N-Space
Space (1990)
N-Space
Criticism (1989)
New Destinies, Playgrounds of the Mind
The Lost Ideas (1991)
Playgrounds of the Mind
Ghetto? But I Thought…(1991)
Playgrounds of the Mind
Adrienne and Irish Coffee (1991)
Playgrounds of the Mind
Trantorcon Report (1991)
Playgrounds of the Mind
Comics (1991)
Playgrounds of the Mind
The Green Lantern Bible Update (1991—for DC Comics)
Playgrounds of the Mind
WORKS WHICH HAVE NOT APPEARED IN A NIVEN COLLECTIVE TO DATE
By Mind Alone (1966)
No Exit (1971)
In the Cellar (1979)
The Wristwatch Plantation (with Sharman Di Vono and Ron Harris)
STORY COLLECTIONS
A1. Neutron Star, Ballantine, April 1968
A2. The Shape of Space, Ballantine, September 1969
A3. All the Myriad Ways, Ballantine, June 1971
A4. The Flight of the Horse, Ballantine, September 1973
A5. A Hole in Space, Ballantine, June 1974
A6. Tales of Known Space, Ballantine, August 1975
A7. The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, Ballantine, February 1976
A8. Niven’s Laws, Owlswick Press, 1984
A9. Limits, Del Rey Books, 1985
A10. The Magic May Return, Ace Books
A11. More Magic, Ace Books
A12. The Time of the Warlock, Steeldragon Press, limited edition
A13. N-Space, Tor Books, 1990
A14. Playgrounds of the Mind, Tor Books, 1991
A15. Bridging the Galaxies, San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Inc.
A16. Crashlander (the Beowulf Shaeffer stories), Del Rey Books, 1994
A17. Flatlander (the Gil “the Arm” Hamilton stories), Del Rey Books, 1995
NOVELS
N1. World of Ptavvs, Ballantine, August 1968; a shorter version, “World of Ptavvs,” appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow, March 1965; Known Space.
N2. A Gift from Earth, Ballantine, September 1968, originally appeared as Slowboat Cargo in Galaxy, February, March, and April 1968; Known Space.
N3. Ringworld, Ballantine, October 1970; original book publication, no serialization; Known Space.
N4. The Flying Sorcerers (w. David Gerrold). Ballantine, August 1971; originally appeared as “The Misspelled Magishun” in Worlds of If, May-July 1970; not part of a series.
N5. Protector, Ballantine, September 1973; the first half of the novel, “Phssthpok,” appeared as “The Adults” in Galaxy, June 1967, Known Space.
N6. The Mote in God’s Eye (w. Jerry Pournelle), Simon and Schuster, October 1974; original book publication, no serialization, not part of a series.
N7. Lucifer’s Hammer, Playboy Press (hardcover), Fawcett Books (paperback)
N8. The Ringworld Engineers, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston (hardcover), Del Rey Books (paperback)
N9. The Patchwork Girl, Ace Books (illustrated trade paperback), 1978
N10. Dream Park (with Steven Barnes), Ace Books
N11. Oath of Fealty (with Jerry Pournelle), Timescape Books (hardcover), Pocket Books (paperback)
N12. The Descent of Anansi (with Steven Barnes), Tor Books, 1982
N13. The Integral Trees, Del Rey Books, 1984
N14. Footfall, Del Rey Books, 1985
N15. The Smoke Ring, Del Rey Books, 1987
N16. The Legacy of Heorot (with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes), Simon & Schuster (hardcover), Pocket Books (paperback)
N17. Dream Park 2: The Barsoom Project (with Steven Barnes), Ace Books, 1989
N18. Achilles’ Choice (with Steven Barnes), Tor Books, 1991
N19. Fallen Angels (with Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn), Baen Books, 1991
N20. The California Voodoo Game (with Steven Barnes), Del Rey Books, 1992
N21. Ganthet’s Tale (graphic novel with John Byrne), DC Comics
N22. The Gripping Hand (with Jerry Pournelle), Pocket Books, 1992
N23. Beowulf’s Children (with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes), Tor Books, 1995 (British title: The Dragons of Heorot)
N24. The Ringworld Throne, Del Rey Books, 1996
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Coldest Place,” copyright © 1964 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Worlds of If, December 1964.
