have medical treatment unless you are first sterilized. Penalty for violation includes (of course) steriliztion.

Of course an underground bootleg-medicine industry develops - on the model of moonshining (this was written before the "drug war"). Now:

- Suppose a new superflu develops and is about to kill virtually everyone not immunized. Get immunized and sterilized or get the flu and probably get dead - and either way you're left with too few breeders to keep civilization going.

Of course there's no TIME to get the law repealed: The exponential spread is already started and the policitians have killed off too many people with the current legal regime to repeal it (or pass an exception) in time.

What do you do?

Protagonists include a bootleg doctor and a crippled dwarf who is his "blade runner" - a supplier of instruments for illegal surgeries.

This story has NOTHING to do with the movie or the book discussed above. And the title "Blade Runner" has NOTHING to do with those stories, either.

The movie company just ripped off the name of an author's work because it "sounded good" and applied it to something entirely different. And in the process they pretty much shafted any attempt to bring the novel Bladerunner to the silver screen.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

All that said, I still foamed at the mouth when I found out Verhoven had dropped the powered armor from Starship Troopers. He pretty much proved he couldn't direct, or select good actors, too.

And while we're at it: SURE the commanding officer is going to hold off on a RESCUE MISSION so two of his underlings can get in a little sex before the battle.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Theodore Logan]

Amen.

In my opinion, the movie is even better. PKD had a a bunch of interesting ideas, but questionable literary talent. Scott has a great eye, but seemingly no terribly original ideas of his own. They make a great pair, which is what made the movie so great.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Where can I get some of that cool-aid you're drinking?

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[mandolin]

Movies and books are competely different art forms. It's like saying, "I have to admit I'd love to see Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a painting, but only if it was done right.

Movies and books aren't "completely different". They share the common properties of plot, protagonists, story flow, etc.

And in response to your analogy, you could easily translate a symphony to film. Think music videos, or Fantasia.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[GrimSean]

Starship Troopers the movie did not lampoon the book. It did an excellent job of ripping on what the book was most definitively not about. Go read some of Heinlein's essays. Read "Take Back Your Government"--if you can find a copy (apparently the American people don't care enough about the idea of participating in government to buy such a book). Read what he says about ST. And then tell me it's a love song to fascism.

Too many people read Stranger in the 60's and said "Ooooh, here's a remarkable model of what the world should be!" and then dove back to his previous novel to face major disillusionment...because it didn't fit their narrow conception of what Heinlein should be writing.

The interesting thing about Stranger in a Strange Land is that it initially arose due to the November 1949 issue of Astounding (the Time-Travel issue) and was originally thought up to be the story behind the suggested title Gulf, and there are obvious similarities between the evolved humans in Gulf and Valentine Michael Smith.

As to Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land, RAH worked on both of them at the same time, and the leftover notes from Troopers were apparently used in Stranger to help round it out (just one of those bits of trivia you pick up that makes you think)

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Grog6]

I think everyone who read Ringworld must think so, at least, all the ones who watched Kung Fu, in my age group.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[bolthole]

That bit killed the book for me. Pi is a universal number, it contains all the patterns that you want. Moreover God could not change the value of Pi even if He wanted to. (let Pi be three. Right).

You've missed two very fundamental things:

1. The premise was, I believe, that the universe was made that way in the first place, not that pi was "changed".

2. what the heck gives you insight into what God can and cannot do with the universe??? your extensive cosmos creation experience?

These days, it is easy to both put together semi-realistic computer-simulated worlds, then play with "what happens if the frictional coefficient is x.5 instead of x?" The Creator of EVERYTHING, should have no more difficulty doing such a thing to the "real" world.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Wiwi Jumbo]

Perhaps that's for the best, Slim Picken's(??) played his role totally straight in Dr. Strangelove...

All the better I think. :)

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[dillon_rinker]

No freaking DUH you haven't read the book.

The movie pretty much missed the point of the book. Read the Rinkworks summary of the book - it's pretty much on target. Heinlein was a complete reactionary, and, politically, the book was an ode to patriarchal rule (though not exactly totalitarian, kind comes close) by soldiers, the ultimate conformists. The only people who could vote were veterans.

The other point of the book was power armor. One guy enclosed in a solid suit of powered armor who could be dropped from orbit and take on a conventional tank battalion gets together with a platoon of his closest friends and wreaks havoc on a planet. (I've not read an earlier scifi story about power-armored soldiers; as nearly as I can tell it's the archetype for the whole armored infantry subgenre of military scifi.) The armor in the movie is nifty, but the soldiers are susceptible to a headshot from a high-velocity pellet gun, for crying out loud, while Heinlein's mobile infantry could handle nukes a nuke with no problem.

In short, if the producers wanted to make an B-grade campy anti-authoritarian sci-fi movie with nifty costumes that lack verisimilitude, that's fine with me. I'd see it twice in theaters and buy the video. But WHY oh WHY did they have to eliminate the possiblity that anyone would ever produce a movie that treated Heinlein's novel and its two core ideas with some respect?

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[astro-g]

The second (third??) time I "read" lotr,
we, as a family, borrowed a full, unabridged set of talking books from the library, I think it was read by tolkien, although I am unsure.
We listned to it while we drove around the entirety of the south island, New Zealand. it was good, because you could hear the original author putting his own emotional overlay onto the written material.

as for the movie, I liked it.
I also liked starship troopers.
the parts of the book, starship troopers, that I have read so far I also like. (civilised aliens fighting back, seems much more likly than insects cabable of shooting down things in orbit..)
Both movies entertaind me, Which is I think, the
most importaint part of seeing a movie.
I wont say that starship troopers was a *good* movie, but I was entertained.

I have been involved in making a short film, for a friend. The main issue with making a movie, and one which I have NEVER seen discused, (especially from novel adaptaion), is that in a book, the author can convey what the charecter is thinking. Its written down, right there on the page. seperate events can be wriiten down, explanatiosn and *descriptions of proccesses* can be put on the page. these simply do not translate to film.
you can go part of the way, as the original hitch hikers guide to the Galaxy (hereafter h2g2) tv series did, and the radio play, by inserting "the book" as, I suppose, a sort of muse(?) but it still isnt the same.

I like what jackson did for gollum/smeagol.
he had to give some indication of what is going on inside the poor creatures head. the way he did it carries well.

also, regards the film my friend made,
A budget greater than "you can use the schools camera's and editing equipment, and here, have a tape" also helps.

finaly, I have heard that jacksons first cut for fellowship was over 9 hours long. some of the cuts are obvious - galadriels gifts, they sudenly have them, but no explanation is given as to where they came from. (although I believe galadriel is cut in as a flashback, giving the star glow vial to frodo).
I presume the two towers was similar.
I hope one day to get massively long blu-ray(or something else) disks of the films, but ill have to wait.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would'nt if you new any history, as in the history of WWII. By history, I don't mean "what general shat behind what tree", I mean what was going on in peoples lives. Specificaly, what was going on in the United States. That "DO YOUR PART" part is straight out of WWII homeland propaganda. Remember also, the US has been entangled with Iran and Iraq since befor WWII. Though the "SHOWDOWN IRAQ" bit is a bit eerie.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[fucksl4shd0t]

I have to disagree with your entire statement. I found that the movie stayed well true to the deep meaning of the book.

The basic problem is that Heinlein typically doesn't have any deep meaning. :) He's a shallow author. Sure, he writes about stuff that I'm directly interested, and I find it good reading. But when it comes down to it, the work is very shallow.

All plot deviations aside, 'cause it's been like 15 years since I read the book, I found the only unsatisfying thing about the movie being that they removed the power suits. That introduced the question of atmosphere and crap, something which Heinlein was specific not to ignore (like Star Trek does, but his really good stuff predates star trek). Of ocurse, the bugs could live in the same atmosphere as humans, otherwise they wouldn't be fighting, right?

The thing you've gotta remember, they took a book and crammed it into 2 hours or so. They made it into a war story, which it was to begin with, among other things. In doing so, they had to drop shit left and right from the book. Removing the power suits effectively cut the length of the movie in half, since most of the book was spent learning about the power suits. This is why sci-fi books rarely make movies that a geek will say "that was true to the book!". The nature of the medium is totally different. In a book you rely on your reader to supply visual and audio effects, and you focus on more impmortant things. You can go through an entire train of thought. If they made the Zelazny book "Guns of Avalon" into a movie, it would probably either be a long, boring narrative or a 30-minute flick for all the action that's actually in the book.

Heinlein is good at making neurotic characters and putting them into neurotic societies. They made a movie that portrayed this. They added some fluff and pulp so the audience would laugh and cry. It wasn't in the book for a reason, and had it not been added to the movie the movie might well have sucked. It's a different medium.

That said, I *do* wish the moviemakers would get the help of the author when they make these movies. I realize that was impossible for Starship Troopers as well os for LOTR. But if they want the best chance of being able to stay "true to the book" and still be able to add the plot shit that they sometimes need to, they need the author to help. I'm not saying all the added shit is always needed, though. Don't get me wrong. :) In the case of starship troopers, I think some of it was.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[fucksl4shd0t]

In any case, if you want something that will be judged on its own, you should create something that can stand on its own not something that pretends to be the same as something else.

YOu got modded as funny, I found it insightful. Anyway, that last sentence of yours is the reason why I think that Willow will wind up standing up better as a movie than LOTR. :) All other issues about Willow aside, it was written to be a movie. That's an important distinction, so it stands up as a movie. Make it a book? More likely a short story. Heh.

I have to say that I do tend to picture scenes as I read, but it really depends on the scene. I do it in reverse. When the author goes out of his way to describe a scene, I tune it out. I find that verbiage boring. Just tell me the guy has a sword, is wearing leather, and maybe has a beard. I don't give a shit about the rest, I'll probably picture him as either me or Val Kilmer, no matter what.

Finally, I'm generally upset with the fact that movies based on books take the same names as the book. Why couldn't it be "Verhoven does Starship Troopers"? Something that doesn't take away any other moviemakers purchasing rights to make another movie that is their own depiction. I think variety in movie portrayals of books would be a good thing.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[fucksl4shd0t]

It sounds to me like you're less a fan of Tolkien, and more a fan of accuracy. A recreation of every scene in Lord of the Rings? Preposterous!

Open for flaming, but here goes....

I've spent a lot of time trying to block out my memory of reading Fellowship of the Ring. It was the most time I've ever felt I truly wasted on one thing. I fell asleep frequently while reading it. I found the long laborious descriptions of *everything* to be, well, long and laborious. Nothing but two-dimensional characters (a staple of heroic fiction of any sort, in fact), and a contrived quest. Why is it that the ring was forgotten by all, but everyone who turns up in the book knows about it? Eh?

Where's the politics? What's so goddamn special about Moria? Where do the dwarves live? They're always running into gay elves, but where's the rest?

On the other hand, I am really enjoying the movies. Now I get to see the plot that was buried in all the verbiage. All the crap is being pulled away from the books or adapted well (the scenery is amazing! as the scenery in the books, but do you want to spend 10 minutes reading about the scenery or 3 seconds watching it all pass by?). I can finally see the plot! It makes sense now!

I'm filing LOTR in the bad books/good movies category.

As I said, let the flames begin.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[fucksl4shd0t]

you can go part of the way, as the original hitch hikers guide to the Galaxy (hereafter h2g2) tv series did, and the radio play, by inserting "the book" as, I suppose, a sort of muse(?) but it still isnt the same.

I hate to say it, but you lost quite a bit of credibility with this statement. :)

Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy was originally a radio show. Whether or not the TV show or the book came next I am unsure of, but I can look it up if it's that important. According to Douglas Adams, each adaptation of the story took all the same dialog and changed everything else. That is, in the book, the characters said and did the same things as in the radio show, but for completely different reasons. Ditto for the tv show. In fact, he mentions feeling uncomfortable about the radio transcripts being released since that made the first work in the series that accurately represented another work in the series.

So, in this specific case, in fact, Douglas Adams proves to us that each media is completely different from the rest with different needs and different ways of conveying the story. He has, probably, the only group of stories that stand on their own in each form of media in which they are made.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[vrmlguy]

I'm just going to answer one of your questions.

Why is it that the ring was forgotten by all, but everyone who turns up in the book knows about it? Eh?

The ring is similar to the Holy Grail in the Arthurian legends, in that everyone knows what it is, but no body knows where it is. Bilbo found the ring in "The Hobbit" and kept it for several decades before Gandolf got off his butt and figured out what it was. Even then, if Frodo were to walk into the Prancing Pony and say, "Look here, I've got the One Ring!", everyone would shrug their shoulders and go back to drinking. The only characters who take an interest in the ring are those who trust either Gandalf's or Sauron's opinion of its identity.

Thus the black riders were told by Sauron to go to the Shire and try to sniff it out; once they arrived at the Prancing Pony they got busy asking about the ring and if anything unusual had occured recently (like people turning invisible).

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[fucksl4shd0t]

Well, that certainly makes a lot more sense. I'll rewatch the two movies, 'cause any excuse to watch them is probably a good one. :) The distinct impression I got from the movies is quite different, more like nobody even remembers it ever existed, and then people coming out of the woodwork to proclaim that Frodo has it and must be protected.

It's been so long since I read the Hobbit, so I don't remember much about the ring in that book. The movie for Fellowship of the Ring, of course, presents Gandalf's connecting of that ring to the One Ring as a brand-new thing he discovers only after Bilbo gets possessed by it. That's a detail that makes perfect sense to modify for the sake of the movie, since they didn't start with the Hobbit (neither did Tolkien, iirc).

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Zaak]

The armor went because it would have been too expensive to equip to render it.

Are you aware that the Starship Troopers movie had a production budget nearly that of Star Wars Episode 1? And you're telling me that it would have been too expensive for them to have rendered the suits?

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

TTFN

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[pthisis]

The Hobbit was published before the LotR.

Spoilers on the ring in the Hobbit:
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Bilbo meets Gollum underground when he's fleeing the goblins. Gollum has the ring. They have a riddle-battle which Bilbo wins, winning the ring--he wrests it from Gollum and puts it on, managing to escape.

The ring has few sinister undertones in the Hobbit, it just makes the wearer invisible.

Sumner

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[fucksl4shd0t]

I'm not copying anything from your post, if anybody wants it they can read the spoiler. :)

I heard a story once, and I cannot verify its authenticity, that Tolkien wrote the LOTR first. Then he realized he needed to explain how Bilbo got the ring from Gollum and wrote the Hobbit.

It doesn't have the "patch" feel though. The Hobbit definitely feels like a prequel, but it doesn't feel like a patch. So, assuming the story I heard is true (and checking publication dates on the books should suffice, I just haven't done it), then he probably had the whole story figured out already.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[1984]

Ahem.

I work for Tippett Studio. Where do you work?

Cheers.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Wolfrider]

--Actually I loved the movie (this is WAY before I read the book) and thought the casting was good too:

Dina Meyer....Pvt. Dizzy Flores

Denise Richards...Pilot Cadet Carmen Ibanez

Jake Busey....Pvt. Ace Levy

Neil Patrick Harris....Col. Carl Jenkins

Clancy Brown....Career Sgt. Zim

Michael Ironside....Lt. Jean Rasczak

--Can't see anything wrong there; altho it was slightly jarring to see Doogie Howser in a Nazi-type role.

--BTW, Dina Meyer as Dizzy Flores was my favorite char. Clancy Brown played his role excellently, and Michael Ironside I *still* admire for that role. :)

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Wolfrider]

--Actually I should qualify that; after reading the book, I was like "WTF? The only similarity to the movie are some names and locations!!"

