[X] My Assistant

[volcanopele]

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1596

Okay, the movies aren't loading for me, maybe the rest of you are having better luck.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Nobody will ever accuse Niven of scientific profundity early in his career. Consider "Neutron Star", in which a race of sophisticated star-travelling aliens don't realize that neutron stars must have extremely strong tidal forces close to them (and which inexplicably won a Hugo -- Carl Sagan had a comment on that). Or "Becalmed in Hell", in which Venus is pitch-black beneath its cloud layer (although in that case the greenhouse effect obviously wouldn't work). Still, Niven had no science education when he started writing, so I suppose you can put this down to on-the-job training -- his recent work has been better. But his early popularity among SF fans didn't do much for the genre's literary reputation.

[nprev]

Nobody will ever accuse Niven of scientific profundity early in his career.  Consider "Neutron Star", in which a race of sophisticated star-travelling aliens don't realize that neutron stars must have extremely strong tidal forces close to them (and which inexplicably won a Hugo -- Carl Sagan had a comment on that).  Or "Becalmed in Hell", in which Venus is pitch-black beneath its cloud layer (although in that case the greenhouse effect obviously wouldn't work).  Still, Niven had no science education when he started writing, so I suppose you can put this down to on-the-job training -- his recent work has been better.  But his early popularity among SF fans didn't do much for the genre's literary reputation.

All that being said about Niven, I am amazed at how many of his fans are represented in the UMSF community based on usernames alone: "tasp", "Chmee", etc. To give the man his due, he seems to have influenced the second and third generation of spaceflight enthusiasts and professionals much as Heinlein and Clarke did the first...not a bad thing, and quite a contribution in its own right!

Continuing OT here, who will pick up the torch after Niven's done? (This actually might be more relevant than it seems at first glance; "hard" SF clearly plays a major role in attracting kids to the physical sciences, including spaceflight disciplines). I confess that I haven't read much SF written after 1980 or so...seemed like the whole genre was degenerating into alternative-universe/fantasy hogwash, and hard SF was a vanishing subspecies.