Niven Larry - Limits.pdf - Larry Niven - Zabr7

Limits (SSCol) -- Larry Niven -- (1985)

(Version 2002.08.18)

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Lion in His Attic

Spirals by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

A Teardrop Falls

Talisman by Larry Niven and Dian Girard

Flare Time

The Locusts by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes

Yet Another Modest Proposal:

The Roentgen Standard

MORE TALES FROM THE DRACO TAVERN.

Folk Tale

The Green Marauder

War Movie

The Real Thing

Limits

INTRODUCTION

Half my output used to be short stories.

It's common knowledge in this field that the money is in novels; but

it's also true that stories come in their own length. Stretching an idea

beyond its length is even worse than over compressing it. Ordinarily I would

have continued to write short stories,

What happened was, I hit a bump in my career.

A novice writer should try anything, not just to pay the rent, but

because he needs practice, versatility, skills. Later he must learn to turn

down bad offers: the first bump.

The second bump comes when he learns to turn down good offers.

I'm a slow learner.

I learned to say no; but that was only a couple of years ago. Show me a

contract and I flinch; but III committed myself years ago, it gets signed; and

then the book must be written.

Footfall, being written with Jerry Pournelle, is a year and a half

overdue and finished. But everything else is backed up behind it.

I didn't know whether The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring would be one

book or two; it was conceived as Siamese twins. It's two, and The Smoke Ring

is awaiting Footfall

So are a children's book to be written with Jerry Pournelle and Wendy

All; and The Legacy of Heoro4 with Jerry (again) and Steven Barnes. A

collection of the Warlock stories needed rewriting to remove redundancies.

I've been rewriting speeches into articles for the Philcon. Where would I find

time to write short stories?

But I did.

In 1983, Fred Saberhagen wrote me with a strange proposal. How would I

like to write a Berserker story?

The idea: Fred will ask half a dozen friends to write tales of human

Berserker encounters. Fred will shuffle them into the order he likes, and

write a beginning and an ending to turn it all into a novel.

Sure I wanted to write a Berserker story! I didn't have to do any

research; it was all in my head. I've been reading them long enough. I wrote

"A Teardrop Falls" and sent copies to Fred and to Omni, which bought it for an

indecently large sum considering that I hadn't even built my own background.

I've since seen other Berserker pastiches in the magazines, and I await

the novel with some eagerness.

There was to be a new magazine on the stands, a meld of fact and fiction

aimed at the general reading public. Its name: Cosmos. Its editor:

Diana King.

Diana commissioned a story for that magazine from me and Jerry

Pournelle. Topic: probably asteroid mining. Tone: space advocacy, and light.

"What we'd really like to be writing," I said, "is 'To Bring Home the Steel,'

by Don Kingsbury. Only it's already done."

Call it a character flaw: I have to be inspired. Jerry and I gathered

one evening to plot the story. I didn't get going until we realized who it was

that scared Jackie Halfie into leaving Earth.

What happened? Cosmos became Omni Diana King resigned and was replaced

by Ben Bova. Ben rejected "Spirals" because it was too long. The story

ultimately appeared in Jim Baen's Destinies.

Collaborations are hard work. The only valid excuse for collaborating is

this: there is a story you would like to write, and you don't have the skills

you'd need to write it alone.

Exceptions? Sure! Jerry and I wrote "Spirals" together because it was

more fun that way. And there is a classic exception, a way of collaborating

that holds no risks at all.

Here's how it works. You've got a story in your trunk. Somewhere in

there is a terrific story idea; but it never jelled. You broke your heart over

it when you didn't yet have the skills, and now you can't throw it away and

you can't bear to look at the damn thing either.

Then you meet a writer who seems to have the skills you would have

needed. Hand him the manuscript! "Can you do anything with this?"

Look: you've already done your share of the work, and it's earned you

nothing. He's done no work at all. If he says "No," you've lost nothing. He's

lost nothing. If he says "Yes," it's his risk. Maybe you can get reinspired.

It was that way with "The Locusts." I'd only recently met Steven Barnes.

The direction he was taking, he would soon become the best of the New Wave

writers. Well, I couldn't have that

I handed him "The Locusts," and he made it work. Ultimately I watched

that story lose him his first Hugo Award. We've since written two novels

together.

At the Phoenix World Science fiction convention in 1979, I told James

Baen that I had run out of anything to say about the Warlock's Era.

Jim made me a proposal. "We'll invite some good people to write stories

set in the Warlock's world. You be editor. I'll do all the work, you take all

the credit."