--I would *really* have loved to see the powered armor myself, but think about it - the movie tells a story pretty well by itself. It's just not the same story as the book. ;-)

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Sri Lumpa]

I'm French but as long as they buy more wine to pour it down I don't mind ;)

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[peter]

One problem with making (written) hard SF into a movie is that movies have trouble explaining anything without having the characters standing there talking about it. The descriptive language used in stories conveys the physical principles at work, etc. (e.g. the story might talk about blueshifted light, while in a movie you'd just see blue stars, without realizing they were blue because of gravity or doppler shift, or whatever was going on.) It's dumb when characters stand there discussing something that should be common knowledge for all the characters, so you know they're saying it for the audience's benefit. They might as well have a very short educational piece with diagrams and stuff instead of having the characters explain it. Either that, or everything gets Trekkified, so there is no apparent science in action, and the audience's knowledge of physical principles is no longer useful in seeing where the story is going, or anticipating what the characters should do.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Zaak]

I work for Tippett Studio.

Then you probably know a lot more about the visual effects business than I do. However, that doesn't change my point which is, Starship Troopers had a large budget for visual effects. With a similar budget, Episode One managed an almost entirely CG set with many CG characters. Why couldn't Starship Troopers, which had CG bad guys and CG space battles, create CG armor as well? Or at least armor costumes?

I strongly suspect that the answer has more to do with politics and actor face time than with effects budgets.

I believe that this illustrates the difference between making a movie out of a book because of a real love for the book (Lord of the Rings), and making such a movie for a reason which doesn't include respect and faithfulness to the story the author was telling (The Postman, Starship Troopers, etc).

TTFN

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[pxpt]

I always pictured Louis as David Carradine (the guy from "Kung-Fu").

Freaky.... so did I at the time I read the book!

Nowadays if I read the book again I would probably have Laurence Fishburne in mind - but perhaps thats me confusing the Kung-Fu scene in The Matrix with Kung-Fu - the programme :-P

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[HuguesT]

Sorry, with all due respect you don't understand. the point is made very clearly in the book that Sagan is talking about the mathematical constant.

This makes absolutely zero sense. Mathematically Pi is the ratio of the circumference of the disk to its diameter in the Euclidean plane. It can only have one real value no matter how you look at it. It is an idealized number, not a physical constant that the designer of this universe, if any, would have any control over.

It makes as much sense as wanting to change the value of 1.

The second point of my post is just as important. Any message can be found in Pi, it is a property of that number. If you look down the suite of Pi numbers you will find (eventually) all the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, the history of the world, the encyclopedia britannica, all the constants of the universe to an arbitrary precision. Everything. In ASCII or in ABCDIC, In English or in German, your choice. Just as you would if you had a perfect random number generator and you waited long enough.

So that point in the book make doubly no sense at all. First of all no God can design Pi to put a message there, and second of all any message is already contained in it.

Might as well look for a message in white noise.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[pthisis]

As I said, the Hobbit was published before LotR.

Sumner

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[1984]

OK, my previous comment was a bit asshole-ish. What I meant was, Tippett did the all the creature effects on Starship Troopers (Sony did the spacecraft). I'm told it was considered just too much extra expense to put all the soldiers in suits. Would have meant thousands more (complicated) rendered objects per scene. Anywhere you see a soldier wearing a helmet, they'd be wearing a full rendered suit. That's a lot more design, animation, and rendering time.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[mink]

It would have been better as a Colonial Marines movie in the Alien universe.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[mink]

So the voice I hear when I cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp is not God?
I'm going to have to start playing with myself again then.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[mink]

I cant believe we need spoiler space for The Hobit.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Actually what happens is:
The ring decides it wants to get found, so it slips from Golum onto the lakeshore.
Bilboo finds it and puts it in his pocket.
They have a riddle battle over Golum showing him the way out, and Bilbo wins with "What have I got in my pocket".
Golum cant figure it out and stalks away. Bilbo puts on the ring by accident, Golum comes up and cant find him, so he freaks out (thinking that he stole the ring and has left for the exit).
Golem races for the exit, not knowing bilbo is following invisibly behind.
Once at the exit, guarded by orcs, and closing, Bilbo leaps over golum and squezes through the door, leaving his shirt buttons behind.

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[peter]

How do the French^H^H^Hfreedom fries taste?

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[peter]

> Not a movie trailer, but you're on the right track.

Well, I think it's a pretty good analogy.

Too bad /. doesn't let you play nethack while you wait 2 minutes so you can post again, or give you some quotes from zippy the pinhead to read....

Re:Good SF and bad movies...

[Arseniev]

You know, most movies will likely have a different "point" than the book they are based no. Heck, sometimes they are different than the scenario they are based on!
This is because the director (and/or producer) is the artist who has the final say on the work, not the book author. Sometimes the core idea is preserved, sometimes not; sometimes the result is a failure, sometime it is a masterpiece (Hitchcock movies are good examples).

This is understandly frustrating for the book author and its fans, but, really, is it that fun to watch a movie that tells exactly the same thing as the book? See the Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings Series: acceptable movies, but no real added value to the books.

As for me, I've come to accept that. When I've read a book that has been made as a movie, I don't go see it (or I go fully aware that I'll be disappointed). If a movie is released based on a book I haven't read, I make sure I don't read the book beforehand.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Happy Monkey]

Question 5 gives a list of some of his books, and other titles are mentioned in other questions. What more do you need for an author's background?

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

PSST: You're sitting at a computer which is connected to the largest collection of information and data in the known universe. Before you start telling us how ignorant you are you might want to do some work for yourself and type "Larry Niven" into google.

Re:Who is this guy?

[termos]

He is a science fiction writer which is known for the book series Known Space and Ringworld. I have heard that Arthur C. Clarke named him as his favourite author. He is very well known in other words. :-)

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It strikes me as pretty amazing someone hasn't at least heard of the guy. But if you're really starved for info, I have a suggestion: The Internet. I'm sure Google can turn up a thing or two.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Bonker]

Niven's background very nearly approaches Asimov's.

While I don't mean to sound elitist, to a science fiction fan, saying 'Larry Who? Niven? Never heard of him' would be like a physicist saying 'Niels Who? Bohr? Never heard of him."

Niven is both a *very* talented writer and an incredible world builder. While he had outside influences, he just about invented the concept of a Solar Ring World (Derived from a Dyson Sphere obviously), which has been re-used repeatedly by authors, movie-makers and comic-book artists since 'Ringworld' was originally published.

If you *really* don't know who Niven is, go do yourself a favor and get a copy of both 'Ringworld' and 'The Integral Trees' from your local library. Read them. Sit back and wait for your mind to cool down. Then go read everything else he's ever published.

Re:Who is this guy?

[RevAaron]

I'm pretty new to sci-fi myself, and hadn't heard of him. I've heard of the Ringworld series though. I just (within the last 1-2 years) started reading sci-fi, starting with Star Wars books, then Dune and others, and I just finished the Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter Hamilton. (The Reality Dysfunction, the Neutronium Alchemist, and the Naked God) Incredible books which paint a world so real and awesome details.

I just started the Hyperion series, and after that, the Foundation trilogy. Would you put the Ringworld series in this kind of class of a whole universe unfolded for the reader? I'll need something to read after the Foundation books! :)

Mote

[scharkalvin]

I just read an article in Astronomy magazine about travel to the stars using a laser to drive a sail craft. I thought this sounded too familiar. Sure enough Niven has been there. I'm going to have to pick up a copy of "Mote in God's eye" and re-read it. I think he also 'invented' the Bussard ram jet too.

Re:Mote

[Anonymous Coward]

You capitalized the term Bussard. Doesn't this tell you something? Isn't there an overwhelmingly large, obvious fact sitting right in front of you? Have you figured out what it is yet? Bussard isn't just some random name that Niven applied to "his" invention, it's the surname of Robert W. Bussard, the man who really "invented" the Bussard ram jet.

Re:Mote

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't the quotes around 'invented' tell you he was being sarcastic? /. sucks

Re:Mote

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you mean "invented" as in "first to use in a book" then...maybe.

The Bussard Ramjet was proposed in 1960 by Robert W. Bussard, a physicist

Re:Mote

[Anonymous Coward]

To my eye (not the original poster, BTW), it tells me that Larry hasn't really built an actual, physical Bussard ramjet. That's about all. I knew better, but not from the quote marks.

Re:Mote

[Tassach]

Travel by a laser-powered solar sail was not an original idea of Niven's. Try reading "The Flight of the Dragonfly" by Robert L. Forward. Excellent book.

Re:Mote

[Anonymous Coward]

Bussard "invented" the Bussard Ramjet... hence his on the front of it...

Re:Mote

[fgb]

He did use the Bussard Ramjet in his story. But the credit for "inventing" it should go to Robert Bussard, the physicist who first came up with the idea in the early 60's.

Re:Mote

[geekoid]

must of been him, I can't possible think ofanyone else that would have invented the Bussard ram jet.

Re:Mote

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're implying that Niven got the idea from Forward, The Mote in God's Eye predates The Flight of the Dragonfly.

Re:Mote

[Tassach]

My point was that the idea of solar sails has been bounced around for quite a while. A number of different sci-fi authors (at least among those who understand physics) have used it as a plot element. I have not traced the idea to it's origin, but it probably originated in a research paper before it ever was incorporated into a work of fiction.

My first encounter with Niven

[Seq]

I had a book report to do in high school. It was obvious that I had to do science fiction, as I rather enjoy reading such literature. Unfortunately, thrown into that section of the library, I was a little lost, if only by the size of the science fiction shelves. I took a browse through, and recognized names of authors I've read before, but came across one called "ringworld", by a fellow named "Larry Niven". I hadn't heard of him (I, myself, find this hard to believe now), but figured it was probably rather good, as it had five copies in a public library. I started the book on a friday night, and while I cannot remember if it was saturday night or sunday night that I finished it, I couldnt put the book down for more than a few moments without deciding to read "just one more chapter." That is the only assignment I finished in high school without waiting for the deadline to approach. This probably wont interest anybody, but I just figured I would share my story of my first experience with Niven's work. I'd highly reccommend his work to anyone.

Re:My first encounter with Niven

[jazman_777]

This probably wont interest anybody...

Guess the "interesting" moderations _really_ meant "uninteresting", but that's not an option. But we'll take Karma any way it comes, eh?

Re:My first encounter with Niven

[Anonymous Coward]

I read Ringworld as and adult only because it got such rave reviews here on /.. I was underwhelmed by the boring writing and lack of idea content. Is this just supposed to be a teenager's adventure story, or did I miss the point entirely?

Re:My first encounter with Niven

[Anonymous Coward]

me too.




ringworld boring.

Re:My first encounter with Niven

[Anonymous Coward]

we need an AOL filter.

Re: Answer 2: Is Science Fiction healthy

[HiThere]

This is a harder question than it looks. I don't think it is healthy, but good real science fiction has always been such a small slice of the market that it's quite difficult to be sure except for decades later. E.g., Robert Forward was a great science fiction writer. And a pretty good story teller, too. Ditto for Hal Clement. And a very few others. Most well known authors have been great story tellers, who plied their trade in the Science Fiction area. E.g., Jules Verne. (The hollow earth hasn't been a reasonable idea since Newton. Just do a few calculation on the strength of materials required to make it work.)

Most of what's called good science fiction is actually good story telling. Nothing wrong with that, but story telling can play in any field. Science fiction is different. Ringworld was a great concept for a science fiction story. But it made use of a lot of magic (hyperdrive) to make the story work. So it's a great story, and a good science fiction story.

With that background: It seems to me that science fiction is both in trouble, and more vital than ever. The reason science fiction is in trouble is the same reason that even narrow specialists can't keep up with their fields. And that's the same reason that it's more important than ever. I consider Lobster's (et seq.) to be the best science fiction that I've read in the last decade. There's almost no magic in them. The only weakness I see is that some of the characters are a bit difficult to empathize with. Which weakens it a bit as a story, but not as Science Fiction. But, and here's the catch: Lobsters takes place within the next 50 years. (10 if I take the story literally.) Now if things are changing that fast, and they appear to be, long term projections go right out the window. (As it was, Larry Niven used hand-waving magic to justify not using computers to navigate hyperspace. And it took magic, because without magic 1: people wouldn't be able to do the navigation, and 2: computers would have done a much better job. But people make a much better story.)

So I say that science fiction is in dire trouble, and that most of what passes for science fiction is really just high-tech fantasy. But there are still a few exceptions.

Copyright a plot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time there was a gaming article that blew away the punch lines of several Man-Kzin War stories. I asked that it not be published. In that case too, I acted to protect my copyrights and my authors.

This doesn't sound right to me. How can he stop someone from giving away the ending. Sure, he can ask nice and hope they are nice, but talks acts like he had some kind of legal right. WTF?

Re:Copyright a plot?

[LionMage]

Once upon a time there was a gaming article that blew away the punch lines of several Man-Kzin War stories. I asked that it not be published. In that case too, I acted to protect my copyrights and my authors.
This doesn't sound right to me. How can he stop someone from giving away the ending. Sure, he can ask nice and hope they are nice, but talks acts like he had some kind of legal right. WTF?

You know, that struck me as a bit odd, too. I don't see how copyright can cover a plot summary of a book or story. Not only that, but the Fair Use clause of copyright law expressly allows for quotations and summaries used in book reviews and scholarly writings... Properly attributed, of course. I haven't seen the gaming magazine in question, but I don't see how Niven could have had a case unless there was a really egregious case of plagiarism.

This smacks of the same heavy-handed tactics others (especially authors) have used to suppress material they don't like. His high-priced attorneys are banking that nobody will be able to afford to mount a legal defense, and will cave in to any request that Niven makes. That's why, as much as I hate Elf Sternberg, I'm glad to see that he found a viable way to defend himself against this aggressive litigation: Elf claims that he's writing parody, as defined in the body of U.S. law and legal opinion, and at least in this country, that's an absolute defense against any infringement claims. (I get a kick reading some U.K. sites that talk about unauthorised parody, in regard to the flap over Mike Meyers using the title Goldmember for one of his Austin Powers movies. I guess the U.K. doesn't believe in protecting parody.)

Re:Copyright a plot?

[digitalgiblet]

Once upon a time there was a gaming article that blew away the punch lines of several Man-Kzin War stories. I asked that it not be published. In that case too, I acted to protect my copyrights and my authors.

Important point: He asked that it not be published.

He did not litigate. He did not act in some heavy-handed way.

He "acted to protect his copyrights" by requesting that someone not give away the endings and thereby discourage people from reading the books.

I don't see why anyone would be upset by that.

Re:Copyright a plot?

[lolife]

I enjoyed the interview but this copyright business left a bad taste in my mouth. He basically said "someone told me it violated my copyright". Oh good, another mindless cease and desist issued by lawyers without any thought of the actual harm. These sort of derivative works benefit the original author and deserve more rational consideration than "someone told me it violated by copyright".

Re:Copyright a plot?

[geekoid]

becaue it is not a protection of copyrights, as he alledgedly claims. He has no copyright on a review of his book, the fact that he would throw "protect copyright" into the mix clearly implies litigation, something many, if not most, gaming magazines can not afford. so its a vieled threat. no more, no less.
If he said, "hey, don't give away the ending, its not nice" and thats as all fine.
saying "you better not give away my ending, or else!" is not.

I do love Larry Niven...

[Anonymous Coward]

What should I do in my life?!!

Star Trek Cartoon...

