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threemonkeys...I did it again. I bought and read another Larry Niven book. Before ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thoatherder comes around and whacks me for gross stupidity, let me justify myself. Way back in the dark and distant reaches of the past when I was a teenager, one of the very first books I bought with my own money was Neutron Star, a collection of Niven short stories. Back then his work just blew me away. He wrote stories based around great seemingly original ideas and he wrote about the most alien of aliens. They sparkled and for a while he was the brightest star in the sf universe. Since then he has become sloppy and lazy and spent way too much time with Jerry Pournelle. But back then he was the best. His best known works are set in his "known space" universe but he has used other settings too. One which he has kept coming back to is The Draco Tavern and that is the title of the book I just read. It is a collection of all the Draco tavern stories which have been written over a span of about 30 years at a rate of nearly one a year. Surprisingly there were a lot that I hadn't read before.
Some of the stories are brilliant. They are built around interesting little notions of science and philosophy together with the very strange aliens. It is possible to trace the decline of Niven's writing as you work through them although interestingly the most recent stories show some of the sharpness of the earlier ones although with much more politics. I should also say that even at his sloppiest Niven still designs the coolest aliens. These short idea based stories are and always have been Niven's strength. I was engrossed all the way through this collection.
thoatherder comes around and whacks me for gross stupidity, let me justify myself. Way back in the dark and distant reaches of the past when I was a teenager, one of the very first books I bought with my own money was Neutron Star, a collection of Niven short stories. Back then his work just blew me away. He wrote stories based around great seemingly original ideas and he wrote about the most alien of aliens. They sparkled and for a while he was the brightest star in the sf universe. Since then he has become sloppy and lazy and spent way too much time with Jerry Pournelle. But back then he was the best. His best known works are set in his "known space" universe but he has used other settings too. One which he has kept coming back to is The Draco Tavern and that is the title of the book I just read. It is a collection of all the Draco tavern stories which have been written over a span of about 30 years at a rate of nearly one a year. Surprisingly there were a lot that I hadn't read before.Some of the stories are brilliant. They are built around interesting little notions of science and philosophy together with the very strange aliens. It is possible to trace the decline of Niven's writing as you work through them although interestingly the most recent stories show some of the sharpness of the earlier ones although with much more politics. I should also say that even at his sloppiest Niven still designs the coolest aliens. These short idea based stories are and always have been Niven's strength. I was engrossed all the way through this collection.
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Date: 2007-01-25 06:59 pm (UTC)The early Pournelle/Niven collaborations are perfectly readable (if you can stomach some of the politics) but "The Gripping Hand" was as incoherent as any later Niven novel.
The Triffid reviewed "The Draco Tavern" and was disappointed, so I didn't buy it, I have all of the earlier stories already.
So no whacks for you yet.
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Date: 2007-01-25 07:23 pm (UTC)The earlier ones are certainly the best ones to have.