Edited by David Farland. Galaxy, $15.95 trade paper (395p) ISBN 978-1-61986-322-4
The quarterly Writers of the Future contest for unpublished authors generally produces winners whose work ranges from competent to excellent, and the latest cohort is no exception. Standouts are Tim Napper's cyberpunk "Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang,"
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Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. Tor, $25.99 (416p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2841-0
SF doyens Benford (Chiller) and Niven (the Ringworld series) collaborate on a strong SF series launch. Something goes wrong with Earth’s SunSeeker space expedition, leaving the crew without enough fuel or supplies to reach their destination. Just as
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Larry Niven, Author Tor Books $22.95 (486p) ISBN 978-0-312-85219-1
A followup to last year's N-Space , this large and varied collection from hard science fiction master Niven displays the strengths and the weaknesses of that subgenre. With stories such as ``The Soft Weapon,'' in which the hero must solve the...
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Larry Niven, Author . Tor $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7653-0863-4
The cantina scene in Star Wars
, as Niven (Ringworld
) points out in his introduction, partakes of "a hoary old tradition," as do the 27 Draco Tavern stories in this solid SF collection. Most of the tales, set in the 2030s, are short-shorts,
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Larry Niven, Author Tor Books $0 (214p) ISBN 978-0-312-85099-9
The world of 2048 is ruled by a council of computer-enhanced, ``linked'' people, with new members chosen every four years through a competitive mental, physical and aesthetical Olympics. In training, contender Jillian Shomer debates whether to use a
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Larry Niven, Tor, $25.99 (368p) ISBN 9780765308641
Niven's (Ringworld) impressive body of work is given a stunning showcase in this hefty volume, which includes short stories, novel excerpts, interviews, and even obscure nonfiction pieces. The short stories and novelettes explore hard science...
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Edited by Jonathan Strahan, Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $40 (616p) ISBN 978-1-59606-331-0
These 27 short stories, originally published from 1965 to 2000, demonstrate Niven's tremendous range and literary prowess in the fields of SF (Hugo winners "Neutron Star" and "The Borderland of Sol," featuring clever pilot Beowulf Shaeffer), fantasy
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Larry Niven, Author . Tor $24.95 (284p) ISBN 978-0-7653-0167-3
Ringworld
(1970) and its many offspring (The Ringworld Engineers
, etc.) are an SF institution. Unfortunately, bestseller Niven's first Ringworld installment in 10 years combines the worst qualities of hard SF (i.e., cardboard characters, a...
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Larry Niven, Author Tor Books $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-86777-5
Time, space and a reader's patience become vertiginously distorted in this dizzying compilation of six linked tales written over a 30-year time span by Niven (Destiny's Road, etc.), winner of five Hugo Awards. Five short stories written between 1969
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Larry Niven, Author Tor Books $24.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-312-85122-4
When young Jemmy Bloocher kills a caravan laborer in self-defense, he's forced to flee his sleepy, decaying hometown of Spiral Town and travel down the Road to find a new place for himself on the colony world called Destiny. Spiral Town was the...
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Larry Niven, Author Tor Books $24.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7653-0137-6
Larry Niven, winner of five Hugo Awards and one Nebula, presents Scatterbrain, his third collection (after N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind) to showcase his versatile talent. Selections include novel excerpts, short fiction, collaborative ...
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Larry Niven, Author Del Rey Books $23 (0p) ISBN 978-0-345-35861-5
An honored SF writer returns to his best-known creation: the artificial world, built far from Earth by aliens over a half million years ago, in the form of a ring 600 million miles in diameter, hosting an astonishing multitude of inhabitants and...
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Larry Niven, Author Del Rey Books $16.95 (362p) ISBN 978-0-345-30256-4
The setting of Niven's 1984 novel The Integral Trees was striking and imaginative, even for this acclaimed world builder; it's well worth the second visit made in this sequel. Around a neutron star an envelope of gas holds a breathable atmosphere...
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Larry Niven, Author, Tom Clancy, Introduction by Tor Books $19.95 (529p) ISBN 978-0-312-85089-0
``What Can You Say About Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers?'' or, indeed, about any of the provocative ideas that Niven ( Ringworld ) raises in this retrospective collection ranging over three decades of work. This bemusingly titled story is one...
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Larry Niven, Author, Jerry Pournelle, With, Steven Barnes, With Tor Books $23.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-312-85522-2
This sequel to the authors' bestselling The Legacy of Heorot (1987), in which ``Earth Born'' colonists vanquished an alien life-form known as the Grendels (hence the title here), starts slowly. The colonists' children (the ``Star Born'') spend too...
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Larry Niven, Author, Steven Barnes, Joint Author Tor Books $24.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-312-86726-3
The bestselling team of Niven and Barnes (The Legacy of Heorot; Lucifer's Hammer) have produced another compulsively readable, immensely enjoyable near-future yarn. The year is 2020 and the world is run by corporate conglomerates. Beautiful,...