[RichardtheSmith]

Yes Larry Niven intersected with Trek...

This really trips me out...

Re:Star Trek Cartoon...

[gurps_npc]

When I saw this cartoon I got really mad that someone had ripped off Larry Niven's Great story and had to laugh at myself when I read the credits at the end and realized that Larry himself had given permission and agreed to transform his great Known Space/puppeteer/Kzinti story into a Star Trek/Vulcan/Kzinti cartoon.

Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[stratjakt]

Hmmm...

HALO: $46.88

Ringworld $6.99

What's a poor mans who now?

Re:Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[HeghmoH]

Yeah, but look at the costs of making real ones.

Halo: $10^(HOLY SHIT)

Ringworld: $10^(DEAR JESUS THAT'S BIG)

Re:Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[Anonymous Coward]

A Halo is a much smaller object than a full Ringworld, so poorer men could build Halos.

Re:Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[tbmaddux]

Mr. Niven was perhaps also unaware of Ian Banks whose works were arguably mined more heavily for inspiration by the Halo authors.

Of course Mr. Banks undoubtedly read "Ringworld."

Re:Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[Anonymous Coward]

tbmaddux was perhaps also unaware of Iain Banks [bungie.org] whose name he casually misspelled, botching his attempt to look clever.

Of course Mr. tbmaddux undoubtedy read the article he linked to.

Re:Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[Fenris Ulf]

I doubt Mr. Niven is unaware of Iain M. Banks, as he's become rather well known in SF.

Anyways, Banks' "orbitals" are not the same as ringworlds: Instead of a ring which has a star for the center, an orbital is a smaller spinning ring the center of which travels in an orbit around a star much as a planet would.

This has several benefits:
1) a natural day-night cycle, night occurs when the sun is occluded by your "floor"
2) progression of the sun across the sky (sunsets, sunrise)
3) less wasteful - the ringworld has a ridiculous amount of space, more than the Culture needs. In the Culture "more" is not better for the sake of being better.
4) doesn't require material shipped in from out-of-system. Given the Culture's aversion to terraforming planets, I'd imagine they'd be loathe to melt more of them down than they had to.
5) Inherently stable - Unlike the ringworld, which is metastable (thus the need for ramjets on the rim)

Re:Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[pegli]

Halo, by Tom Maddox (1991 Tor books): $0.00

I'd assume that Niven was referring to Maddox's novel which takes place on a big ring in space; hence the comparison.

p.
eniac refugee

Re:Halo" looks like a poor man's Ringworld..

[mink]

The question was talking about he Xbox video game AFAIK.
but I cant tell what you meant since my /. sarcasm/joke detector is in the shop.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Bonker]

A lot of Niven's science fiction is set in 'Known Space' (or in the same continuity). It's not just populated by the Humans who are the main characters in a lot of his books, but also by the Kzinti, Pierson's Puppeteers, and the mysterious Pak Protectors, amoung others. There are myriad worlds in Niven's books, including the aforementioned Ringworld, and many non-worlds, such as the 'Smoke Ring' in 'The Integral Trees'

Is there an intriguing universe to be unfolded there? Absolutely. For me, that universe is more real by an order or magnitude than the worlds set forth in Star Trek or Star Wars.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beeeeotch!

THE MAN burned the library of Alexandria. The internet's next.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Re:Who is this guy?

[isorox]

Indeed, just because "Several Slashdot staff people are major Larry Niven fans", doesnt mean we *all* know he's the lead singer of Nivarna.

(p.s. not every person reading slashdot is a sci-fi fan, and even thsoe that are, some might prefer TV-scifi (trek, wars, bab 5), and not the books. I've read ringworld, but I dont connect authors and books - I have a lousy memory for that, same as a lousy memory for faces)

Regarding the last two questions

[LionMage]

Well, I knew someone would bring up Elf Sternberg's stories, and how Mr. Sternberg ran afoul of Larry Niven. Naturally, Niven claims that Sternberg violated his copyrights. Pardon me, but I was under the impression that copyright only applied to complete works; you can only trademark a name, such as "Kzin." (Paramount goes nuts with claiming trademarks and registered trademarks on everything under the sun, so I know this is pretty standard practice.) Similarly, although IANAL, I understand that you technically can't claim copyright on a character or a concept, only on a work of fiction involving that character or concept.

Not that I think Elf's stories are worth the electrons wasted in transmitting them. Those of us old enough to remember Elf's massive cross-posts of his fiction to a number of Usenet newsgroups (many of which were, in fact, inappropriate venues for this sort of work) will remember the complaints about wasted bandwidth and so forth. At least now that this junk is all archived on the web, only people who want to see it can go seek it out, and the rest of us are spared.

What's interesting, though, is that Elf claims "The Only Fair Game" is the original story where he ran afoul of Niven. I seem to recall an earlier work of Elf's that mentioned Kzinti, which was later edited so that the one Kzin character was changed to some sort of anthropomorphic tiger. (There have to be some early archives of the Usenet posts that contain the original version of the story.) I remember Niven's editorial in one of the Man Kzin Wars books, where he blasts Elf (though not by name) for writing a rather bad story involving a "sadomasochistic homosexual gang-bang." I'll never forget that line. Anyway, I assumed that Niven was speaking about this other, earlier story, and had no idea "The Only Fair Game" even existed until today.

The thing is, though, Sternberg doesn't just steal from Niven's work -- he steals freely from a variety of writers. (I've found elements of C. J. Cherryh's books in some of the stories.) Which leads to the natural question, what can an author do legally to prevent someone from stealing things outright? Short of the Paramount solution (i.e., claim trademark on everything), I don't see that there's much you can do except threatening someone with legal action and hoping they can't afford to fight back in court.

My only other comment is regarding the question of film adaptation, and why so many bad SciFi stories get made into films whereas the "good stuff" never makes it to film. Ignoring for the moment the definition of what constitutes good Sci Fi, I wanted to comment that I was aghast at Niven's seemingly congratulatory tone speaking of how The Postman got turned into a film. I enjoyed David Brin's The Postman, but the film was nothing short of horrible. Costner methodically removed any trace of the Sci Fi elements present in the original book, and dumbed down the dialogue so much that I almost walked out in the first 30 minutes.

Bottom line, I think a bad film adaptation of a Sci Fi book is worse than no adaptation being made at all. I mean, how would Niven feel if some Hollywood mogul made a version of Ringworld, but removed all of what made it good Sci Fi?

Maybe Niven should be grateful nobody's raped his intellectual property yet, rather than being jealous.

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[Galvatron]

IANAL, but copyright does protect you from someone making "derivative works" based on your copyright. A story about Kzinti seems pretty clearly derivative of his Known Space series, and therefore in violation of his copyright. If Elf had made up a new race that just happened to have the same name as Niven's, that would be a trademark matter, but if he copies the race exactly, that's a derivative work, and is protected by copyright.

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I knew someone would bring up Elf Sternberg's stories, and how Mr. Sternberg ran afoul of Larry Niven. Naturally, Niven claims that Sternberg violated his copyrights. Pardon me, but I was under the impression that copyright only applied to complete works; you can only trademark a name, such as "Kzin."

Copyright also covers derivative works, which are any adaptation of the copyrighted work. This covers such things as an audio book version, a foreign translation, and sequels.

I don't think it's a stretch to claim that a short story based in the same world as Niven's is a derivative work on his original book.

It makes sense, if you actually stop and think about it. If I write crappy Kzin stories, it weakens the value of his other books, because people would probably believe that he either wrote the story or authorized it. Accordingly, if it's crap, they are going to be less interested in his further works.

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[geekoid]

His point was not the The postman was a great movie, but that he was glad to see sci-fi books on the screen,regardless of quality. The book doesn't change. So he wouldn't mind seeing a bastardized version of ringworld, in the theory that more people would read his book. Although I suspect the money he would get would be the primary reason for wanting to see his books be made into movies.

"Costner methodically removed any trace of the Sci Fi elements present in the original book, and dumbed down the dialogue so much that I almost walked out in the first 30 minutes."

so apperently it takes 30 minutes to drain ones will power and common sense... ;)
I hadn't read the postman, and I hateed the movie. As a counter to Nivens point, I didn't read the postman because of the movie.

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[LionMage]

so apperently it takes 30 minutes to drain ones will power and common sense... ;)

Since you used a smiley, I am pretty sure that wasn't intended as an actual slam. The truth is, I would have walked out of the film if I hadn't been there with my wife. The sad thing is, she loved it.

She and I are divorced now. Read into that what you will. :-)

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[LionMage]

Ah, that's a point I hadn't considered. Of course, if an author exaggerates or otherwise distorts one or more traits of a race described in one of Niven's original books, as Elf did with the Kzin, then that becomes a matter of parody. I don't remember the exact text of the Supreme Court ruling that Elf cites, but it was pretty interesting, outlining what does and does not constitute parody.

Since special protection has been conferred on works of parody, this does seem to weaken copyright law with regard to derivative works. I wonder if there's a lawyer out there who'd care to comment?

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[LionMage]

Yep... you're the second person to point this out to me. Although the legal protections conferred on parodies in the U.S. seem to dilute the original author's rights with respect to "derivative works." I'd really like to hear a lawyer's take on this.

I do agree, however, that bad fiction based in someone else's universe can turn people off of the original works, and therefore hurt an author's revenue stream. Not that Larry Niven should be worrying about money, considering he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I find it odd that, although many Sci Fi authors don't seem to have a problem with fan fiction written in their fictional universe, Larry Niven has almost always said "no" to fan fic, and stamped it out wherever possible.

Whatever your views on playing in someone else's sandbox, it's something to give you pause for reflection. (I've been in writing workshops taught/moderated by Joe Haldeman, for instance, who didn't like writing fiction set in someone else's universe, although he did write a Star Trek novel once. Go figure. I think he was moderately flattered by the fan fic set in his own worlds, but my memory may be failing me.)

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[Anonymous Coward]

My theory is that you can't get along with people.

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[Redflame]

LionMage (318500) said:
Larry Niven has almost always said "no" to fan fic, and stamped it out wherever possible.

Not quite true. He just didn't like Elf's story, didn't think his characters would act that way, and of course he is concerned about his copyrights. I can see why Elf claims that "Fair Game" is Constitutionally proteced speech based on the freedom of parody.

There is fan fic published on Known Space http://www.larryniven.org/fanfiction.htm. Not much, true, but if you know of more, feel free to have the writers contact the webmasters of Known Space at webmasters@larryniven.org

Filkers were particularly happy to hear the Supreme Court's ruling on Constitutionally protected parodies, and I know of no instance where Niven condemed a filk based on his work, and there is a lot of it.

If you know of another instance where Larry Niven publicly or privatly attmepted to tell someone he couldn't entertain himself writing stories in Niven's universe, I'd like to hear about it.

There are also some Niven works published, with Niven's permission, at http://www.larryniven.org/exclusive.htm Many of them, even diehard fans will nothave seen before.

Re:Regarding the last two questions

[Banner]

Actually, Niven didn't have a legal leg to stand on. Remember Copyright law allow's parody among other things.

However, I seem to recall that there was an agreement between Niven and Elf to pull the story from the internet on the contingency that Niven never speak of it again.
Niven reneged when he blasted Elf in that book's editorial section, so Elf reposted the story. Notice the story is still there. (What's also funny is that Niven and Elf have several friends in common.)

Last of all, someone I knew (who sadly was murdered by some gangbangers in LA in a case of mistaken identity) wrote a story based on Niven's work sent it to Niven and asked for Niven's opinion, etc. Niven basically crushed him. Told him not to write in his world, etc, and wouldn't give him any help or pointers. Niven even made fun of this person (not by name) in one of his editorial sections (Same one he blasted Elf in, if I recall properly).

I lost all respect for Niven when I heard about that. He could have let the guy down gently and offered some constructive criticisms. Maybe encouraged him to keep trying, though on a different track. Making comments about it however in his editoral was pretty low.

Patrick O'Brian -- hear hear

[ianscot]

Patrick O'Brian's sea stories, courtesy of John Hertz.

Cool to see that name on his list of inspirational reading. They're not similar writers; O'Brian's series are historical fiction, and their heart is really the complex, evolving friendship between the two main characters. Not really Niven territory, but they're astonishingly good once you're in the mindset.

Re:Who is this guy?

[RevAaron]

I started with Star Wars, but I don't think I'd say the universe is all that real. While I'm also a fan of Trek, I've never found that too... real. Just fun. :) I'll have to take a look at Ringworld after I finish the next 7 (!) books on my plate. Thanks for the reccomendation.

Re:Who is this guy?

[stripes]

I just started the Hyperion series, and after that, the Foundation trilogy. Would you put the Ringworld series in this kind of class of a whole universe unfolded for the reader?

Yes, without reservations of any kind.

He meant...

[Anonymous Coward]

...mentally poor.

Now, now...

[Thud457]

"Niven's background very nearly approaches Asimov's."

Now, now, there, we all know who's more prolific.

Makes Larry look like a bit of a slacker, actually!

I always thought that Larry should work a little more dilegently. I want more!

Re: PKD

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that PKD is not one of the 'lesser talents' who had his stories made into movies. Sure manyof the movies were sub-par, but that does not diminish PKDs writings.

The machine gnomes stole my drugs!

[Thud457]

Hey, we're talking PKD here!

It seems to me that channeling might be a perfectly reasonable way to conduct an interview!

huh?

[Beansack]

Who the hell is Dr. Larry Niven?

Re:huh?

[cronus42]

DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

A well-known and well-regarded author of science fiction books.

Of course, five seconds with Google would have told you much, much more...

Re:huh?

[error0x100]

If you have to ask, you're not '3133t' enough. At least, that seems to be attitude from the slashdot editors, which I think is really childish. I didn't know who Larry Niven is either.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFM ^H^H^H^H "Google is your friend!"

Re:huh?

[error0x100]

I think you but completely and utterly missed my point. Basic pre-teen reading skills ..

Why is this Flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

It holds certain truths that are hard to dispute.

oh well./ Sucky moderation.

Re:Why is this Flamebait?

[Harinezumi]

Because it's a madlib-style troll, and has nothing to do with Dr. Niven or his opinions

Re:Dr. Niven, the villian

[monopole]

Alas, I fear that I have much the same problem with the later Niven. His early work was excellent but in the 80's it degenerated into far-right rants and white-boy wish fulfillment. It's really a pity.

The Sequel Question

[Rayonic]

It's too bad that the question of sequels didn't make the cut to be asked. I've noticed a trend in Niven's body of work -- he's not good at direct sequels. Really, some of his sequels fall short of the original novel, while the others fall far, far short.

Even when collaborating, the man just can't make a good series. Look at The Gripping Hand for a prime example. Am I the only one who notices this trend?

(Disclaimer: I've only read 50-60% of his work so far. Mainly it's the short stories I have to catch up with.)

Re:The Sequel Question

[Roblimo]

I almost sent him your question, since I think serialization is a plague on the novel-publishing industry, and that franchising an author's work (as Larry Niven, Tom Clancy, and others have done) is a sick marketing tactic that produces bad writing almost every time. (Even Robert Parker's attempt at completing a Raymond Chandler novel stunk -- and Parker is a plenty fine writer himself.)

This is a question I think we should ask a book editor or marketing person. Maybe Baen... he'd make a nice Slashdot interview guest, wouldn't he?

Please sumbit the same question when you see us grab Jim Baen or another publishing person. Or maybe Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog, who may have a better grasp of science fiction as a whole than anyone.

