Starship Asterisk*

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:42 pm

HellCat wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:26 pm

Well. I didn't read on after that. And I decided never to read a book by Larry Niven again.
Ann

Thank you for this summary Ann!
Now I have no regrets for ever reading this, or Niven.
I once thought Heinlein brilliant, but his mysogyny creates quite the bitter aftertaste.
:clap:
Steve

A shame. Both Heinlein and Niven are great writers with some great ideas and inventive technology. I hope the planned series based on Ringworld actually happens and ends up being well done: I'm looking forward to seeing it! You both might even be tempted if the prediction in this statement turns out to be true:

https://www.wired.com/2022/03/geeks-guide-ringworld-tv/ wrote:Ringworld is currently being adapted for television by Akiva Goldsman, with Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor slated to direct the pilot. Science fiction author Mercurio D. Rivera thinks that Ringworld could make a great show, provided certain changes are made to the source material. “I could see this being turned into something really fantastic,” he says. “Because there’s no way they’re going to include some of the things that bothered us in the TV series—about the way that the female characters are treated. That’ll be fixed. And the setting will be phenomenal. They just need to come up with a better plot.”

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:50 pm

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:42 pm

HellCat wrote: ↑Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:26 pm

Thank you for this summary Ann!
Now I have no regrets for ever reading this, or Niven.
I once thought Heinlein brilliant, but his mysogyny creates quite the bitter aftertaste.

Steve

A shame. Both Heinlein and Niven are great writers with some great ideas and inventive technology. I hope the planned series based on Ringworld actually happens and ends up being well done: I'm looking forward to seeing it! You both might even be tempted if the prediction in this statement turns out to be true:

https://www.wired.com/2022/03/geeks-guide-ringworld-tv/ wrote:Ringworld is currently being adapted for television by Akiva Goldsman, with Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor slated to direct the pilot. Science fiction author Mercurio D. Rivera thinks that Ringworld could make a great show, provided certain changes are made to the source material. “I could see this being turned into something really fantastic,” he says. “Because there’s no way they’re going to include some of the things that bothered us in the TV series—about the way that the female characters are treated. That’ll be fixed. And the setting will be phenomenal. They just need to come up with a better plot.”

Both are/were very creative writers, and both are rather screwed up in terms of their social and political values. So you have to balance those. Niven in particular is a master of creating "hard" scifi. He essentially proposes some law of physics, and then follows that to the cool technology it enables. None of the science conclusively violates known physics, and all of it is internally consistent. (Even his stories about magic.) That's quite fun for those of us who are scientifically inclined.