I do not see where y’all are getting a pro-eugenics message from
Jigsaw Man; I always read it as a cautionary tale. It’s basically what the US is doing now, but with slavery. ten years ago, coming into the US illegally was a misdemeanor that got you arrested and dumped back in the home country,
His best works were in partnership with Jerry Pournell, whose politics were slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. If you were not of age during the Cold War, when nuclear war with the USSR was on the table you may not appreciate their appeal after a decade of New Wave jokers in sci-fi.
I found the Motie books more interesting after reading Pournell’s CoDominion and Mercenary Prince books. Like you knew there was a ton of backstory that was just left unexplained. Who the hell are the Blaine’s and what is up with Brenda Cooper’s farm.
I think Card was a bigger disappointment. You read the way he encouraged listening to and seeking understanding with people who are different through the themes of his books, is so at odds with the person he is publicly.
The longtime rumor about Card is that his church (he's Mormon) sat on him, HARD, for a period of a few years that included the death of his kid (so he was particularly vulnerable). He's a shithead but there also seems to be spiritual abuse as part of the story.
Right, and I'm only acknowledging that it is in line with a slew of other rumors that the LDS has done a poor job of dispelling, if they've tried at all.
Indeed! It's like a brilliant environmentalist metaphor about the rapacity of consumerism and how senseless environmental destruction literally takes the magic out of the world, from a guy who *checks notes* hates environmentalists.
I unironically love The Mote in God’s Eye and whenever I reread it I need to will myself to believe that the authors are somehow not the people they have loudly proclaimed themselves to be
It's a long time since I read it, but isn't the whole plot that there are these aliens formerly out there but now they're coming in and they breed super fast so they'll inevitably destroy humanity and then collapse?
The "Motie" aliens must breed or die, sex change after they breed, are very smart/handy with tech. Have gone through many cycles of growth/collapse. They're cut off from FTL travel due to location, but a nearby star is evolving off the main sequence and will allow them to escape for (scifi reasons).
(Spoilers) And the projection in the books is they'd rapidly expand beyond human space, w/ competition for resources eventually pushing them into human space and committing xenocide. So a solution has to be found.
I tried to re-read "Lucifer's Hammer" and I just couldn't. There was no secret what that cohort of SFF writers was about, because they put it on the page.
I still miss his Smoke Ring novels, which I threw away when I learned about the racism pervading Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall. Yet another writer who rendered himself irrelevant and unreadable through hate.
Immigration enforcement ( precursor to ICE) under Reagan was just as bad. They were routinely trying to arrest people in churches without even the pretext of terrorism. They just didn’t like brown people. I refer you to Cheech Marin’s Born in East LA
Yeah, that crop of Manly! scifi authors was a nest of crypto-(and not so crypto-)fascists.
Some of Niven's stuff is good, if you don't read for content; I spent a lot of my younger years reading so-called Hard SF before I noticed the hideous bigotry and flirting with fascism that it was soaking in
Back in the old days, I'd read Pournelle's column in Byte and think "Who could possibly work with this asshole?" and well, now I know. Apparently Jerry was the 'normal' one. O_o
Niven has been on my shit list since before I started giving out books, and as a result I will never give away a Niven or Pournelle book. Not as long as Niven is alive, anyway
Rather earlier in the cycle, there's a short story (I forget the title) where criminals are routinely sentenced to death and organ harvesting, and it's so popular they keep extending it to lesser and lesser crimes.
The protagonist is sentenced to death for running a red light.
Love a lot of his work, but I avoid everything he writes to close to home. Ringworld is fun, also when he writes about the post-apocalypse it's brave White Ranchers and JPL Engineer killing the brown hordes of LA
The tearful apologizing by the naïve hippies in the face of having the power from a nuclear reactor cut off, so their electric guitars no longer work, was so stupid and grating even at the time
The sloppy “Give my children the lightning!” speech/Deus ex machina that becomes the motivating factor for the nerve-gassing nerd warriors is particularly insipid
Walking Dead is so much more human in its envisioning of how people act after a societal collapse
Honestly, there’s some weird shit in those books, I am the least surprised person in the world learning Eddings was a creep. And his books are also just very badly written.