- Robin

Re:The Sequel Question

[Sebbo]

As a novel, Ringworld Engineers is vastly superior to Ringworld. The themes of Engineers are addiction, loss, free will, and what it means to be human. The themes of Ringworld are neat gadgets and neat engineering tricks.

I enjoyed Ringworld a lot when I first read it at age 14; I struggled to keep reading when I re-read it last year. It's more tour guide than novel, with cursory plot and characterization. I was surprised to see Niven advance it as one of his best books in the interview.

Re:The Sequel Question

[GodEater]

Do you classify the Known Space series as sequels ? I for one loved reading as many of them as I could find, and I was / am left desperately dissappointed about at least one of them. In the short story were Louis Wu encounters the Trinoc for the first time - I got the distinct impression there was going to be more in some other tale... I've never found that story if it exists...

Re:The Sequel Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Ringworld Engineers competes with Ringworld (though Ringworld Throne went downhill). I also think the later Dream Park novels (with Barnes) compete with the original. His loosely-connected series of short stories (such as Known Space) are usually consistently good. But in general, I agree with you regarding Niven's sequels.

Re:The Sequel Question

[kfg]

To tell you the truth a certain amount of serializing doesn't bother me. Some stories are just too complex to tell in a single book that can actually be sold and marketed these days.

I guess Harry Potter is as good an example as any of this. The legitimate story really is that long, and if the quality of the writting holds up, well, we're all winners for it.

It's the "franchising" that gets to me, particularly when the franchise is turned over to *other* writers.

C.J. Cherryh has created a few worlds and story lines that I simply adore, but she gets in over her head, calls in "help", just to cover a few chapters mind you, and then the whole thing just goes to hell.

Robert Asprin, in struggling with his worlds and his writer's block, has done much the same thing, ruining the worlds of Skeeve and Phule.

There isn't really anything that can be done about it, because it's simply good business from the point of view of both the publishers and author, but I don't have to like it.

KFG

Re:The Sequel Question

[Rayonic]

I think he does fine with his standalone short stories (that use the same universe and some recurring characters). I was basically commenting on the sequels to his novels. It's possible he screws up direct sequels to short stories, but I don't know if he's done that yet.

Compounding this problem is that he's always leaving loose ends that beg for a sequel (like with that Trinoc story that you mentioned.)

Re:The Sequel Question

[Rayonic]

The Ringworld sequels are certainly his best effort (as far as his sequels go), but I still found them disappointing. A good read, but untimately disappointing.

You mention that the original Ringworld was largely an intro to the Ringworld, and not that deep. I agree with this, however I feel that the original book was leading up to a far greater storyline/world than what the sequels actually presented. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great bits in both Engineers and Throne, but it they don't have the sweep/scope/grandeur that was hinted at in the first one.

Re:The Sequel Question

[Dread_ed]

Interestingly enough, the first book of Niven's I ever read was the Rinworld Engineers (second of three in the series). I read it probably 5 times that year. I have read it probably another 10 times in the 12 years since. The book was and is great.

I read Ringworld after the Engineers and thought it was good, but not as good at the Engineers. Funny huh?

I think this may have something to do with the excitement and intellictual stimulation we feel when we read something new. Then once the characters are known and the plot developed, the story and universe gets "stale."

In other words, decreasing quality of sequels may be due to something other than the writing.

Re:The Sequel Question

[sgage]

Regarding serialization...

Just one word...

Dune.

Dune was one of the most intriguing SF books I've ever read. If only, if only FH would have left it there. OK, maybe one more sequel, but jeezus! Can you say "potboiler"?

It really came across as "let's see how much $$$ we can milk out of this franchise". And his son carried on the tradition.

Ack!

Re:The Sequel Question

[perfessor multigeek]

But would you ask that question of Robert Lynn Asprin or other creators of shared universes (such as Thieve's World?) Or how about the authors who have decided to bring fanfic extensions "in-house" the way that Marion Zimmer Bradley has with Darkover?
After all, aren't these some of the closest analogs of open source to turn up yet outside the world of programming?

Rustin

Re:The Sequel Question

[Rayonic]

Good points, but I have to say that there was a big spoilage factor in your case. Without the mystique, the first book isn't nearly as interesting. Not to mention that you already knew about the Fist-of-God, which was something of a revelation in the first book.

Re:The Sequel Question

[Pxtl]

Actually, I liked The Gripping Hand even more then Mote in God's Eye. Niven does space much better then planets, and Gripping Hand had much less of Pournelle's neo-feudalist jingoism. I found it much more enjoyable.

And while I agree that Ringworld Throne was mediocre, Ringworld Engineers (the second book in the unplannned trilogy) is the peak of the series.

Re:The Sequel Question

[Pxtl]

This always bothers me. People who consider Dune to be Herberts best don't understand Herbert. As a reader of more of his books then just the Dune series: He meant to do that.

The whole point of Dune wasn't just to tell a good story - it was to create a Bible for the rest of the series to follow. It was the genesis of a setting, less then a story. Paul was an an analogue to Jesus or any other religion-founding super-being, and the later books show the aftermath of his life. He created something unstoppable.

Re:The Sequel Question

[mink]

How about George H. Scithers?

"His professional science fiction career has been distinguished. He was the founding editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, for which he won the Hugo twice, in 1979 and 1981. He began or gave a substantial boost to the careers of such writers as John M. Ford, Somtow Sucharitkul (a.k.a. S.P Somtow), and Barry Longyear, publishing the latter's celebrated, Hugo-and-Nebula-winning and filmed "Enemy Mine" in the September 1979 issue. As editor of Amazing, 1982-1986, he gave that magazine a much-needed boost. He has been co-editor (or sometimes publisher) of Weird Tales since 1988.This experience with various magazines has enabled him to carry on some charming traditions. For example, the last story he bought for Asimov's was by Gene Wolfe. The first story he bought for Amazing was by Gene Wolfe. The first story he bought for Weird Tales was by Gene Wolfe. As George has often confessed a secret desire to edit Planet Stories one day should that day ever arrive, I am sure he will try very hard to introduce Gene Wolfe to write a Planet story.

He was also a great patron of the late, great Avram Davidson, publishing him extensively in all three magazines. And as editor/publisher of Owlswick Press, George published (and designed, beautifully) the last two of Davidson's books published in his lifetime, The, Adventures of Dr. Eszterhazy and Adventures in Unhistory.

Indeed, as a specialty publisher, he has produced a long series of handsome books, ranging from illustrated editions of Sprague de Camp and Lord Dunsany to an alleged facsimile of the original manuscript of Al Azif, more commonly known as The Necronomicon.

As a writer he has published but a few stories, but has managed to sell to some of the greatest editors in the history of science fiction, including John W. Campbell, Jr.; Ben Bova; and Frederik Pohl.

But never mind all that-or, put it aside for a moment.

Let us consider George Scithers as a fan. He has been active in fandom since the '50s. George is one of the earliest members of the Hyborian Legion, an association devoted to the perpetuation and admiration of Robert E. Howard, Conan, and all things swordly and sorcerous. But for a single sheet announcing the formation of the Legion, George was the publisher of all issues (from Vol 11, No. 1 to Vol 11, No. 71, 1959-1982) of the Legion's journal Amra, for which he won two Best Fanzine Hugos (1964, 1967).

Amra was, for the time, a truly incredible publication. Long before the days of desktop publishing, in an era of mimeograph, ditto, and manual typewriters, Amra was neatly printed by offset lithography, with beautiful, often very subtle reproductions of the artwork of the great illustrator Roy G. Krenkel. The written content was impressive too, the contributors including Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle, Fritz Leiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and several times (albeit posthumously) Robert E. Howard himself. Several books have been compiled out of Amra material, the best of them being the three from Jack Chalker's Mirage Press, The Conan Reader, The Conan Swordbook, and The Conan Grimoire, which also reproduce much of Amra's sumptuous artwork.

But that's not all. George was once a worldcon chairman and has lived to tell about it, having run Discon I in 1963, having made several basic innovations in worldcon procedures which are still with us today. The Masquerade as we know it is a Scithers invention. Before that, there was a costume party; but the formal event, in which contestants parade across a stage in front of judges, was a Scithers invention.

You must ask George the story of how he called the event to order with a pre-arranged swordfight. (Those were simpler times, before weapons policies.) George has a lot of stories like that, which display a whimsical side. He is also a great patron of the art of the Limerick, for example, and of the Feghoot (those short-short stories that end in awful puns, as pioneered by the late Reg

You're friggin joking!?

[BerntB]

Robert Forward was a great science fiction writer. And a pretty good story teller, too.

Robert Forward a good story teller!? He's a damn good and creative engineer and researcher, but a good author he bloody well is not!

Forward couldn't write literature or write up a believable portrait of anyone to save his life!

I usually describe Forward as the worst author I buy books in hard cover from...

Re:Who is this guy?

[tcdk]

I just started the Hyperion series, and after that, the Foundation trilogy. Would you put the Ringworld series in this kind of class of a whole universe unfolded for the reader? I'll need something to read after the Foundation books! :)

I'm not the one you are responding to but: yes. And no. The ringworld series fall off to quickly, in my opinion. Ringworld Engineers is okay (for a Niven book, which means better than most :-) and does a good job of answering a lot of the questions raised in the first book.

The Ringworld Throne is .... not something to bend over backwards to get your hands on. It's really two stories, one of them not really related to the Ringworld (could have happened any where) and one... just bad.

Your are certainly ripping through the master pieces. It's kind of sad that you read Night's Dawn before you read the Foundation books - you would have gotten more out of Night's Dawn if you had read more classics first.

I would recommend that you read some robot stories by Asimov before you read foundation. The more classics you have read, the better you'll understand the new classics. Names: Heinlein, Harrison, EE 'doc' Smith (If you had read Doc Smith you would have had double the fun when you read Peter Hamilton), Poul Anderson.

When you are done with your current reading plan: go for everything by Iain (M) Banks, read everything else by Simmons, check if you like John Barnes, I've aversions to David Brin, but can understand why most people like him, Ken Macleod, Linda Nagata,....

All very nice but

[uncadonna]

Junk science cuts both ways. Niven's "Fallen Angels" strikes me as malign, irresponsible propaganda.

It's fine for people to advance their point of view, but putting bogus science in the mix is a stunt that I would wish, to put it mildly, Niven would avoid. Some of the readership might think the scientifically literate characters in this story were describing the way the actual real universe works.

I'm all for progress, mind you, and I'm as tired as the next geek of people who don't believe in it. I'm just not for pretending that unconstrained pollution is the cure for an imminent ice age in the actual real world. The way "evidence" was mustered for this conclusion in this book is classic junk science.

This book is entertaining as light fiction, but in a way that is divisive, contemptuous, ignorant and destructive. It irresponsibly damages serious discourse. I'm sure it's done considerable harm to some of its adolescent readership. It ruined any respect I had for Niven.

Re:All very nice but

[HeghmoH]

I love science. I love SF. But anyone who gets their science from SF deserves exactly what they get.

Re:All very nice but

[TheCrazyFinn]

The Science in 'Fallen Angels' is better than 90% of the so-called 'Science' being put forward by the greens these days.

Classic example is the 'greenhouse cliff', which ignores the fact that average temperatures on earth were roughly 5 degrees higher 1000 years ago, without a disastrous icecap melt.

The iceage cliff in Fallen Angels matches up pretty well with current understanding of how fast iceages begin, and what prevented the 'Little Ice Age' of the last 700 years from becoming a true ice age.

Please get a clue before knocking the science in 'Fallen Angels'

Re:All very nice but

[Anonymous Coward]

B52s, machines of death. They aren't a thing to be proud of.

Re:All very nice but

[pj2541]

You missed the whole message of Fallen Angels.

What Niven (IMHO) was trying to say is that there is at least as much evidence for global cooling as for global warming, and that the 'Greens' are going off half-cocked as usual.

It's also a cautionary tale about letting the junk scientists rule the world, a rather disturbing trend that is continuing even now.

Call if sarcasm, parody, or just tongue in cheek, there was nothing wrong with the science in Fallen Angels. We just won't know which side was right for a few (perhaps hundreds of) years yet.

Re:All very nice but

[spun]

Current science suggests that global warming may in fact lead to disasterous global cooling. The sequence of events goes something like: Glaciers melt, flooding the North Atlantic with fresh water. The influx of lighter fresh water disrupts the thermohaline circulation. With no heat circulating through the oceans from the equator to the poles, the northern and southern lattitudes may suddenly become much colder. This is thought to have been a contributing factor in the Younger Dryas cooling event 13,000 years ago.

Re:All very nice but

[Pxtl]

As a niven fan, I never expect to read a book that positively revolted me as much as Fallen Angels did. It was painful. I finished the book out of sheer morbid curiousity at where else he was going with this.

I assume that the flavour of this book (except for the NASA-bashing) was not Niven's fault. The novels Niven writes on his own are very apolitical except for a mild pro-corporate attitude. Pournelle, on the other hand, is an extremely old-fashioned conservative - he supports religion, monarchistic power, and is vehemently anti-intellectual. Read the many other collaborations of theirs and compare teh tone to Niven's books alone. Niven's bad guys are con-men and warriors, while Pournelle's bad guys are foolhardy academics and environmentalists. Look at how many academic villains there have been in their compilations - both the Legacy of the Heorot and Mote glorify the militaristic characters while they insult the academics.

No introduction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the person who posted the article assume that just because the /. staff know who this guy is that the /. readers also know who he is? I would have appreciated an introduction.

Re:I FUCKED LARRY'S WIFE. IN THE ASS, NO LESS.

[Anonymous Coward]

You truly are a troll to be commended. One of these days you're going to get me in trouble at work, though.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one of the most celebrated names in sci-fi!?

Tip; google search "larry niven"

Solomon.

[TheLink]

The difference between wisdom and intelligence?

That question reminds me of the story of Solomon deciding which woman was the baby's mother.

1 Kings 3:16-28

Nowadays most knowledgeable and intelligent people would suggest using DNA tests for such a case.

In contrast, Solomon's method would find out who was better suited to be the baby's mother. Even if you are physically the baby's mother, if you'd rather the baby be chopped in two, you aren't a mother to the baby.

Whilst many intelligent people have a tendency to answer just the given question, a wise person will often give an appropriate response for the entire situation.

Giving correct answers to questions shows your your knowledge and intelligence. Responding appropriately to the entire situation shows your wisdom.

Re:Solomon.

[cranos]

Umm wasn't the tale of Solomon and the baby really just a vieled threat to the other Israelites? You know something along the lines of Israel being the baby and Solomon threatening to start a war if the others don't back him?

Re:Solomon.

[seebs]

The story continues that, after this, two women came to Solomon, dragging a man before the throne, and each said he married her daughter, then ran off. Solomon did the same thing; ordered the guy chopped in two. One woman protested, one said "go ahead". Solomon stopped the executioner, pointed at the second woman, and said "She wanted him killed. She is the true mother-in-law."

Recommendations of Niven's books

[ornil]

Could someone give me a recommendation or preferrably a reading order for Niven's books?

I've read Discworld and Discworld engineers, but that's it.

Thanks.

Re:Recommendations of Niven's books

[docbrown42]

Well, first off you might try reading books written by Niven. Diskworld is by Pratchet. You're probably thinking of Ringworld.

Pick up a copy of "N-Space" or "Playgrounds of the Mind". I'm pretty sure there's a chronological list of Known Space stories in one of those books (I'd check my copy, but I don't have it right now).

Re:Recommendations of Niven's books

[sconeu]

I assume you mean Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers.

