[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.

[helvick]

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.

Continuing OT for a bit but I have to say that you're missing some pretty good material then. Off the top of my head:
Greg Bear
Iain M. Banks
Kim Stanley Robinson
William Gibson
Neal Stephenson
Vernor Vinge
Charlie Stross
Peter Watts

All have written\are writing grade A hard science fiction.

And if you really did stop reading after 1980 then you'd have missed Douglas Adams which is an oversight that you have to rectify immediately.

And post 1980 you also have the likes of Frank Herbert and Orson Scott Card. Some might argue that they also write "hard" SF but I'd put any of the above ahead of them.

[Bob Shaw]

As a life-long SF Fan, perhaps a word or two on hard SF might be of some worth...

I accept Bruce's point regarding the actual science in early Niven, but that wasn't the point: in fact, the science was subsumed in the storytelling. It didn't matter that there were logical inconsistencies, the point was that there were logical (albeit fallacious) consistencies. And that was the great joy of Niven, in the post New Wave era - the man dared to speak of science as though it were not the enemy. I'd far rather read early than late Niven, which is almost impenetrable since he decided that the numbers ought to add up (I want a Ringworld which simply *is* rather than one that comes with a lengthy character-to-character exposition every ten lines; anyway, wasn't Louis Wu *always* a Protector?).

For serious intellectual challenge, however, apart from early Baxter I have to say that Neal Stephenson takes the prize. Anyone who can seamlessly jump from skate-boarding MAFIA-funded pizza-delivery to the fall of the Ottoman Empire (via unfeasibly strange Atlantic islands) deserves an award all of his own. And then we come to the cyptogrphy...

Iain Banks is a horse of another colour, and a seriously silly person, too! (Fancy a climb, anyone?)

And Ken MacLeod... ...a joy, except that I keep expecting to meet myself!

Bob Shaw

[ljk4-1]

The Death Star approaching Titan!

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19698