Nothing ever good comes from looking up the people involved in the media you like. You'll only ever feel guilty and have to like fewer things. No benefit.
Asimov could grope unwilling women in his sleep from two buildings away. They should've made him wear catcher's mitts with his arms glued to his sides whenever he went to fan conventions.
My initial reaction to this video was “man, how much coke could Harlan afford in those days” but per this 1996 interview that’s just his natural state.
In Larry Niven's most famous book Ringworld, he wrote in not one but two different species that deliberately bred intelligence out of all females so they could be mindless sex and reproduction drones
Can't be Pak. I don't remember any specific discussion of women being exposed to Tree-of-Life and on a quick reread there's no mention in the last chapter of Protector, where it would have been necessary.
Ugh. Had a comment here that got deleted when I went to double check book titles. 1/11?
Minor Spoilers: I don't think you read the series ( obviously Ringworld and Protector) . There are 3more Ringworld books and the 4th book of "fleet of world" series about Puppeteer history is sequel to both.
I read the Ringworld sequel (engineers?) and I think I started but didn’t finish the one after that. My headcanon is that everything after the first two is of insufficient quality to care.
I'm not going to pretend that I've read all of his stuff, but I'm rereading Ringworld right now and I didn't get the impression that Kzin and Puppeteer females were *deliberately* bred to be non-sapient; it seemed to just be how they evolved. Maybe a later book says it was deliberate?
Here's my point: even if it's not "deliberate" by the species in the text, Niven still made a point to write in his book about multiple species with mindless sex drone females, WTF
And you would notice that it isn't the males that get that treatment, even though they usually do when this kind of reproduction strategy happens in nature.
In ‘Ringworld Engineers’ the Kzin character confirms that his homeworld’s females have indeed had sapience bred out of them because the Kzin of the Ringworld have NOT done that.
(The Kzin concludes that having a lover one can talk to is hot, so there’s that.)
I remember that one! As with many of Niven's lesser efforts, it falls apart on the premise level and isn't saved by technique of execution, which can sometimes save a weak premise if it's good enough.
He also does this thing where his personal opinion is treated as an obvious ground fact, like his thing about how many-worlds theory being true would result in mass suicides because your life is meaningless if your actions are undone by another you
Well fuck. I was a huge huge fan of hers, though I always thought Heritage of Hastur had some very unsettling ideas on gay men, sexual abuse and pedophilia. It makes sense now but damn.
Almost wish I'd just taken your advice and stayed uninformed.
That sounds a lot like something his pal Jerry Pournelle would say out loud. Kind of glad I had moved on to other writers. Add him to the list of disappointed with public figures.
Yeah, that would be the comment that has led @kithrup.bsky.social to say he will never spend a dime on that man’s books. (I didn’t hear about it until after I met him at BayCon last year. He is also somewhat of a curmudgeon, it turns out.)
Wow the rest of it sounds arguably MORE bonkers. There are people that will tell you that the Niven plan is already happening and I know black people who definitely suspect organ harvesting
He wrote a short story for danger Visions about a future, where people were given the death penalty for parking violations so that you could harvest their organs. It was meant to be a cautionary tale. I know he has tendinitis in his hands and carpal tunnel. Did Pain drive him mad? Is he just a dick?
That was 'The Jigsaw Man', written for Harlan Ellison's notorious 'Dangerous Visions' anthology. When I first read it some 40-odd years ago, I thought it was a cautionary tale, not a manifesto.
I think some of the worldbuilding in it was absolutely brilliant and I still think about it a lot. Loved it as a teenager. Not sure I could enjoy it again now.
I was madly into Larry Niven from about 1976 to 1980. And then I read the sequels by his protégé in the 2000s. I make no excuses for liking him. But I am aware now of what he is.