Discworld is Pratchett, though I believe he's never written a book with that in the title.

Re:Recommendations of Niven's books

[Anonymous Coward]

Discworld was written by Terry Pratchett, not Niven.

Re:Recommendations of Niven's books

[wind]

Ummm... how about straight from the horse's mouth (so to speak):

Niven:

What book you give depends on who you're giving it to. To a mundane, give LUCIFER'S HAMMER. To a scientist, give THE INTEGRAL TREES. To someone who already wants to write, or to know about Niven, give N-SPACE or PLAYGROUNDS OF THE MIND or the forthcoming SCATTERBRAIN. Fantasy fans and Angelinos get THE BURNING CITY.

what for sci-fi

[fermion]

I really like is answer to "Is Science Fiction healthy" and the related NASA basing. The fact is that science fiction is a very large category which can include extremely serious stories such as "Ringworld", as well as the Heinlein sex commentary "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" and Pohl's semi-historical novel "Chernobyl". To say this or that is real science fiction is a conceit.

As far as space is concerned, when it is part of the science fiction story, it is mostly just a plot device. The story could just as easily be about Homer lost at sea or Huck floating down a river. This is especially true for most so-called science fiction TV shows. In fact, when a show tries to talk about (of course with many errors, inaccuracies, annoyances, but this is fiction) humans journey into space, or the commercialization of space, they get canceled quickly.

I think the interesting thing is that science fiction tends to promote understanding, knowledge, and then exploration. This is what NASA and other organizations are doing a very good job at. However, people get caught up in the idea of adventure and danger, which NASA is not do good at providing, nor should it be their job.

The love the odd space opera. OTOH, sometimes just thinking about what might happen if someone could predict the time of a persons death is enough for a wonderful sci-fi yarn.

Lucifer's Hammer

[zenofjazz]

Yes, that one would indeed make awesome big-screen fodder.. but how would you fit it all into even a 3.5 hour movie?
assuming that problem is resolved, let me know, I'll order tickets as soon as available.
Yes, Niven is my favorite SF author, and I have everything he's written.

Re:Lucifer's Hammer

[docbrown42]

Lucifer's Hammer would be great on screen, and I'm sure they could sut out some of the sub-plots to get it into a 3hr movie.

Another good one would be Footfall, but then, I want to see Michael (the Orion powered ship in the end of the book) on the big screen. :)

Re:Lucifer's Hammer

[Anonymous Coward]

...it would also be nice to see the shuttles meet with a more noble end :'-(

Re:Lucifer's Hammer

[Anonymous Coward]

...and, having grown up in Bellingham, WA, it would be fun to see what they do with that... At least it would get rid of the G-P stink!

Re:Lucifer's Hammer

[geekoid]

Lucifers Hammer could be good, Footfall would be horrible:
you mean you want elephants shooting guns?
plau a lot of the exitement is in the details that would not work well on screen. sure, fans might enjoy it but that wouldn't be enough to make it a success. I won't say what part here, because Larry Niven might want to sue me for disscussing a plot he wrote.

Re:Lucifer's Hammer

[perfessor multigeek]

you mean you want elephants shooting guns?
As if movies always stick to an author's idea of an alien's appearance.
Naw. I agree. The whole fun of the movie (mudbath brainstorms notwithstanding) is the launch and voyage of the Michael. Distant second would be the portrayal of the bad guy's ships and their culture.[1]
What I would *really* like to see is a movie version in which the sleazy "journalist" does indeed have the same career path he does in the book. No Hollywood studio would ever go along with Niven's version.

Rustin
[1] second time today on that subject.

I like Dick's answer

[epepke]

I'm quoting it from memory, so I probably have some words wrong:

I have just seen Blade Runner. It is terrific. It has nothing to do with a book. What my book will become is a futuristic shoot-em-up. Which is just as well, because my book may have made a terrible movie, full as it is of the main character's internal dialog. A book is meant to be contemplated, but a movie is an event that moves.

Starship Troopers (was:Good SF and bad movies..)

[zenofjazz]

A most excellent novel, turned into the most horrid of movies... If you take out the powered armor, of course everyone is gonna die like sheep... and if you paint the culture as pure fascism, it's gonna look like crap... The movie was the most putrid exscresence to have come out of hollywood, if only for how totally it ruined a good book!

Science Fiction is dying!

[Anonymous Coward]

>It looks to me as if Science Fiction is in
>trouble, or it may be sick, or it may be dead and
>doesn't know it yet.

It is official: Niven confirms: Science Fiction is Dying!

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SF community when it was confirmed that SF market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all novels. Coming on the heels of a recent survey which plainly states that SF has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SF is collapsing in complete disarray.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SF's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SF faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all because SF is dying. Things are looking very bad for SF. As many of us are already aware, SF continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Writers are moving out of SF: William Gibson's latest novel has high geek content, but none of the science isn't already deployed. Same for Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon: good story with high geek content, but nothing beyond the current state of the art. And guys who once wrote Hard Science Fiction are branching out to Fantasy.

Publishing is corporatized: Bookstores have SF sections that are overcrowded with Fantasy and StarTrek, StarWars, Babylon5 & serials.

All major surveys show that SF has steadily declined in market share. SF is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SF is to survive at all it will be among obsessed trekkies. SF continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SF is dead.

Fact: Science Fiction is dying

Re:Queen Mum

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's FUNNY. Offtopic, yes; troll, absolutely - but utterly hilarious. However, it might be better to pick some other old woman in your future trolls; the Queen Mum died last year. Barbara Bush, maybe? Or sticking with the Royal angle, Princess Anne?

wow, bad attitude!

[Erris]

"If you want more Known Space stories" was intended as an invitation to daydream, not to violate my copyrights and steal my ideas. Turning such dreams into stories is only done under restricted circumstances and with permission.

What kind of attitude is that? I love the known space story and other work by Neiven but my gratitude to its creator does not extend to limiting what I or others do. How does anyone intend to "share the dream" like that? Why would anyone bother to contribute back ideas to someone who would step on them like this? It's a very supprising attitude from such an amusing author.

No one owns an idea. Once you tell it, it belongs to everyone. Telling people that they can't write stories about rat tailed cats is about as silly as telling people they can't write stories about elves. Your words are yours, a phrase might be a trademark, implementations might be protected, but the rest is fair game.

Re:wow, bad attitude!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

No one owns an idea.

No matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true.

Re:wow, bad attitude!

[gaijin99]

No matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true.

Er, actually, it is true. Copyright extends to a specific arrangement of words, not the basic concepts behind the words. You could probably make a pretty good case that Nivin owns the word "Ringworld", but this would not prevent someone from writing stories that involve a ringworld (Dyson Circle?).

If ideas were ownable the Heinlein estate would be getting royalties on waldos (all the various "telepresence" apperatus), and waterbeds. Similarly, SF involving a character becoming both of its parents would be forbidden because Heinlein wrote it in "All You Zombies". The Anime "Bubblegum Crisis" would be illegal because it involves powered armor...

Even in extreme cases, where a writer makes an exact copy of a popular universe, but changes all the names are perfectly legal. As an example: a while back an RPG firm seemed as if it were going to get the rights to make an RPG out of the various "Highlander" movies/televison shows/etc. The deal fell through after they'd invested considerable time and money writing the thing; so they changed all the names, and published. All perfectly legal.

Under the US copyright laws, it is true that no one owns an idea.

Re:wow, bad attitude!

[HalfFlat]

No one owns an idea.

No matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true.

On the contrary, no matter how often the claim otherwise is repeated, "intellectual property" is a legal fiction, maintained only by goverment fiat.

The only idea owned, in any normal sense of the word 'own', is the idea that is not shared. You can talk about the source of an idea, the inspiration for an idea, the scope of an idea, and so on. But the owners of an idea are exactly those who have it, and this includes everyone to whom the idea is transmitted.

Copyrights, trademarks and patents are legal mechanisms used to restrict the propogation of the representations of ideas, or to restrict their implementation. The aim is nominally to encourage the creation of more entertaining or useful ideas and knowledge, though it seems to be used more as a tool to enrich the rich and restrict competition. That said, none of these tools, even in a legal sense, claim to restrict ownership of an idea; at most they restrict its representations, expressions and transmissal.

Ideas are not like bricks or cabbages. Ideas can not be owned in any sense akin to that of material objects. At most, they can be kept secret and thus said to be in the possession of a few.

Re:wow, bad attitude!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If you'll look carefully, you'll see that nobody was talking about US copyright law.

Re:wow, bad attitude!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Ideas are not like bricks or cabbages.

I repeat myself: no matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true. You can rationalize all you like, and say that ideas should be common property, but unless you reject the idea of private ownership wholesale-- some people obviously do-- then ideas are owned just like anything else.

That's just how the world is.

Re:wow, bad attitude!

[Chymaera]

Well, yes, it is true. People own expressions of ideas, not ideas. :-)

A sure bet...

[bluephone]

"If I had to bet my reputation it would be on RINGWORLD.

Yeah, well, if I had written a monumental, watershed moment type of book like RW, I'd bet on it too. Why did that question get there? Did anyone of us really think that he wouldn't pick one of the greatest novels of the 20th century? Do I ask too many rhetorical questions? Can you tell I'm a rabid Niven fan? :)

Re:A sure bet...

[1u3hr]

Personally (how else) I'd say that A World Out of Time was a much more mature story, with better characters (though that's never been a forte of Niven), some mind-expanding astro-engineering, but much more hard-nosed as to the credibility of the science (except for the teleportation booths/immortality treatment) than the mass of contradictions in the Known Space canon that ties you up in knots when you try to reconcile it all. Later he wrote two novels (apparently) in the same timeline, The Integral Trees and its sequel -- also intersting, but not so great.

It's really a shame that Niven lost steam by about 1980. Some authors, like Frederik Pohl, got from strength to strength as they age, but Niven seems to have got stuck and kept recycling stuff he'd whipped off in the 60s, when he was writing the orignal Known Space stories. (I loved many of these, but I wish he'd moved on after Ringworld.) Don't mention Jerry Pournelle -- with the single exception of Inferno, those collaborations were all long-winded crap.

After Ringworld

[Anonymous Coward]

Read his short story collections...Neutron Star, Tales of Known Space, Flatlander. Then, read Protector, which IMO is his best Known Space novel.

Science fiction being in trouble.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh.

Unfortunately, I don't forsee another Dune Chronicles in the near future. (Though, pleasant surprises happen. Yay probability!)

I do see a shitload of low-level crap flooding the market. That, by itself, means sci-fi is not in trouble. When shelfspace is filled up by utter drek, it means that a writer doesn't have to be the best of the best to sell his or her book(s). It also means that there's a greater number of 'decent' to 'good' books out there. Maybe not anything great, but great books are like great people - a true rarity.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Zathrus]

The ringworld series fall off to quickly

Huh?

Have you read the other Known Space books? There's much more to it than just Ringworld and sequels (and both sequels, IMO, aren't worth reading). Neutron Star, Flatlander (Gil Hamilton stories), and a good bit more.

Lucifer's Hammer, Mote in God's Eye, Dream Park, and Integral Trees are also worth reading, although not in the Known Space series. Most of his more recent works aren't very good - and I say this as someone who owns pretty much every book he's published - but Ringworld is without question worth reading, and Known Space is on the scale of the other worlds the OP mentioned.

Re:Starship Troopers (was:Good SF and bad movies..

[Anonymous Coward]

The culture in the book was pure fascism - it's just that Johnny doesn't realise it because he's indoctrinated by his "political science" teacher.

How about the rest of us?

[dasmegabyte]

I personally think Larry Niven *DOES* need an introduction, since I have no idea who he is. Being that I don't read nearly enough sci-fi literature (instead wasting my time with the subversive literature assigned to me by this damn hippy graduate program), I would have appreciated a quick run down of what he's written and why he's important.

But of course, since everybody over there knows who he is, I guess I'm just an ignorant shithead.

Re:How about the rest of us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is your friend

Re:How about the rest of us?

[dasmegabyte]

Bah. Slashdot's supposed to put news in a blender and serve it up with a tiny straw umbrella. I shouldn't have to go googling every time somebody answers questions. Tell me why I should care, man!

All it would have taken is a simple "Larry Niven, inventor of the Web Ring."

(That's a joke AND a troll)

Re:How about the rest of us?

[geekoid]

I guess I'm just an ignorant shithead.
well, you're half right...rimshot...

joking aside, I pretty much think it is common cortesy to at least place a link to an introduction for every interview.

Re:How about the rest of us?

[Degrees]

Yeah, that is kind of a hard one. On the one hand, if you go down to the bookstore, look in the Science Fiction section, under "Niven" you will see a bunch of titles. On the other hand, we cannot point you to a movie you might have seen. On the gripping hand*, you if you read one of his books, you probably went out and found more of his books to read. At least that was what happened to me, and seems to have happened to my science fiction reading friends. (So then, you are now a part of the "in crowd"....)

Essentially, his books had more science to them than many many of of the other popular science fiction writers. A number of people get into reading science fiction while they are young, so the exposure to scientific ideas (in addition to a story) is cool.

I remember vividly when in one of the books, the story gave the description of a totally private, un-snoopable communications link: lasers between spacesuits, in perfectly lined up tubes (robotically maintained alignment.) At my age (I think I was thirteen or fourteen), the dawning of that idea in my mind was a revelation. It was that kind of thing that caused me to pursue more of Larry Niven's work (and collaborative works with Jerry Pournelle.)

Eventually, someone wrote that if you like the science in these guys' work, you will also like Robert L. Forwards' work - and they were right.

But back to your point - I agree, a list of titles would have nice. If there is something like imdb for authors (what? Amazon.com in a Lynx browser?) that would have helped.

*Inside joke - you'll have to read "Mote In God's Eye"

Re:The staff can suck eggs

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't agree more. I don't know, nor give a fucking shit who Larry Niven is. It's sad that the true insightful comments are shoved down to -1. Mods are no better than crapflooding trolls.

Third Person?

[cherrypi]

"To someone who already wants to write, or to know about Niven, give N-SPACE..."

Interesting that he refers to himself in third person... I smell a secretary.

Re:Third Person?

[Redflame]

cherrypi (71943) said: Interesting that he refers to himself in third person... I smell a secretary. Niven realy does refer to himself in the third person, and has for *at least* decades. Maybe it is a California thing. Carol Phillips Co-Manager of Known Space: http://www.larryniven.org Co-Administrator of the Larry Niven List: http://www.larryniven-l.org

Re:Third Person?

[freeweed]

freeweed talks like this too, sometimes. Are you trying to say something to freeweed?

Nevinyrral's Disk

[totallygeek]

Is this the same Larry Nevin as the Magic card?

Re:Nevinyrral's Disk

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, it's from a novella of his called The Magic Goes Away.

Ken

Does Larry Niven have cancer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or was he just joking?

Re:Does Larry Niven have cancer?

[admiralh]

That was my first reaction, too. However, it was the questioner who said he had cancer, not Niven.

quick innocent question: what's an angelinos?

[Destoo]

So.. what's an angelinos?

(small.. angels?)

(bonus points for giving the relation with fantasy(+1 imaginative), and for describing The Burning City (+1 bookworm)

Re:quick innocent question: what's an angelinos?

[Argylengineotis]

resident of Los Angeles, CAalifornia (USA)

Re:quick innocent question: what's an angelinos?

[belg4mit]

A native of Los Angeles

Re:quick innocent question: what's an angelinos?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're the putative intermediate vector bosons that are the mediators of the holiness charge. And since you asked, 10^34 can fit on the head of a pin.