“Becalmed in Hell,” copyright © 1965 by Mercury Press, Inc., for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1965.
“Wait It Out,” copyright © 1968 for Futures Unbounded
“Eye of an Octopus,” copyright © 1966 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Magazine, February 1966.
“How the Heroes Die,” copyright © 1966 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Magazine, October 1966.
“The Jigsaw Man,” copyright © 1967 by Harlan Ellison for Dangerous Visions.
“At the Bottom of a Hole,” copyright © 1966 by the Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Magazine, December 1966.
“Intent to Deceive,” copyright © 1968 as “The Deceivers” by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Magazine, April 1968.
“Cloak of Anarchy,” copyright © 1972 by The Condé Nast Publications, Inc., for Analog, March 1972.
“The Warriors,” copyright © 1966 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Worlds of If, February 1966.
“There Is a Tide,” copyright © 1968 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation for Galaxy Magazine, July 1968.
“Safe at Any Speed,” copyright © 1967 by Mercury Press, Inc., for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1967.
“Madness Has Its Place,” copyright © Larry Niven, August 1990.
About the Author
LARRY NIVEN was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, California. In 1956, he entered the California Institute of Technology, only to flunk out a year and a half later after discovering a bookstore jammed with used science-fiction magazines. He graduated with a B.A. in mathematics (minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Kansas, in 1962, and completed one year of graduate work before he dropped out to write. His first published story, “The Coldest Place,” appeared in the December 1964 issue of Worlds of If. He won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1966 for “Neutron Star,” and in 1974 for “The Hole Man.” The 1975 Hugo Award for Best Novelette was given to The Borderland of Sol. His novel Ringworld won the 1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1972 Ditmar, an Australian award for Best International Science Fiction.
THE COLOR OF SUNFIRE
My contract with the Pleione ended on Silvereyes.
Silvereyes was Earthlike, blue-on-blue under shredded white cloud. Earthlike, except for the sunflower fields. Every world, even every habitable world, has its own strange signature. The atmospheric bands and prolate shape of Jinx, the freeway lines girding Earth, the cue-ball white of Mount Lookitthat, and now, finally, the silver sunflower fields of Silvereyes, Beta Hydri I.
There were five such fields spaced around the planet. Five oval fields of sunflowers, each the approximate size of, say, Mongolia or Iran. If you caught the planet just right, with two of the fields showing in daylight, they looked like gleaming silver eyes peering into space. Clouds couldn’t block that glare, could barely dim it. The eyes peered blindly up to watch us land.
Earth, Jinx, Wunderland, We Made It—for three years I had lived with the Pleione, hauling goods among the home worlds. Each time we went up we were richer. My contract was up, my money was banked, and I was down for good. I would be a landowner on Silvereyes, at least long enough to know whether I liked it.
The spaceport was at the edge of one of the huge sun-flower fields. From the fence to the horizon the sunflowers grew, thick, knotted grey stalks two feet high, topped each by a rippling blossom with a silver mirror surface. Each towel-sized mirror blossom was turned toward the late afternoon sun, and each
was curved into a paraboloid of rotation, its focus on a black photosynthetic knot protruding from the blossom.
Nothing lived in that field besides sunflowers. Any trespassing plant or animal would have been blasted for fertilizer, blasted to ash in the blinding focus of rippling solar mirrors.
I gawked at the sunflowers for awhile, thinking philosophical thoughts. Then, carrying my luck-gift, I walked to a transfer booth. I dropped a coin in the slot and dialed at random.
Tomorrow I would look for property to buy. Tonight I would celebrate.
Luck brought me out in a private residence somewhere in the world. A stick-thin householder unfolded himself from his masseur chair to stare inquiringly at me. I called, “What town is this?”
“Bradbury’s Landing,” said the worthy. “Do I know you?”
