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'd like to see superconductors get cheaper and closer to ambient temperature. There are engineering games you could play with that.
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.
Ethics change with technology.
In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
One mark of a good officer, he remembered, was the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.
Once every hundred years, the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clean as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won't have to look at it.
My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.
Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.
And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.
Anything beats an expensive stack of paper.
It's very difficult for a black man to get out of South-Central Los Angeles, and get out civilized....The only men I know who have escaped, all began reading Robert Heinlein at age ten.
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.