Re:quick innocent question: what's an angelinos?

[geekoid]

someone who lives in Los Angeles county.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Thud457]

You really should read "Neutron Star" before "Ringworld" -- it sets up a lot of the primary motivations for the characters in the latter story.

Warning : Possible spoilers for "Ringworld" (I figured that was better than giving up the ending of "Neutron Star" ;-)

1. Why do the Puppeteers claim they are leaving known space?
2. What prize do they offer Man and Kzinti to convince them to explore the ringworld?
3. Why did the Puppeteers become intereted in the Ringwold? (Remember curiosity is not a natural trait for them.)

the movie was MUCH BETTER than the book.

[bani]

the book rambled too much, and wandered aimlessly a lot. the pseudo-religion was also a bit too weird for me.

Best SF Line

[GammaRay Rob]

My first encounter with Larry Niven's work was during high school, oh so many years ago, with this line (by memory, hopefully not too far off the mark):
"Hey you, from We Made It, what am I?"
(A Flatlander, obviously!)
I was hooked.

The ignorance displayed on slashdot knows no bound

[Anonymous Coward]

"To my eye, it tells me that Larry hasn't really built an actual, physical Bussard ramjet."

Dumbass. He keeps it in his backyard.

Because knowing is half the battle!

The difference between Asimov and Niven ...

[Tim Ward]

... well, the most blatant one anyway, is that Niven can do characters and Asimov can't - they're all cardboard.

Re:The difference between Asimov and Niven ...

[Bonker]

Asimov lovers will flame me for this, but I agree. I think that his characters are very flat and stale in comparison to Niven's characters.

(Spoiler)

Louis Wu spends all of 'Ringworld Engineers' recovering from addiction to electrical pleasure-center stimulation, for example. It affects his every action and every motivation in the book. He grows around it and is a fuller character because of it.

Janet Asimov, on the other hand, can do decent characters, but even then they're still pretty flat when compared to Niven.

IMHO, Niven and Heinlen are about on equal grounds when character-crafting.

I always liked that book!

[Thud457]

[ob M$ slam]:
He has this big-ass radiation-spewing monstrosity powered by nuclear weapons launching right over Billy G's backyard.

Clue

[uncadonna]

(On the one hand, the above comment demonstrates my point nicely. On the other... well... I usually resist credentialism, but there's a time and a place for everything. So... ahem...)

I got my doctorate in atmospheric and oceanic sciences from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1996. I get my clues from J. Clim., J. Phys. Oceanog., and J. Fluid Mech. Where do you get yours from? Jerry Pournelle?

Please feel free to provide substantive evidence for your two assertions above. Amaze and demystify us all and provide references in peer-reviewed scientific literature, if you can.

Re:Clue

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! A true member of the guild.

Ooookay....

Re:Clue

[TheCrazyFinn]

Please provide some proof that what I said is incorrect. You've claimed it's junk science, I've called your bluff, you don't get to call mine without data (Not Credentials, which mean merely that you've been able to parrot certain data).

Now put up or shut up.

Personally, I'll take Jerry's Ph.d's over yours any day.

Re:Clue

[uncadonna]

heh, that's not how it works. You're the one who made the claim, so you're the one with the burden of providing evidence.

As far as I know, the consensus opinion about the last 1000 years' global temperature time series looks like this for what it's worth. Let us know your basis for disagreeing so dramatically.

Re:Clue

[TheCrazyFinn]

Bugger off then. You claimed 'Fallen Angels' was junk science, I said it was better science than what the Greens were spewing (Not that it was necessarily great science). Put up or STFU. And in case you're wondering, I'm perfectly aware I highballed the numbers on global temp average in 1000AD.

How about Macaulay Culkin as Ender Wiggen

[Mouth of Sauron]

I think that would be a riot.

Lord of the Rings: The Cast from Hell

Frodo - Pauly Shore
Sam - Chris Farley
Gandalf - George Carlin
Strider - Tom Cruise
Merry - Jim Carey
Pipin - Chris Rock
Legolas - Carrot Top
Gimli - Jessie Ventura
Boromir - Kevin Sorbo
Arwen - Rosie O'Donnel
Galadriel - Britney Spears
Bilbo - Willian Shatner
Grima Wormtongue - Paul Rubens
Gollum - Adam Sandler
Elrond - Brent Spiner
Saruman - Patrick Stewart
Sauron - Marlon Brando

Re:How about Macaulay Culkin as Ender Wiggen

[Anonymous Coward]

I would gladly pay another $7.50 to see Shatner play Bilbo... $15 if you count TTT.

As far as Wormtongue, I thought that WAS Paul Reubens...

Re:How about Macaulay Culkin as Ender Wiggen

[gordie]

Right cast but the wrong book, they would be perfect for a move based on "Bored of the Rings" by The National Lampoon!

Re:How about Macaulay Culkin as Ender Wiggen

[mink]

Wormtongue was played by the guy who was the Harkonen Mentat in the dune film. Does he ever not play those type of characters?

Better Question

[t0ny]

Someone should have asked Niven how much longer he was going to whore out the Ringworld series.

Re:Better Question

[t0ny]

Someone should have asked Niven how much longer he was going to whore out the Ringworld series.

Oh come on, that was funny, especially when you see the 100000000 Ringworld-based books.

Re:Better Question

[Redflame]

If you aren't enjoying the RINGWORLD cycle, then don't bother reading RINGWORLD'S CHILDREN, coming out in January 2004.

Those of us on The Larry Niven Mailing List fondly recall that, when Larry joined the mailing list when it was still with Bucknell, the first post he received pondered what might have happend had Teela had a child, and thereby triggering his fertile imagination.

For details on that event, and news on other works in progress, visit:
http://www.larryniven.org/wip.html

Carol Phillips

Co-Manager of Known Space: http://www.larryniven.org
Co-Administrator of the Larry Niven List: http://www.larryniven-l.org

Re:Better Question

[t0ny]

Actually, a better question than that would be how long is he going to whore out man-kzin wars.

Brin's 'Postman' vs Costners 'Postman'

[huckamania]

Although they share a similar story line, the Kevin Costner movie stripped almost every vestige of what made the book great. Costner turned the lead role from hero to antihero. In the book, the Postman was looking for and actually trying to reestablish civilization. In the movie, he's just trying to scam food, supplies and sex (while also getting a lot of people killed in the process). The movie combined the two female leads and dropped the most important story line in the book (if you've read the book you'll know what I'm talking about - The night of the long knives). In the book, there are reasons for what the Postman does. In the movie, the Postman just seems to wander about making trouble and only at the end does he do anything about it.

What a waste. I could go on but it's the same for almost all big screen adaptations of SF books. The translation of Starship Troopers was nearly as painful. In the book, troopers were seperated by miles (that's why they had armor) and in the movie troopers just ran around in mobs. One grenade could have taken out an entire squad.

The only hope is that hollywood will notice the performance of a faithful adaptation of source material ala Spiderman or the X-Men. If they can do that for comic books, there's hope that they'll one day do the same for Science Fiction.

Re:Brin's 'Postman' vs Costners 'Postman'

[LionMage]

Costner turned the lead role from hero to antihero. In the book, the Postman was looking for and actually trying to reestablish civilization. In the movie, he's just trying to scam food, supplies and sex (while also getting a lot of people killed in the process).

It's been years since I've read The Postman, but I have to disagree with your reading of the book. If you read the book carefully, you'll find that the "hero" was much like Costner's version of the same character -- a flawed man who started out trying to scam some free food and shelter, moving from town to town. He finds a Post Office jeep stranded out in the middle of nowhere with the decayed remains of its driver, and the protagonist steals the uniform (or what was left of it) and a few other odds and ends (such as a scintillator, since there were nuclear weapons used in the war that occurred before the book's events, and some areas were still "hot zones"). He takes a bag of mail with him, and uses the letters as a desperate ploy to gain entry into towns that have built city walls to keep marauders out. Only later does the protagonist take on a more noble role, when he realizes the power in the dream that he's been selling people.

The problem is, Kevin Costner can't play at being smart, because he's clearly lacking the intellect to pull it off, and he's also seriously un-hip. So Costner rewrote the protagonist as a bumbling fool, when the protagonist in the book was smart (and survived on his wits alone at many points in the story). It's no wonder that Costner removed all mention of the group that was trying to re-establish technology, and their fake AI -- the real AI was destroyed shortly after the war, in the book. The protagonist in the book saw right through the fake AI, realizing that it was a scam, and there was a man behind the curtain. (The real AI was destroyed by rioting mobs, who sabotaged the power plant and facilities used to support the AI, which tragically shut down the AI's plans to help rebuild the country and the economy -- no doubt Brin's scathing commentary on the Luddite streak that permeates American culture.) Costner's version of that character lacked the smarts to see through such a deception. And on it goes.

I'm not sure which plot line you're referring to as "the most important." If I'm remembering correctly from your "night of the long knives" comment, this has to do with the plot line featuring the biologically enhanced super-soldiers who essentially became the feudal warlords of a broken America. If that's what you're referring to, then yeah, that's a key plot element Costner scoured out of the story.

I remember this one part of the film where they talked about the "Bad Mumps," when they were called "war mumps" in the book, and I cringed. Costner made some comment in the press before the movie came out that he'd "tweaked" the dialog, to make it sound just right, and after seeing this film, I have become convinced that Kevin Costner should never be allowed to edit a script ever again.

Re:Brin's 'Postman' vs Costners 'Postman'

[abreauj]

If I'm remembering correctly from your "night of the long knives" comment, this has to do with the plot line featuring the biologically enhanced super-soldiers who essentially became the feudal warlords of a broken America.

Not even close. The "night of the long knives" subplot was the one where the girl came up with the notion that women were responsible for their men; that by preferentially mating with the violent jerks, women were really the ones responsible for causing the war.

Her solution was to spread the idea that it's a woman's responsibility to cull the herd; that if a man was the sort that would seek power and bring about another war, it's his mother's or his wife's responsibility to see that he doesn't live long enough to cause harm.

The "night of the long knives" was a particular night when all the women in the bad guys' camp were to simultaneously kill the men in their sleep.

Re:Who is this guy?

[tcdk]

What I was trying to say was that I found the quality of the Ringworld series to deteriorate to quickly. But you are right - I should have mentioned Known Space. I haven't really gotten into it - I've read N-Space and enjoyed it and Niven himself mentiones it as a good place to start.

Agree with you on Lucifers Hammer and Mote. Great book. Haven't read the other two, but has been meaning to pick them up.

Ah.. so may books - so little time.

I beg to differ

[spun]

Bob Forward is by no means the worst storyteller I know. Sure, his characterizations may be a bit flat, but for shear scope of vision still within the realm of the possible, few others come close. Isaac Asimov and Greg Bear come to mind as authors whose grasp of science approaches Forward's, while still having realistic characters. But while Asimov must have cried all the way to the bank when folks ripped off his telecommunications satelite idea, Forward has cleverly patented many of his 'science fiction' ideas. If we build a space ladder in the next ten years or so, Bob may become a very wealthy man.

Re:I beg to differ

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

Actually, it was Arthur C Clarke who posited the sputnik, not Isaac Asimov.

Re:I beg to differ

[HiThere]

And Clark patented the idea. It just took longer than 25 years before the first one was built.

Re:I beg to differ

[Ambient Sheep]

I don't *think* he did, but I could be wrong. I think he said that he'd wished he'd patented it, but that ultimately it wouldn't have made any difference because of the 25-year thing. Or something like that.

Errata

[kfg]

In the above, second line the word "was" should be "saw."

The fact of the matter is that, yes, I *am* dyslexic, not just a bad speller and have to find a spelling/grammer checker that's "antidyslexic."

As you can see the word is a proper word either way around, and even the grammer parses, although the *meaning* becomes a bit strange.

I'll begin to believe we're making progress in AI when I see an antidyslexic spelling/grammer checker that actually works, since it will have to intuit "what I meant" from "what I said."

And of course in line 3 I added an extra "o" to god. That's just the batteries in my cordless keyboard going flat and it's repeating keys. Time to go to the store I guess. Spelling it with a lower case "g", however, was entirely intentional.

KFG

Re:Errata

[orangesquid]

That's okay. I read dyslexically sometimes, and your sentence made sense until you pointed out your own mistake :D My mind seems to look for meaning first and look at what's there second, and the finding-meaning step doesn't necessarily keep things in the correct order. But maybe that's a lookahead cache with poor jump prediction, or some sort of compiler over-optimization. I'll gdb brain later and try to figure it out.

Re:Errata

[kfg]

Be sure to pipe to a file when you do that. If your brain is anything like mine that's going to be one *long* listing.

KFG

Questions

[jetlagQ]

Reading through the list of questions, i was startled by their high caliber. They were far better than any i've seen in the other interviews. congrats to the questioners and the moderators both.

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence (OT)

[schon]

I've read through "The Road to Ehvenor" (I hope I spelled that right, it's been a while since I've seen it.)

Has anyone read any of his later works?

Yup, consistantly good, as always.. "Not Exactly the Three Musketeers" and "Not Quite Scaramouche" are still in print, I don't know about his other works (I don't think "The Road Home" - the only other one you missed is currently in print, but you can probably pick it up at a used bookstore.)

"Hard wired"?

[Dr. Manhattan]

An older species won't have human versatility in sex: sexual responses will be all hard wired.

Huh? I thought one of the key attributes of intelligence is learning and adaptability, the very opposite of hardwiring. The higher-up you get in intelligence on Earth, the less hard-wiring you see. A foal can walk within minutes of birth; a human baby takes several months minimum.

On the other hand, a human can learn Irish dancing, karate, rock climbing, roller skating, ice skating, and driving. An unusually smart horse might be able to learn one, but an average human, given training, could become competent in all of 'em.

Humans even rewire their brains in fundamental ways. We have deep wiring, apparently, to learn spoken language, but we can train those parts of our brain to read writing, and sign language. Helen Keller learned to communicate by touch. I don't know of any animal besides primates that have learned to communicate in other than their "natural" channels.

Humans show wide varieties of behavior in extremely fundamental bodily functions; bathroom habits differ somewhat (my poor wife learning to use those Eastern toilets...) but our sleeping habits differ more, our eating habits differ substantially, and our sexual habits perhaps most of all.

I don't buy it. An 'older' species, that has had longer to develop, would seem likely to have even more variation in sexual habits and most other areas.

Re:"Hard wired"?

[1u3hr]

Yes, that "hard-wired" stuff makes little sense. Just about every mammalian species ever studied has sexual practises that the Pope would not approve of. Just look at dogs -- dominant males mount (or at least go through the motions) others to show who's boss. Bonobos spend all day screwing anything that they can find, dolphins, too.... Most of these animals could be considered "old species", whatever that means, (I suppose been relatively unchanged for a million or so years).

Niven tried hard to seem hip about sex in some of his stories, but didn't really convince. As he's aged he seems to have been getting more into the dirty-old-man style that Heinlein exemplared, which was worse.

If you want to read some terrific SF featuring future sex (by which I mean not just porn in space), try John Varley's work, especially the collection The Persistence of Vision.

Re:"Hard wired"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to trace a few phylogenetic trees way too far to be happy, but I seem to recall humans as being, on average, a younger species than horse. Or elephant. Or, well, many things.

Don't confuse intelligent capacity with hardwiring. If you believe darwin, we slowly adapt to our environment. The longer we spend in a static environment, the more acclimatized we become. Given that, the statement seems reasonable at face value.