Consider when these stories were written; transplant technology was still relatively new and seemed magical, and the utterly befuddling complexities of immunology and rejection were not yet obvious, so there was this sense of infinite potential.
Organ harvesting is pretty much max evil. However since you ask, I'm wondering if Sinophobia might play a part, backpackers cautionary tales and so forth
According to Harlan, Everyone was a hack plagiarizing his works, and Gene Roddenberry can go fuck off for messing with his script for City on the Edge of Forever
Ellison's oh-so-edgy sour cynicism was not right for the series, with drug-dealing and military-style execution. Rewrites by Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon improved the story, and after a lifetime of kvetching by Ellison he published his version so we can compare them.
Comments
Jigsaw Man; I always read it as a cautionary tale. It’s basically what the US is doing now, but with slavery. ten years ago, coming into the US illegally was a misdemeanor that got you arrested and dumped back in the home country,
Motie Books are oddly dull dreck
The characters are flat AF.
No psych insight will never survive adaptation.
Known Space could be new Star trek. Incredible world building, species, characters.
I came of age during the Cold war,don't see the appeal of motie crap
But I was Go smacked that Earth was part of a military dictatorship, Martial culture.
Seems like a massive fact to gloss over.
Since Barnes' politics are so directly in opposition to the evils that Niven and Pournelle endorsed.
https://bsky.app/profile/utumno4.bsky.social/post/3lkzawdcqk22v
...by LAPIS LAZULI.
Now I just have to learn Mons was a bad dude too.
A disk that's whole point is to consume the mana that makes magic. It doesn't do anything useful, just consumes it leaving a wasteland.
People are complicated I guess. 😕
Thing is, it's so obvious now but then, as a sci-fi obsessed teen, it never occurred to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hb2EItHEH4
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2008/2/29/2008march-science-fiction-mavens-offer-far-out-homeland-security-advice
Some of Niven's stuff is good, if you don't read for content; I spent a lot of my younger years reading so-called Hard SF before I noticed the hideous bigotry and flirting with fascism that it was soaking in
The protagonist is sentenced to death for running a red light.
(Seriously his great-grandpa was Edward L. Doheny, the first guy to get rich off Oil in LA, got involved in Mexico and the Teapot Dome Scandal)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer
Just dipshit nerd masturbating by the end, really
Walking Dead is so much more human in its envisioning of how people act after a societal collapse
...
Google it...
...
"Oh my fucking god!!"
Relatedly this talk show with him, Harlan Ellison, and Isaac Asimov is a real study in contrasts. https://youtu.be/RZvcKB9vQO0?si=uc7DMeLTQGnhXVeJ
( I'm wondering too. Pak? Puppeteer infested? )
Minor Spoilers: I don't think you read the series ( obviously Ringworld and Protector) . There are 3more Ringworld books and the 4th book of "fleet of world" series about Puppeteer history is sequel to both.
I think the series is overall excellent but Niven fails almost every time a character is female and powerful, even when gender is irrelevant.
1s minor spoiler: Yes, there are Pak Protector females.
(The Kzin concludes that having a lover one can talk to is hot, so there’s that.)
Technically pak ( but pak breeding males are equally dim )
The Ringworld corrects the mistake in man - kzin wars.
( Making all Ringworld kzin sentient)
Niven Has a habit of writing something shitty and retoning it later book
like, that ain't you bro! it don't affect you!
Almost wish I'd just taken your advice and stayed uninformed.
Actually, maybe they are his autobiographical inserts?
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2008/2/29/2008march-science-fiction-mavens-offer-far-out-homeland-security-advice
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart
Especially considering his own politics
Consider when these stories were written; transplant technology was still relatively new and seemed magical, and the utterly befuddling complexities of immunology and rejection were not yet obvious, so there was this sense of infinite potential.
Eight centuries later, Louis Wu is over 200 years old, thanks to boosterspice.
It’s an immortality thing. He’s as terrified of death as any lifelong atheist.
A week later the prof contacted me to say Harlan would really like it if I didn’t do that