Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven—known as Larry Niven—is an American science fiction writer. His best-known work is Ringworld, which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him the 2015 recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. It also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes the series The Magic Goes Away,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 April 1938
CountryUnited States of America
I don't run ahead of science. I follow as close as I can, and I peer over their shoulders while the scientists are watching their feet.
Look at the rest of my novels, and every one of them covers a few months or a year, and the crisis is over by the time that's done.
I'd like to see superconductors get cheaper and closer to ambient temperature. There are engineering games you could play with that.
We need to take command of the solar system to gain that wealth, and to escape the sea of paper our government is becoming, and for some decent chance of stopping a Dinosaur Killer asteroid.
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.
Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.
Jesus Pietro wasn't used to dealing with ghosts. It would require brand new techniques. Grimly he set out to evolve them.
I'd visit the near future, close enough that someone might want to talk to Larry Niven and can figure out the language; distant enough to get me decent medical techniques and a ticket to the Moon.
Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes.
Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.
SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
Anything you don't understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times.
I've spent a lot of my life among people brighter than myself.