“Doubtful.” I opened the door to place my luck-gift in a shelf outside the booth. It was a copy of a Hrodenu touch-sculpture, lacking something of the original no doubt, but a good piece, and expensive. “A luck-gift for the first silverman I was to meet. If you’ll name me the best bar in town, I’ll not disturb you further.”
“Try Grushenko’s,” he said immediately. “But let me offer you a drink first. My name is Mann.”
I would have refused. To take something in return might spoil the luck. But now I had a better look at him, and I knew he wasn’t a silverman after all.
He was a Wunderlander. The asymmetric beard made it certain, though his attenuated seven foot frame showed his low gravity origin. He had the dignity to go with the beard, the straight posture, the unconscious air of nobility. A wonder it had lasted, for he must be desperately poor.
And poor men don’t leave their own worlds. They can’t afford to. Curious…
“Taken,” I said. “And I’ll trade you tales.”
“A good custom,” said Mann. “I followed it at one time.” He dipped into a cupboard and brought out a bottle. “I’d offer you your choice, but there is only vodka. It’s good in droobleberry juice, or chilled and tossed back over the palate.”
“Chilled then. I plan to be drunk before the night ends. Is it night here?”
“Barely.” He seemed startled. “What did you do, dial at random?”
“Yes.”
He laughed. He pulled out a worn low-temp container, opened it and dipped the bottle. The liquid inside boiled and smoked. Liquid nitrogen. He held the bottle until water started to freeze out of the vodka, then poured. He bowed as he handed me the drink.
I bowed and handed him the touch-sculpture copy, though the luck had gone out of the gesture. A pity I hadn’t met a silverman.
“Call me Richard,” he said. “Richard Harvey Schultz-Mann. And who shall tell his tale first?”
“Yourself,” I said. I’d chosen my own tale, of a bandersnatch hunt near the Jinxian shoreline, and of the telepathic woman who needed a bandersnatch skeleton to complete her collection. But she kept fainting, with no apparent medical cause. She was an experienced huntress. Though she knew about bandersnatchi, her habit was to read the mind of her prey. Sensory deprivation kept putting her to sleep…
But what of his tale? He must be churchrat poor. I was not judging only by his small apartment nor by his aged clothing. He himself was aged. Half his beard and most of his hair were white. His withered skin look like he’d slept in it. A man who doesn’t buy boosterspice is a man on the edge of starvation.
Richard Harvey Schultz-Mann tossed a jigger of vodka back over his palate. “Would you believe that I once had it in my power to blackmail the entire puppeteer species?”
“Certainly,” I said. “You’re my host.”
“Meaning I could tell you anything at all.” He laughed. “But this is true. Once I knew the location of the puppeteer home world. You may remember that that was the species’ most closely guarded secret, before their exodus.”
“I remember. They pulled up stakes about forty years ago.” My family had gone broke in the crash. Half the interworld businesses in known space had folded for lack of the puppeteers. One day their commercial empire had offices on every known habitable world. The next, they were gone, their commitments paid off in cash.
Rumors were rife. The most consistent was that the galactic core had exploded in a chain reaction of novae, and the puppeteers had found out about it. The radiation wave wouldn’t be reaching known space for another twenty thousand years, which you’d say is a good long time. But the puppeteers were cowards. They had left, in the fastest species migration on record.
Luckily I’d already earned my spaceman’s papers. With no money left, I’d have had to drop out of grad school.
A thought hit me. “Is that how you lost your money? In the puppeteer crash?”
He looked at me from under shaggy white brows. His eyes were black and deep. “Yes and no. I wasn’t in the stock market. I was tracing relics of tnuctipun biological engineering, flying my ship on a government grant. I set my ship down on a world orbiting Mira Ceti, and there I met a Jinxian.”
“You were tracing what?”
“Old plants, genetically tailored by the tnuctipun, left behind when the tnuctipun were wiped out. They’ve been mutating for more than a billion years. I was tracing stage trees, but those sunflowers outside are more of the same.”
“Oh, really?”
“The Slavers used them for defense, surrounding their plantations with sunflower borders. The tnuctipun used them to attack the plantations. Afterward, the sunflowers throve. A built-in heat beam is more effective against predators than mere thorns.
