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Larry Niven
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 Larry Niven entered science fiction in 1964, with a new generation of writers including Ursula K.
Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas M. Disch, and Norman Spinrad in the U.S., and
Michael Moorcock, Keith Roberts, and the whole New Wave in the U.K. (which later came to dominate the sf of
the 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic). Of them all, he was the only one whose metier was hard science
fiction, and as such he was a key figure in a generation that tried to declare the end of science fiction and the birth
of speculative fiction, phoenix-like from the ashes of the genre.
Specifically, the advocates of speculative fiction wished to discard both the attitudes and affect of
hard science fiction and to eliminate any necessary connection between the literature and science. Ironically,
Robert A. Heinlein coined the term "speculative fiction" in his World SF Convention speech of 1941, but it
never challenged the dominance of science fiction until the 1960s. During a short but intense time of passion
and literary experimentation, the real action in sf was in opposition to hard science fiction, except for Larry
Niven's work.
His stories of the 1960s and early 1970s were all hard science fiction, with the verve and action
of Heinlein and Herbert combined with the fascination with science-driven plots and settings of Hal Clement.
Most of his early works fit into a future history schema called "Known Space," and are collected in
many volumes of his short stories, most centrally in
Neutron Star (1968), The Shape of
Space (1969), All the Myriad Ways (1971),
Tales of Known Space (1975), The Long ARM of Gil
Hamilton (1976), and in the novels World of
Ptaavs (1966), A Gift from Earth (1968),
Ringworld (1970), Protector (1973). Alone in his generation,
Niven became the great hope of hard science fiction for a decade, the writer whose work was the popular focus
of hard sf devotees until the next generation of hard sf writers such as Gregory Benford emerged in the 1970s.
Because the whole attention of younger readers had shifted in the mid-sixties, Niven's work prevented the
whole New Wave controversy from becoming merely a generational argument, with the sixties children
of Bester and Sturgeon replacing the fifties children of Heinlein and Campbell. And Niven has continued into
the 1990s writing hard sf novels, as well as in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle --
The Mote in God's Eye (1974), Lucifer's Hammer
(1977), Footfall (1985), and others.
"The Hole Man" (1973) explores the idea of a tiny quantum black hole (now a discarded bit of
science but then a theoretical possibility) in a manner paradigmatic of his hard sf method. Niven sets up a
dramatic situation involving characters in conflict and then proceeds to use every event to support rather large
amounts of expository detail describing places, things, gadgets (including the Forward mass detector -- see note),
and other items of speculative science. Niven's own sincere enthusiasm for neat ideas carries the day -- we are
to identify with the anonymous narrator, whose intense intellectual fascination with ideas represents the
attitude of the story. We can even admire, intellectually, the perfect murder. That the basic science of the story is
no longer "real" does not in this case lessen the impact.
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.