Friday, 5 December 2025 03:33 pm
Book Review: N-Space
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deckardcanineWhen I pulled this off my shelf, I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that it was not a novel. It is an incomplete collection of Larry Niven's short stories, excerpts from novels, essays, and (in larger print) commentary thereon. I figured that this would be enough to scratch my sci-fi itch.
Once I saw how many writers contributed to the introduction -- the cover says only Tom Clancy, but then we have six further congratulations -- I knew I wasn't going to read the whole book. Heck, the table of contents should've tipped me off with "From RINGWORLD." I ended up skipping every excerpt, aside from the brief ones that appear before almost every entry. (Whose idea was it to excerpt a short story already given in full?)
I won't list all the titles. Most of them I don't expect to remember. My favorite of the stories is "The Meddler," which stands out as a Spillane parody. "Inconstant Moon" is a powerful one, playing a simple, credible premise in a logical yet emotionally charged way. "The Fourth Profession" is intriguing in a more original way. Of the essays, I have to pick "Niven's Laws," possibly the reason I ever had the collection on my wish list.
If everything is presented in chronological order of publication, then I observe a general trend of Niven learning to include women more. Alas, nearly all of them are of carnal interest to someone, especially the protagonist. Did Niven use female characters only when the alternative was to write something gay or asexual? OK, there was that old lady, but...
Eventually, I took to skipping the longer stories, along with the boringly named final essay, "Space." To me, Niven is so hit and miss that I was right to wait a decade before reading any more of him. It'll probably be another decade before I try again.
Now reading The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty. Back to a Middle Eastern flavor.
Once I saw how many writers contributed to the introduction -- the cover says only Tom Clancy, but then we have six further congratulations -- I knew I wasn't going to read the whole book. Heck, the table of contents should've tipped me off with "From RINGWORLD." I ended up skipping every excerpt, aside from the brief ones that appear before almost every entry. (Whose idea was it to excerpt a short story already given in full?)
I won't list all the titles. Most of them I don't expect to remember. My favorite of the stories is "The Meddler," which stands out as a Spillane parody. "Inconstant Moon" is a powerful one, playing a simple, credible premise in a logical yet emotionally charged way. "The Fourth Profession" is intriguing in a more original way. Of the essays, I have to pick "Niven's Laws," possibly the reason I ever had the collection on my wish list.
If everything is presented in chronological order of publication, then I observe a general trend of Niven learning to include women more. Alas, nearly all of them are of carnal interest to someone, especially the protagonist. Did Niven use female characters only when the alternative was to write something gay or asexual? OK, there was that old lady, but...
Eventually, I took to skipping the longer stories, along with the boringly named final essay, "Space." To me, Niven is so hit and miss that I was right to wait a decade before reading any more of him. It'll probably be another decade before I try again.
Now reading The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty. Back to a Middle Eastern flavor.
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