“Then there are the air plants. Another tailored plant, once used to replace air on Slaver ships. Later they learned to hold their air in bubbles. Now they cover dozens of known asteroid belts. But I digress,” said Mann.
I assured him I’d been fascinated. He smiled and refilled our glasses. I was sipping at my own vodka, for it was stinging cold. I’d have choked myself if I’d tried to drink it like he did.
“The Jinxian,” he said, “had found the puppeteer system. He was making pirate raids on them. Idiot. He’d have been rich beyond dreams if he’d simply blackmailed them. They’re cowards, the puppeteers. They were afraid that if men knew where their world was, someday they might try to rob them. Like the Jinxian, raiding their ships, or worse. An armed invasion, a hundred years from now, or a thousand, or ten thousand. You see?”
“Yah. He told you where their world was?”
“As he was dying,” said Rich Mann. “Twenty-three point six, seventy point one, six point nil. That was what he said.”
“Just one world, I assume.”
“Of course. Not one puppeteer in a million would be brave enough or insane enough to trust itself in a fragile spacecraft. Each of their representatives to other worlds was more or less insane. How could they colonize other worlds? By sending maniacs?”
“I used to wonder why nobody ever found that world. It must be somewhere in known space, or not far outside. People must have looked. Newsmen, fortune hunters, hobbyists. Spacemen aren’t known for a repressed curiosity.”
“They didn’t know what they were looking for.” Mann lay back in a fading masseur chair whose machinery had long ceased working. Once I would have commented on the odd contours of his beard, covering his right cheek entirely, sprouting in a single waxed spike at the left point of his chin, shaved off entirely below the part in his hair. But I’d seen too many odd customs on too many odd worlds. I’d even found people to comment on my own customs, and to laugh at them.
“I found out,” he said. “That was my mistake. I should have gone straight back to civilization, looked up the puppeteer embassy and made a deal. Memory erasure of those coordinates, for a fee of a hundred million stars. Right then, no hesitation. They’d have jumped at the chance.
“But I had to see for myself. What was it you said about spacemen and curiosity?
“I took my ship, my borrowed ship that was owned by the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx, and I went to twenty-three point
six, seventy point one, six point nil. And what I found was a big, fat, fuzzy red giant. Talk about the purloined letter! Men must have been watching that star with telescopes before ever they flew.”
“Naturally I believe you,” I said. “Every word, immediately. But I seem to remember that the puppeteers walked in Earth’s gravity, breathed terrestrial air, and never wore protective clothing against the ultraviolet waves in sunlight.” Mann was grinning like he had my wallet. “All right, I know I’m off the track, but how? The puppeteers must have come from a nearly Earthlike world under a nearly GO sun.”
“That’s where everyone else went off the track, too. They were all searching around G- and F-class sun. Funny thing is, that fat red giant probably was a yellow dwarf a million or two years ago.”
“But—”
“How about Procyon? We Made It has a population near a billion, yet everyone knows it’ll start expanding in half a million years. We’ll be gone long before then, of course. The Core explosion.
“I see why you’re confused, of course. I saw that red giant, and I decided the Jinxian had lied to me after all. I searched what should have been the habitable temperature bands. I found rocks up to the size of Ceres, no bigger. I’d been assuming a transparent, Earthlike atmosphere. Now I searched further and further out, assuming denser atmosphere, more greenhouse effect. I searched out to two billion miles from the primary. Nothing. The Jinxian had lied.”
Mann got up to refill our glasses. I said. “If that’s your story, I’m going to brain you with a Hrodenu.”
“It almost was the end. I was a week toward Silvereyes before I turned back.
“I’d been thinking. The puppeteers were used to G-type sunlight. If their world was actually circling a red giant sun, they must be using supplementary ultraviolet. That would release more heat on their world. Plants would need it too. More heat, higher temperatures. They’d be further out.”
“You could carry that on forever,” I speculated. “Assume more and more power per individual, more and more individuals. Any flatlander uses more power in a day than a citizen of Russia, at its peak of power, used in a lifetime. Seawater distilleries alone…”