(Where humans differ, vastly, seems to be the ability to distinguish and move away from biological impulse only. If you can succinctly justify this in terms of species age, I'd imagine there are scientists the world over who'd love to hear about it. ;) )

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too right.

Of course, you got modded flamebait for not reading the same material as the slashdot 'editors'... shame on you!

Personally, I think that comment in the story would sound just as pretentious and stupid if it said: "The slashdot 'editors' all know this guy who works at OSDN, so we feel he needs no introduction".

Re:Wisdom vs. Intelligence (OT)

[revery]

Thanks.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, someone modded flamebait simply for not reading the same books as the slashdot crew!

Jesus.

It's HIGH TIME some of these moderators learnt what the fuck flamebait means.

There's not a single sentence of flamebait in isorox's post.

I have no problem with that.

[BerntB]

I have no problem with Forward's books being worth reading -- as I wrote, I happily buy them in hardcover.

But to call Forward a good story teller (as the original comment) is showing a bad grasp of reality. (-: I think the US idiom is "What are you on, what does it cost and where can I buy it?". :-)

(-: And if you're smaller than 100kg muscles, don't call me "high brow lit type", or similar grave insults! Besides, they would be obviously be wrong since I read /. :-)

Re:I have no problem with that.

[spun]

Maybe we have different definitions of 'good storytelling.' For me, a good story is one that has good pacing and dramatic tension. It should pose interesting questions. Some people find Forward dry, because many of the questions his books pose are complex, dry, and scientific. He isn't so concerned about his characters, their motivations, and relationships. Maybe if you explained what you consider 'good storytelling' and why Bob's books fall short of that, I could understand your point of view better.

No, scratch that. Reading what I just wrote, and noting that you still by his books in hardcover, I do think I understand, and even agree to a point. You aren't saying he's a bad writer, just that other writers have a better grasp of the fundamentals of storytelling. Thinking back on the books of his that I have read, I can't remember ever being 'sucked into' one of his stories to the point I couldn't put the book down.

Doh!

[spun]

You are absolutely right. I had just read a comment about Asimov when I wrote that, and my brain slipped a gear...

It's just fanfic

[XNormal]

There's tons of that all over the net. Much of it makes Elf's work seem worthy of a Pulitzer by comparison.

a Small Review of "The Burning City"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Story is set in the same "univers" as "The Magic Goes Away", but much later. Mana has been heavily depleated. The old gods are "turning mythical". Most of the action takes place in what is now Los Angeles, though part of the book uses ( Hwy 5 ?) as
a setting, with a side trip to Carmel. The Le Breya tar pits play a role as does the Los Angeles River.

The story is told from the point of view of Whandall Placehold. When you first meet him, he is a young boy and does not know a lot about the world around him. As he learns, you are introduced to the complex enviroment around him. This enviroment, both cutural, and geographic, is depicted with high resolution. The details become important as the story progresses. This detail also makes the book very vivid. I found a number of easter eggs while reading. At some point I will reread with the goal of finding more. I would not take any name for granted!

If you have read any of the Warlock stuff, you would know that it is fantasy where magic is a force of nature(?) that is explored just like any normal force is explored in Hard SF. This is true Fantasy done SF style. It is also a great "What If ...?" exorcise. As any good piece of liturature, it has something to say about the "human condition" that is relevent to our world today. In history, as in physics, similar initial conditions usally yeild simular results. You will find aspects of our society in this book, that you might have overlooked befor.

Whandall Placehold typifies a set of characteristics that are promoted in this story. He tends to keep his mouth shut, and listens. He is curious and a natural explorer. Facts are not just learned, they are analyzed and placed in the contexted of a larger world view. If something does not work, the whole model is updated. If data is missing, Whandall will try to find it. Even though the boy is a bit impulsive, he generaly thinks befor he acts, the more so as he matures (with some backsliding during his teens). The basic rule: Look, Think, Act.

I found this book to be one of the finest examples of what a story teller can do. Though, I would classify this book as "Liturature" as apposed to "A good story". It also shows the synergy that can be achieved through colaboration. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle out did themselves. Every aspect was masterfully executed. "The Burning City" has an important message, as social comentary. But this message does not get in they way of the story. As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of detail. All of this detail is used in propelling the story. Unlike some Open Source code, there are no variable declared, that are not used! No were does the book bog down. All of this detail is presented in an exciting and well paced maner. At 613 pages, this is a long novel, but thats how long it needs to be to tell the story.

The characters are great. Kids act like kids, teens act like teens, and adults act like whatever their enviroment and inclination molded them to be. But with that, they are all recognizable individuals, no lame stereo types here.

I have one question, Why the strong magical nature of the Redwood forests around Tep Town, when Tep Town itself is running low on mana?

Oh, and I also liked it because, at the end of the story, Whandall is 43, and I just turned 43!

Re:a Small Review of "The Burning City"

[Redflame]

Anonymous Coward wrote: Oh, and I also liked it because, at the end of the story, Whandall is 43, and I just turned 43!

Write to us regarding your review, please.

webmasters@larryniven.org of Known Space http://www.larryniven.org

Wow, beligerent morons!

[Squirrel Killer]

I repeat myself: no matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true. You can rationalize all you like, and say that ideas should be common property, but unless you reject the idea of private ownership wholesale-- some people obviously do-- then ideas are owned just like anything else.

Umm...from the US Copyright Office:

Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed. (My emphasis)

I see you say later that you're not talking about US copyright, but I thought US copyright was more or less synch'ed with the Berne copyright standards. Mind citing your basis that ideas are protected by copyright?

-sk

Re:Wow, beligerent morons!

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Mind citing your basis that ideas are protected by copyright?

I never said that they are or aren't. You're making assumptions about what I'm talking about. Your assumptions, while interesting, are not applicable. Neither I nor Erris made any mention of copyrights or copyright laws.

In short, I think you're kind of missing our respective points.

Re:Wow, beligerent morons!

[Squirrel Killer]

I never said that they are or aren't. You're making assumptions about what I'm talking about. Your assumptions, while interesting, are not applicable. Neither I nor Erris made any mention of copyrights or copyright laws.

What kind of intellectual property protection do you think Erris was talking about?

Niven answered a question about a copyright based cease and desist order with, "'If you want more Known Space stories' was intended as an invitation to daydream, not to violate my copyrights and steal my ideas." Which kinda leaves the impression that Niven has a bad attitude towards fans and their use of his copyrighted material.

To which Erris responded, "No one owns an idea...Your words are yours, a phrase might be a trademark, implementations might be protected, but the rest is fair game.", which is a straight explaination copyright protections and restrictions.

Then you say, "No matter how many times you might repeat ["No one owns an idea."], it still isn't true." and say that you're not talking about copyright. Well, bully for you, because Niven and Erris are talking about copyright. They sure as hell aren't talking about patents (under which an idea might have protection.)

While I'll grant that you didn't say that ideas are protected by copyright, I fail to see how your comment that "'No one owns an idea' is false" (paraphrased) is correct in the realm of copyright. Even if ideas are owned under some other type of protection, what bearing does that have to someone complaining about a copyright holder's over-zelotness?

-sk

Re:Wow, beligerent morons!

[identity0]

Forget it, at this point it's clear that this guy is just trolling. I'd challenge this guy to point to *any* copyright, patent, or trademark office in any country that will let you own an idea(as opposed to complete work, design or logo). If he says he's not talking about those, either - those are the mechanisms by which intellectual property are protected, bud. If not by those methods, then ideas are only "owned" in your dreams.

Re:Who is this guy?

[geekoid]

I don't know why you were modded flamebait, but man, that is one funny line.

Next time somebody askes who larry niven is, I'm going to tell them he is the lead singer of Nivarna.

OTOH there are some people that fans of a genre really should know.
for Sci-fi, Larry Niven is one of them.
For music, its the monkeys.
IF we were talking shaXspear, then for music it would be the beatles.

Colonizing our subconscious.

[Lemmy Caution]

He's inviting us to daydream, but essentially telling us to not document our daydreaming, our share it.

It reminds me of what a German film maker once said, during the 50's - that the Americans were colonizing their subconscious. That's what he wants to do: colonize our subconscious. Establish his tropes and "franchises," and that make sure that we depend only on him for them.

It is an idea that needs to be resisted. The people at Illegal Art have the right idea. It's important to counter the "artist's rights" rhetoric - which is a fair rhetoric insofar as artists do need support, even if the implications of the ownership model are grossly unfair - with the idea that we are all potentially artists, and that, since Homer, we all use reworked and reframed ideas.

Re:Colonizing our subconscious.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's inviting us to daydream, but essentially telling us to not document our daydreaming, our share it.

Don't be daft. He's not telling you you can't document it. He's not telling you you can't share it. What he's saying is, if you plan to publish it (i.e. share it in a non-personal way), he reserves the right to dictate whether or not that's acceptable.

What right do you have to go in and traipse around in the fertile grounds of his imagination without respecting the rights he has due to the creation of his own space? If you want to daydream in a way that's unencumbered of such constraints, don't choose to do it in his world.

A cool idea recorded for your entertainment, or perhaps even shared with a few close friends, is just that. Nobody owns such things, not even yourself, once they're shared. However, a cool idea promoted for hundreds or thousands to see, many of whom you neither know nor intend to, is a statement. And it should be within everyone's rights to ensure that statements they don't believe in or desire to be made not be made with their words, no matter how loosely you choose to interpret "their words".

Re:I beg to differ/me too

[zogger]

--author was clarke,the satellite was telstar. Telstar was also a 60's instrumental song, BTW.

Forgotten question

[Snaller]

More generally--"If you want more Known Space stories" was intended as an invitation to daydream, not to violate my copyrights and steal my ideas.

How do you defend laws that allow copyright of certain words strung together?

Re:Forgotten question

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps because his livelihood depends on "laws that allow copyright of certain words strung together".

You just lost.

[rjh]

Congratulations: you just lost the argument.

The very instant someone appeals to authority or credentials, they've lost the debate. It's an enormous logical fallacy. That you're standing on your credentials is a strong sign you shouldn't be taken seriously. People who are incapable of understanding "don't use logical fallacies" in an argument have absolutely no standing to weigh in with any sort of informed opinion on any scientific debate.

You may have a PhD. That doesn't mean you know the first thing about science.

Re:You just lost.

[DrMorpheus]

BZZZT, no jackass, you lose. His arguement is this:

Please feel free to provide substantive evidence for your two assertions above. Amaze and demystify us all and provide references in peer-reviewed scientific literature, if you can

Now, can you? Didn't think so.

Re:You just lost.

[uncadonna]

On the contrary. While a PhD doesn't prove all that much anymore, it actually does prove that I know "the first thing" about the discipline in question. I passed a comprehensive exam, for instance.

I did not "argue from authority" in the sense of subverting a logical argument. I certainly uttered no fallacy. Here is why I believe my credentials are relevant.

The poster made two statements about a science with which I am familiar. On the grounds of this familiarity, I am confident that neither he nor any reader will find any actual peer-reviewed scientific evidence that supports those statements.

Like any honest thinking person, I welcome serious evidence to correct me if I'm wrong. Saying "you just lost" won't do, though. If you say "science shows thus" you need to be able to back it up.

Re:You just lost.

[guybarr]

The very instant someone appeals to authority or credentials, they've lost the debate. It's an enormous logical fallacy. That you're standing on your credentials is a strong sign you shouldn't be taken seriously.

When in a debate between peers of the same field, you may be correct. But in a hetrogenous group (that is the most polite way to describe a /. discussion) It is practically compulsory.

A person with a PhD in the field knows more than me. period. I'll ask his oppinion way before yours or any other person of less standing in his field . This does not mean I will not doubt what he says; by all means I will use my head, and if it is really important will get a second oppinion. But of an expert. The average /.er does not count.

And if you still disagree, consider wether you would go to an MD or a sweet-talking salesman to get a surgery done.

How much would a one-way mission cost?

[perfessor multigeek]

That's it. The Shrub's defenders keep saying that he's not as dumb as he seems. This is his chance to prove it.
Plant A Bush On Mars Now!
Hell, let's send an entire garden's worth.

Rustin

Flash Crowd and the Slashdot Effect.

[obnoximoron]

I am surprised no one has pointed out yet that the Slashdot Effect was anticipated by Niven long before the Internet came into being. Read Niven's 1973 short story Flash Crowd.

Re:Flash Crowd and the Slashdot Effect.

[freeweed]

No offense, but I'm much happier killing some poor shmuck's website than I am teleporting with 500,000 unwashed geeks :)

Pratchett and O'Brian

[wwi]

Larry Niven reads Pratchett and O'Brian: you should too. Both are excellent writers. Both excellent antidotes to the junk that is filling the world under the name "literature".

Hermaphrodites?

[perfessor multigeek]

Congrats. You win the award for post most likely to utterly perplex and upset Niven should he decide to red the thred.

Interesting point, though.

Rustin

Re:Hermaphrodites?

[dalamcd]

Obviously it was an... extreme example. But there are many others (Tom Bombadil from LotR being a decent one).

And until we can really get some decent way of showing characters' thoughts (Dune's way is bad), there are going to be a lot more movies that get butchered, because too much depends on you knowing what they're thinking.

dalamcd

Re:Hermaphrodites?

[perfessor multigeek]

Oh no, without doubt, you raise a valid point. Personally, my two favorite movies are Blade Runner, which completely warps beyond the book in ways that even the makers probably didn't intend, and Casablanca, where they were making it up as they went along.
As somebody who just had a rehearsal end in the next room two hours ago (actors! what a bunch of wierdos!), I have no doubt that moviemaking is far more unique a medium then we generally give it credit for. Our tendency to speak of movies as if they were made by three or four people and everybody else was an interchangable part just encourages that misunderstanding.

What makes it all even funnier is that authors aren't developing much credibility in understanding how to convert their own work. F. Scott Fitzgerald was eloquent on the subject decades ago and Anne Rice's statements about the disposable dreck made from her stuff show that not much has changed.

My counterexample, however, would be plays. Look at how many crisp, watchable movies have come from simple plays (A Few Good Men). Maybe we just need to get Sorkin to sit down and teach other people how to handle that transition.

Of course, part of the problem for blockbusters is that we're not allowed the leisure to watch the nonverbal stuff and figure it out for ourselves. Of all people, some of the actors from Friends are turning out to be good at that sort of thing . . .when we give them the uninterrupted screen time to do it. Look at Kudrow in The Opposite Of Sex. She does just fine. Look at Anniston do her perplexed-but-maintaining-her-dignity thing.
Reaction shots aren't rocket science, but they do require a slower pacing then we allow these days. They also require audience attention to detail. Watch Temptation of A Monk and you'll see plenty of that sort of thing. Ironically, Chinese cinema, contrary to all of our old stereotypes of "inscrutible Chinese", is making a regular succession of movies that convey detailed thought just fine without dialogue, let alone Dune-style narration.
But then narration takes us back to Blade Runner as another nail in the coffin, so I'll leave it at that.

Rustin

Re:propaganda from Niven et al

[perfessor multigeek]

Where would you place Oath of Fealty?

Re:Asimov

[Grog6]

Asamov is one of those writers who seem to read best in date of publication, rather than series, pe se.
I mean, if you read the major series, "Trilogy" and "Robots" as groups, you'll miss that whole interplay between the series; or will learn things too soon to be surprised by them.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Redflame]

Anonymous Coward said:
>THE MAN burned the library of Alexandria.

Haven't you read any of the Svetz stories, all of which are reprinted in the USA edition of RAINBOW Mars?

