Product Description

1974 story collection from Larry Niven. 1975 Locus Poll Award, Best Single Author Collection (Place: 2). Collects nine stories and one essay, including: Rammer, The Alibi Machine, The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club, A Kind of Murder, All the Bridges Rusting, There Is a Tide, Bigger Than Worlds (essay), $16,940.00, The Hole Man (winner, 1975 Hugo Award; 1975 Locus Poll Award, Best Short Story (Place: 2)), The Fourth Profession (nominated, 1972 Hugo Award).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1369471 in Books
• Published on: 1974-06-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 196 pages

Customer Reviews

Niven's hard science has the right stuff
Larry Niven is at the top of his form in this collection of short stories, most of which take place in the futuristic realm of his "Known Space" series. Hard science is probably Niven's biggest strength, and his most effective strategy involves assuming some distinct technological breakthrough, then working out all the physical limitations and social ramifications that said breakthrough implies. For example in "Rammer," the design of the ramjet is interesting, but the clever way it's used to escape a global tyranny is even more fascinating. Still more attractive is the idea of the "displacement booths" which allow instant transportation from one booth to another. Niven discusses the exciting possibilities of this technology, particularly its application to criminal activities ("The Alibi Machine", "A Kind of Murder", and the Runyan-esque "The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club"), but also in reference to an otherwise impossible space rescue in "All the Bridges Rusting". "There Is a Tide" features space traveler Louis Wu and an unusual death trap; "The Hole Man" shows two scientists in conflict over the possibility of a quantum black hole, until one of them decides to end the argument once and for all, and "The Fourth Profession" is a memorable tale of a bartender who takes some alien learning pills. Since each story has a solution based on technical data described in the exposition, the reader can try to match wits with the hero, just as in mystery yarns, but be forewarned - Niven has obviously thought long and hard about the various possibilities, while the reader probably hasn't. Meanwhile, there are some fairly good characters, too; the stubborn ramjet pilot, the jaunty criminals, and the concerned bartender all find themselves put upon by society, but they all find their own ways to get what they feel they deserve. "Bigger Than Worlds" is Niven stripped down to the essentials - no characters, no plot, just a fascinating speculative essay describing various types of "super-planetary" artifacts that (human) beings might just possibly live on someday. Niven isn't shy about his background in mathematics, and much of the book deals with physics and/or astronomy, so readers who are math-phobic probably won't find this book as entertaining as some of his more fantastic speculations, but fans of hard science fiction will definitely want to check this one out.

Good, if slightly dated, sci-fi
Larry Niven is one of the great sci-fi writers of the 20th century-- and his name is rightly placed alongside Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, etc.

This particular book, _A Hole in Space_, is a collection of short stories. Many of the stories in this collection are focused on a speculative development known as "displacement" technology-- that is to say, teleportation. As always with Niven, there are three primary concerns: (1) what could this or that technology be used for, (2) what would be its practical limitations, and (3)how might society respond to such a development and how would it change society. Thus, you have stories like "The Alibi Machine", "A Kind of Murder" and "The Permanent Floating Riot Club", all of which involve matters of crime and law enforcement in a world where in-home instantaneous teleportion is available.

Not all of the stories here, are about teleportation technology. My personal favorite, "The Rammer" speculates on what might happen if a person, long frozen in cryogenic suspension, were actually to be revived in some distant future and to find that it was not what he expected or hoped. It also addresses how he intends to use a particular kind of space flight technology called a ramjet to escape this dystopia. Another, "The Fourth Profession" envisions what might happen if it ever became possible to acquire knowledge through the use of pills/drugs that had been coded in a particular way. In it, an ordinary bartender takes four pills (from an alien merchant) that give him knowledge of four unusual professions.

As with any collection of short stories, there are some great ones here, some OK ones, and a few duds. Personally, I think the rescue story "All the Bridges Rusting" is rather dull, while Niven's non-fiction essay on possible superstructural astroengineering (Dyson spheres, ringworlds, disk worlds, etc.)is just that.... an essay listing some things that might conceivably be done.

And, as always with Niven, the stories really seem to be oriented around scientific puzzle solving. How does a futuristic society where privacy no longer is valued find people who might be able to stand being alone on an interstellar starship for 30 years? How to solve a crime when everyone can make a perfect alibi? How to rescue a ship moving at light speed far outside of the solar system? How to discover what powers an alien communications generator on Mars? How to Pretty much every story in here focuses on questions like that-- to some degree or another.

As you may gather from what I've said here about 'problem-solving' and speculative scientific developments, Niven's fiction tends to be oriented around *ideas* and their implications, rather than around characters and their relationships. Some writers explore the complexities of human feelings and motivations-- not Niven, he explores ideas. And, in fact, this emphasis on speculative ideas and scientific problem solving extends even to the point where plot and story seem secondary to it. The real action here is not so much what characters do, but what they figure out and how they they figure it out. Thus, the real climax of the story "There is a Tide" ends up being not some great showdown with the deceptive alien the protogonist just met-- but rather, his figuring out why the oceans (seemingly) moonless plant experience tides.

One criticism that can be leveled against this is that, as a result, Niven's characters tend to be cookie-cutter throwaways... more or less similar in personality, behaviour, attitude, etc. On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that Niven's characters don't *need* to be anything more than that since he's really writing about ideas rather than character in the first place.

One other criticism that I think can be leveled against this book (as well as against other Niven books_ is the degree to which *some* parts of it seem a bit "dated" just three decades later. And by "dated" I don't mean references to 8-track tapes or anything like that... but rather, with 3 decades having gone by since some of these were written, some of the 'speculative scientific ideas' he proposes seem a bit harder to swallow. Also, there are many ways in which our society is already changing that Niven doesn't seem to have anticipated-- take smoking and drinking for instance. His characters usually smoke like chimneys (even aboard spaceships where air is scarce)and drink like fish-- but Niven never seems to have imagined that these sorts of things would be come public health issues. I bring this up not to fault Niven for not having foreseen everything (after all, he's just a writer-- not a prophet), but rather just to illustrate that that there are some features of his fiction that are starting to show their age. Still, that's no reason not to enjoy 'em.

Unpolished semi-precious stones in a stone heap
I've read 11 of Larry Niven's SF books but this collection of short stories falls far short of his usual standard. If anything, the collection feel amateurish. Only two of the nine stories held any sort of captivation for me: Hole Man and Fourth Profession. However, even these semi-precious stones in a tub of ugly stones were tarished with underdevelopment. Granted, short stories are supposed to be short, but these stories didn't have a sheen finish. There are better collections of SF than this... take, for example, Neutron Star, also by Larry Niven.