A Niven Question
Mar. 17th, 2007 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollSomeone asked about my views on older Niven collections in one of the earlier entries but I can't recall which one.
Roughly speaking, I liked everything up to about Convergent Series, which is just getting into Post-Playful Niven (OK, some of it is from his first collection, which I have never seen a copy of, and some of it is more recent). If I had to rank them:
Neutron Star
I think this isn't his best collection but it very nearly is and it's probably [1] the collection that got me hooked on Niven. I think. My copy is nearly falling apart from all the times I read it.
1: I read the next collection first and I liked it but I don't think I really got hooked on Niven until Neutron Star. I actually bought A Gift From Earth before Neutron Star but that was because back then, you bought any SF you saw, because you couldn't be sure when the next one would come along.
A Hole in Space
My favourite collection of his, largely because I really like the teleport universe, whatever it was called.
The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton
What can I say? I'm a sucker for police procedurals.
All the Myriad Ways
Inconstant Moon
For some reason these blur together in my mind. As I recall, there's some nice examples of playful Niven in here.
The Flight of the Horse
I had a very low sense of humor as a kid. I realized later that I probably first read Niven in Playboy, since that's where one of these first appeared.
Convergent Series
This collected all the The Shape of Space material that didn't end up in Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven, plus more recent material. It was ok but I don't seem to have reread it very often.
Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven
A relatively weak collection (This is where some of the stories that were in The Shape of Space ended up) and not one I reread with any frequency.
Roughly speaking, I liked everything up to about Convergent Series, which is just getting into Post-Playful Niven (OK, some of it is from his first collection, which I have never seen a copy of, and some of it is more recent). If I had to rank them:
Neutron Star
I think this isn't his best collection but it very nearly is and it's probably [1] the collection that got me hooked on Niven. I think. My copy is nearly falling apart from all the times I read it.
1: I read the next collection first and I liked it but I don't think I really got hooked on Niven until Neutron Star. I actually bought A Gift From Earth before Neutron Star but that was because back then, you bought any SF you saw, because you couldn't be sure when the next one would come along.
A Hole in Space
My favourite collection of his, largely because I really like the teleport universe, whatever it was called.
The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton
What can I say? I'm a sucker for police procedurals.
All the Myriad Ways
Inconstant Moon
For some reason these blur together in my mind. As I recall, there's some nice examples of playful Niven in here.
The Flight of the Horse
I had a very low sense of humor as a kid. I realized later that I probably first read Niven in Playboy, since that's where one of these first appeared.
Convergent Series
This collected all the The Shape of Space material that didn't end up in Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven, plus more recent material. It was ok but I don't seem to have reread it very often.
Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven
A relatively weak collection (This is where some of the stories that were in The Shape of Space ended up) and not one I reread with any frequency.