THE MAN tried to SAVE the library of Alexandria!

The word you want is "Surreal"

[Grog6]

...It's bad when the Headline News looks like a bad Scf-Fi novel, or possibly another 'Nostradamus' treatment.

Re:Who is this guy?

[oh]

Niven is both a *very* talented writer and an incredible world builder

Niven has some very good talents, and his short stories can be excellent and thought provoking.

I have to say that for novels I think he is better when writing with other people.

Lucifer's Hammer, Footfall, and Hollywood

[freeweed]

A few years back, when previews were showing for Armageddon and Deep Impact, I was anxiously anticipating both movies. Big disaster, and especially end-of-the-world stories have always been my faves. Having read Hammer 4 or 5 times at this point, I was really hoping someone was going to make a semi-adaptation of it (it being one of the greatest books written in the latter half of the 20th century imho).

So, I saw Armageddon first. Almost left the theatre until I realized it's a really funny movie if you imagine Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck as secret lovers.

Then came Deep Impact. Not bad, typical Hollywood overdoing of everything.. hmm, doesn't look like the end of the world's gonna happen... HOLY FUCK THERE'S MICHAEL. Orion (nuke powered ship from one of Niven/Pournelle's early classics) on the big screen (in a movie sorta loosely based on the other of Niven/Pournelle's earlyclassics).

The icing on the cake is when the comet hit the Earth. I'll most likely never see Hammer on the big screen, but considering how bad most SF books are mangled, I look at fondly Deep Impact as a sort of weird love-child from Niven and Pournelle.

Re:Who is this guy?

[1u3hr]

The big question, never satisfactorily answered, is "Who built Ringworld, and why?"

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Philip Jose Farmer imagined the wonderful "Riverworld", but had the same problem, after having his protagonists explore it, they had to find the creators, and that was when it fell flat. Bob Shaw wrote a series about Orbitsville, a complete Dyson shell. Apparently, that was built by a superior race as a playpen to suck humans in so they wouldn't wander around the galaxy making trouble. (A Dyson shell has an area of millions of Earths.) That was fairly believable.

The Forever War

[zabieru]

Actually, Haldeman's The Forever War skewered--or rather respectfully rebutted--Starship Troopers, primarily through Haldeman's Vietnam expoerience of just how pointless war can be.

Tolkein

[zabieru]

Actually, I would like him to lie naked on a bearskin rug. Thank you.

Clarke and Niven

[sbszine]

I have heard that Arthur C. Clarke named him as his favourite author.

I saw an SF documentary which suggested that Clarke and Niven were enemies. According to the doco Clarke is a pacifist and was disgusted with Niven over his participation in the Star Wars SDI project. That was a while ago, so it might all be water under the bridge now. Or Clarke made the comment some time in the seventies...

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the Ringworld books were a part of the Known Space series...

I agree, but

[lingqi]

Obviously you have not been through many wars... I had the unfortunate opportunity of browsing through some books about WW2 era media, and you cannot possibly believe the size and energy of the propaganda machine.

To be honest, it continues to this day - winners write the history books, friend.

Uninformed

[Rob Riggs]

Bullshit! The climate was not 5 degrees higher 1000 years ago.

Slashdot really needs a -1, Uninformed moderation option. (And who the hell moderated the parent Informative?)

Climate through the Ages - The last 1000 Years

Re:Uninformed

[TheCrazyFinn]

http://www.grisda.org/origins/10051.htm

Postulates 2-4 degrees higher (I know I was higballing at 5)

Re:Uninformed

[Rob Riggs]

You are citing a two-decade old paper from a creationist "research center" to support your argument?

Shit... I've been trolled. Mea culpa.

Re:Uninformed

[TheCrazyFinn]

Just citing the first thing that came up on Google

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/iceage_20011207 /
2-4 Degrees Farenheit (More than your source)

http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/library/e ar thmatters/spring2000/pages/page35.html

http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/Weather/PaperPro po salArticles/ThequotLittleIceAgequotof.html

1-2 degrees change

http://www.uah.edu/News/2000news/coralsea.html

says 2-3 degrees.

As I said, I was highballing at 5 degrees.

Re:Uninformed

[uncadonna]

Fortunately, we can still see what you actually said:

Classic example is the 'greenhouse cliff', which ignores the fact that average temperatures on earth were roughly 5 degrees higher 1000 years ago, without a disastrous icecap melt. The iceage cliff in Fallen Angels matches up pretty well with current understanding of how fast iceages begin, and what prevented the 'Little Ice Age' of the last 700 years from becoming a true ice age. Please get a clue before knocking the science in 'Fallen Angels'.

The quoted URLs, not all peer reviewed science either, assert that there was a 'Little Ice Age' causing cold winters in parts of Europe, and possibly elsewhere. I never questioned that assertion, not because it's true and because you never made it.

You have presented evidence that parts of Europe were as much as 4 degrees C (more than 5 F) colder in winter at certain times tha now. Nowhere do you support the idea, in your hastily Googled references, that in the past 1000 years the world, or even any part of it, was 5 degrees warmer than now, but that was what you said.

So, regarding global temperatures being 5 degrees warmer than now in AD 1000, you weren't "highballing", you were at best confused, if that's supposed to be your evidence.

The "evidence" you've shown is totally irrelevant to your assertions. Your frantic efforts to save face are leading you to a classic junk science ploy. Please think twice about what you are doing.

As for the sudden onset of ice ages, (your other claim) Niven and Pournelle rely heavily on this fairly common belief, but it's mythology. It was commonly reported in the media in the 1970s, true. (North America had a bit of a cold snap then.)

As far as I know (and I did look extensively once - I think I may still be quoted in the sci.environment FAQ on this subject) it was a serious speculation in the proto-climatology community in the early years, and it made it onto sensationalist TV and into magazines, but never passed peer review as far as I could tell after a serious search. Ever.

In other words, no, sorry, you still haven't presented the slightest evidence that the two things you claimed have anything to do with what science has to say.

A little humility is not a bad idea in discussing a science which you do not know. Try "I had heard that" or "I was under the impression that", or "I read in the afterword to a light SF novel that"... You might have more of a chance to learn something if you let go of your misplaced confidence. You don't have to defend yourself. You overreached. Let go.

Now take a deep breath, say "oops...", and you'll feel much better. Try to remember there is probably no subject on Earth that someone on Slashdot doesn't know a great deal about, so it doesn't pay to be too brashly confident about third-hand information around these parts.

Re:Uninformed

[Rob Riggs]

You said in your original post that temperatures were 5 degrees higher 1000 years ago. Since you did not further qualify that statement, your sentence implies that you believe temperatures were 5 degrees higher 1000 years ago than they are today.

None of these articles you cite mention what the average global temperature was 1000 years ago.

It sounds like you are changing your argument to fit the facts. That's perfectly fine. I agree that global temperatures fluctuated by a few degrees during the last millenium.

Re:Who is this guy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Niven's background very nearly approaches Asimov's

Hardly! Asimov was an experienced scientist. Niven just has a rich family. Asimov would never have had the earth rotating in the -wrong- direction like Niven did.

He's a good writer. He's not a good scientist. He also hasn't written as much as Asimov either.

"Flight of the Dragonfly "world now 5 novels

[snakelass]

Robert Forward expanded "Flight of the Dragonfly" into a novel "Rocheworld," followed by "Return to Rocheworld," "Ocean Under the Ice," "Marooned on Eden," and "Rescued From Eden." All excellent reads.

Re: not completely true ...

[guybarr]

Pi is a universal number, it contains all the patterns that you want. Moreover God could not change the value of Pi even if He wanted to.

For convex geometries (gaussian curvature >0) the ratio of a circle's area (or circumference) to r^2 is less than Pi. For concave, it is more than Pi.

So i'd humbly suggest that under this definition, gods can change Pi ...

-- with courtesy of the math nit-picking club.

Militarist threads in Heinlein

[billstewart]

Heinlein was Navy, and the only-soldiers-are-citizens kind of militarism is all too common in ex-Navy people I've known. You'll see pro-militarist mindsets all through Heinlein's writings - look at the Roads stories, for instance. He's not universally in favor of the military doing what their told (the soldier who destroys the orbital bombs in (IIRC) Green Hills of Earth, for instance), but the soldiers are always the honorable ones.

Question for Adam Rightmann,,,

[marko123]

Are you the Adam Rightmann of Adequacy.org? If so, what happened to the site? Is it's spirit somewhere else? I miss it... badly.

marko

Send all convicts to Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars will be the new Australia.

I can see the headlines now: 2103 Cricket Interplanitary Cup: Mars Humiliates England

Re:Send all convicts to Mars

[oregonnerd]

Hey, come on, man; didn't you read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? It's supposed to be the Moon...and of course we need an AI networked computer...

SPOILER WARNING

[Saeger]

SPOILER FOLLOWS:

It turns out that the Sun -- shining on the other side of the planet -- didn't go nova afterall, it only burped a nasty flare, but the scientist got some sweet end-of-the-world lov'n in anyway. :)

Truly one of the most memorable episodes in my mind.

--

Danger and adventure?

[alizard]

However, people get caught up in the idea of adventure and danger, which NASA is not do good at providing, nor should it be their job.

How many astronauts raining from the sky in chunks in a 30 year old Shuttle will it take for you to get the point that NASA is providing danger and adventure?

Unnecessarily, unless the money we as taxpayers have spent on NASA and its contractors has been totally wasted and we don't know how to build better, cheaper and safer aerospace vehicles than we did in the 1970s.

We've been putting people into near-Earth orbit for about 40 years. Getting into orbit isn't supposed to be a dangerous adventure anymore any more than a trip around the world by jet is supposed to be.

I'm not interested in getting drama out of NASA. Reliable, inexpensive transportation all over the Solar System and interesting research would suit me fine.

A world without inspiration

[Convergence]

Mickey mouse was raped, So was most of Jazz, so was rock&roll. Come on, you don't SERIOUSLY think that a dozen people all independently came up with the same style of music all at once, did you?

Or, how about the homage that sci-fi must give to HG Wells. Or have is our current sci-fi authordom just a collection of gang-rapists that are screwing the sould of HG Wells?

Almost no creation is completely origional; with sufficient background, you can usually trace where they came from. And, when you start burning books and authors because they were inspired by someone, at what point do you stop? Do stop the second rock&roll, or jazz or rapper artist. Do you stop the second author who writes sci-fi? Do you stop after the first RPG and forever deny all others the same chance to be inspired?

If this is the future you want, go to hell.

Nobody is perfect. Nobody, sometimes especially the origional creator, can lay a claim on having perfect vision. If sharing an alternative viewpoint of a fictional world is rape, then you deserve the dreary world you will get.

Re: Answer 2: Is Science Fiction healthy

[Saeger]

most of what passes for science fiction is really just high-tech fantasy

This is becomes especially true for many people once the factual concept of the technological singularity sinks in. Suddenly the future appears much much closer, more incomprehensible, and far more shocking than most scifi can offer (by definition of Singularity).

--

What are you smoking?

[jotaeleemeese]

Do you want our first representative in another planetto be a convicted criminal threatened by an inhumane and immoral punishment? In a kamikaze mission?

That would say tons about the civilization sending that explorer.

Re:What are you smoking?

[bluGill]

First, I'm assuming there is no intelligent life on mars, at which point it doesn't matter.

Second, I did not mean to suggest that we would force anyone to go, only that we would offer them a chance. They know they are guilty (if innocent they should plan on appeals to prove it - though I'll admit our courts are not perfect) so they face an early death either way. If they want to, we will send them on a one way trip to mars where they can't harm anyone else, and can provide valuable research, otherwise they can die.

I'm not making any comments on the ethics of death penaltys, which is a different debate, I'm saying given that we have the death penetly that would be applied to someone with the right skills to do research on mars, lets offer then a one-way trip instead. Life sentences could count too. (spend the rest of your life behind bars on earth, or have freedom to roam mars)

Re:What are you smoking?

[Tackhead]

> I'm saying given that we have the death penetly that would be applied to someone with the right skills to do research on mars, lets offer then a one-way trip instead. Life sentences could count too. (spend the rest of your life behind bars on earth, or have freedom to roam mars)

All of this is bringing a horrible new meaning to the phrase "I'd kill to be the first guy on Mars!" :-)

Typical US centrism.

[jotaeleemeese]

Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, fell in 1521, 29 years after Columbus first trip.

10 Years later New Spain was a fully stablished colony, with Viceroy, stablished church, etc.

In several places under Spanish dominion Universities were opened and the printing press started to work all this in the 1530s and 1540s.

SO things take time, but not as much as you claim and not in the places where you implied (space exploration is in a completely different ballpark though).

Why should they be enlightened and peaceful?

[jotaeleemeese]

They could be a warrior race living under an absolute dictatorship thirsty for more conquests.

Had Hitler or Stalin prevailed it is not unconceivable that they would have pushed space research much harder in order to make themsleves more popular and to probe that the system they embraced was the right one.

Er....

[jotaeleemeese]

Where do I go and measure those circles of yours?

In the same place where I count using imaginary numbers?

Do you understand the term mathematical aid?

Re:Er....

[guybarr]

Where do I go and measure those circles of yours?

actually, err, our own univrese's inter-galactic space ?

According to GRT, the geometry of space-time is curved. The question of wether our universe is convex of concave was still open, last time I checked (some years ago, granted, so verify it with current research).

In the same place where I count using imaginary numbers?

IMHO, imaginary numbers are "as real" as real numbers ...
I don't find the process of constructing the real numbers (through "completing" the rationals) any less strange or unnatural than constructing the complex field.

So, in which "place" do you "measure" "real" numbers ?

Do you understand the term mathematical aid?

Actually, no. You might have ment to say I need some aid in the maths.
In which case I refer you to detlef laugwitz's book, which indeed aided
me quite a lot. I have many such aids on my shelf.

You might have ment to say I haven't aided the OP too much.
To this I say; On the contrary, if he's smart he'll get curious
and check what I've said out for himself.

S.F. always been such a small slice of the market

[jotaeleemeese]

Does art have to be part of a market as well as anything else?

Can we stop buying and selling at least some things by knee jerk reaction?

Markets this, markets that. Life is not a big bazzar!!!!

Q10 Movies

[shades6666]

It's been a while since I've read the book or seen the movie, but wasn't the movie Deep Impact based on Lucifer's Hammer?

Trade secret, not copyright

[yerricde]

but talks acts like he had some kind of legal right. WTF?

Until the book is published, he does have the right to distribute advance copies to reviewers under condition that they publish no spoilers, not through copyright but through "trade secret" law.

Re:propaganda from Niven et al

[WhiteDragon]

I personally thought Oath of Fealty was a wonderful book. I have been fascinated by arcologies since (yes I admit it) Sim City 2000. It was a great example of sf that doesn't have to have a lot of space travel, futurism, etc. It was a good mix of plausible current/near-future tech and speculation. I also liked the interpersonal and political aspects.

imdb for authors

[WhiteDragon]

I like your idea... of course, amazon.com is not the best source of info. I have been advocating isbn.nu for years for this sort of thing. They're not perfect, but pretty nice. Of course, you could always just look something up in The Library of Congress (Search their catalog Here).

Re:imdb for authors

[Degrees]

Thanks for those links. I did not know about the ISBN one, nor about the search page for the Library of Congress catalog.

Re:S.F. always been such a small slice of the mark

[mink]

Right, because if you think you have gotten a deal from a deveel (especially in the bazzar). First count your fingers, then your arms, then your relatives.