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Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington. Tor, $24.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7653-3323-0
Worried about destructive meteors, nanotechnologist Toby Glyer launches the satellite Briareus to act as an early-warning system. But the on-board nanites start evolving and Briareus disappears, reappearing 25 years later—on a collision course with...
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Larry Niven, Brad R. Torgersen, and Matthew J. Harrington. Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick, $14.99 trade paper (214p) ISBN 978-1-61242-132-2
This collaborative creation—two chapters by longtime SF author Niven, followed by one each from relative newcomers Torgersen and Harrington—depicts a future where the ease of instant travel leads to significant social problems. The writers trace the
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Larry Niven, Author, Brenda Cooper, Author . Tor $25.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1266-2
Fans of both hard and softer, psychological SF will welcome veteran Niven and newcomer Cooper's well-written tale of a 60,000-year layover in space, in which physical challenges of world building are matched by social challenges of collaboration
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Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, Tor, $25.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2608-9
The fourth installment of the Ringworld prequel Fleet of Worlds series (after 2009's Destroyer of Worlds) continues to invent new crises in the path of the alien Puppeteers' flight from a cataclysmic explosion at the galactic core. Within the Fleet...
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Larry Niven, Author, Edward M. Lerner, Author . Tor $25.99 (365p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2205-0
Fleeing a massive explosion at the galactic core, a human colony and their allies, the alien Puppeteers, discover they are not the only ones desperate to outrace destruction in the third prequel to Niven's Ringworld saga (after 2008's...
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Larry Niven, Author, Edward M. Lerner, Author . Tor $24.95 (299p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1825-1
Niven, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, and Lerner (Probe
) offer a lively prequel to Niven’s 1970 classic, Ringworld
. It’s 2650, some 500 years after the human colony ship Long Pass
was captured by Citizens, those paranoid,...
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Larry Niven, Author, Jerry Pournelle, Author Pocket Books $7.99 (432p) ISBN 978-0-671-79574-0
This adequate but inconsequential sequel to The Mote in God's Eye explores xenophobia and overpopulation in a futuristic world. (Jan.)
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Larry Niven, Author, Jerry Pournelle, Author . Tor $24.95 (332p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1632-5
In the long-awaited sequel to 1976's Hugo and Nebula–nominated Inferno
, dead science fiction writer Allen Carpenter returns to the nine circles of Dante's Hell on a quest. After witnessing infamous fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (
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Larry Niven, Author, Jerry Pournelle, Author, Jerry Pournelle, Joint Author Atria Books $24.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-671-03660-7
Bestselling authors Niven and Pournelle (Footfall; The Gripping Hand; etc.) have produced yet another hefty fantasy (set in Niven's The Magic Goes Away series) sure to delight fans of sword, sorcery and male superiority. In the implausibly organized
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Larry Niven, Author, Jerry Pournelle, Author, Jerry Pournelle, With Simon & Schuster $17.45 (368p) ISBN 978-0-671-64094-1
Barnes has joined the co-authors of Footfall to produce an entertaining if uncomplicated SF version of Beowulfwith a Grendel courtesy of the Alien movies. The colonists from Earth have spent a century in cold sleep to make the first journey, one way,
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Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. Tor, $25.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7653-7873-6
Niven and Barnes team up to deliver a trite epic fantasy with a few redeeming qualities. Neoloth-Pteor, the old and jaded wizard of Quillia, is secretly in love with Princess Tahlia. When the princess is kidnapped at sea by unknown nefarious sources
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Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. Tor, $25.99 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2666-9
Niven and Barnes revive their long-running Dream Park series (after 1992's The California Voodoo Game), set in a future when live action role-playing is a reality TV sensation. The televised test run of the Moon's new gaming park is derailed when...
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Larry Niven, Author, Dave Stern, Editor, Jerry Pournelle, With Pocket Books $22 (0p) ISBN 978-0-671-79573-3
This sequel to the authors' 1974 classic The Mote in God's Eye takes place some 25 years after the events of that book. The alien ``Moties'' remain quarantined in their own system, but the formation of a new star nearby suggests an opportunity for...
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Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. Tor, $29.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-7653-9240-4
The disappointing third space opera in the Bowl of Heaven series from hard sci-fi doyens Benford and Niven (after 2014’s Shipstar) returns to a galaxy in which extraterrestrial life-forms have created a “vast bowl built to capture and refocus a star’
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Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes. Baen, $25 (416p) ISBN 978-1-9821-2448-9
Fans of the hard sci-fi Heorot series from Niven, Barnes, and the late Pournelle (1933–2017) are likely to feel that the 25-year wait for this final installment (after Beowolf’s Children) was worth it. Mostly complete by the time of Pournelle’s...
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