I don't think either of us believed it would work out that way, and it

didn't. (I didn't expect Jim to leave Ace Books!) I also had my doubts as to

whether one writer would want to work in another's universe. But we tried it.

I hoped, wistfully, that reading stories set in my own universe might

reinspire me.

It did. Dian Girard is an old friend, and writing "Talisman" with her

was a delightful experience. I wrote "The Lion in His Attic" on my own, by

moving my favorite restaurant and restauranteur 14,000 years into the past.

(That's Mon Grenier, in Reseda, owned and run by Andre Lion.) Both stories

have appeared in More Magic, three years overdue.

"The Roentgen Standard" was party conversation among some of the crazier

members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Most of what I did that

night was listen. When Omni bought the article, I earmarked half the money as

a LASFS contribution.

The LASFS turned the money over to the Viking Fund, lest mankind sever

communications with Mars.

Beginning around 1970, Harlan Ellison enlisted a team to build a solar

system and to write stories within it. The project was to become a book,

Harlan's World: Medea. When the book appears, Harlan will assuredly tell the

tale of Medea's creation in detail; and so I need not.

But my patience is legendary-read: half imaginary-and I don't write

stories to be read only by an editor. "Flare Time" must be ten years old by

now. I managed to get Harlan's reluctant permission to publish

"Flare Time" in a British anthology, Andromeda, and, some years later, in

Amazing Stories. I took the right to publish it here.

I like bars. Gavagan's Bar, Jorkens and the Billiards Club, the White

Hart, Callahan's Saloon: I like the ambience, the decor, the funny chemicals.

I wanted one for my own.

I wanted a vehicle for dealing with philosophical questions.

I wanted to write vignettes. How else would I find time to write

anything but novels?

I found it all in the Draco Tavern. The chirpsithra In particular claim

to own the galaxy (though they only use tidally locked worlds of red dwarf

stars) and to have been civilized for billions of years. It may be so. If

confronted with any easily described, sufficiently universal philosophical

question, the chirps may certainly claim to have solved it. Best yet, the

Draco Tavern reminds me of those wonderful multispecies gatherings on the old

Galaxy covers.~

On the subject of limits:

We are the creators. A writer accepts what limits he chooses, and no

others. Often enough, it's the limits that make the story.

And we know it. In historical fiction the author may torture probability

and even move dates around if it moves his main character into the most

interesting event-points; but he would prefer not to, because events form the

limits he has chosen. In fantasy he makes the rules, and is bound only by

internal consistency. In science fiction he accepts limits set by the

universe; and these are the most stringent of all; but only if he so chooses.

One penalty for so choosing is this: the readers may catch him in

mistakes. I've been caught repeatedly. It's part of the game, and I'm willing

to risk it.

I've also been known to give up a law or two for the sake of a story.

I've broken the lightspeed barrier to move my characters about. I gave up

conservation of rotation for a series of tales on teleportation.

You'll find fantasy here too; but observe how the stories are shaped by

the limits I've set. Most of my stories have puzzles in them, and puzzles

require rules. I seem to be happiest with science fiction, "the literature of

the possible," where an army of scientists is busily defining my rules for me.

Other tales in the Draco Tavern series may be found in my Convergent Series,

published by Del Rey Books in 1979.

What have we here?

Long stories, short stories, very short stories, new and old.

Collaborations. Science fiction and fantasy and economic theory.

Have fun.

THE LION IN HIS ATIIC

Before the quake it had been called Castle Minterl; but few outside

Minterl remembered that. Small events drown in large ones. Atlantis itself, an

entire continent, had drowned in the tectonic event that sank this small

peninsula.

For seventy years the seat of government had been at Beesh, and that

place was called Castle Minter!. Outsiders called this drowned place Nihilil's

Castle, for its last lord, if they remembered at all. Three and a fraction

stories of what had been the south tower still stood above the waves. They

bore a third name now: Rordray's Attic.

The sea was choppy today. Durily squinted against bright sunlight

glinting off waves. Nothing of Nihilil's Castle showed beneath the froth.

The lovely golden-haired woman ceased peering over the side of the boat.

She lifted her eyes to watch the south tower come toward them. She murmured

into Karskon's ear, "And that's all that's left."

Thone was out of earshot, busy lowering the sails; but he might glance

back. The boy was not likely to have seen a lovelier woman in his life; and as

far as Thone was concerned, his passengers were seeing this place for the

first time. Karskon turned to look at Durily, and was relieved. She looked

interested, eager, even charmed.

But she sounded shaken. "It's all gone! Tapestries and banquet hail and

bedrooms and the big ballroom...the gardens...all down there with the fishes,

and not even merpeople to enjoy them...that little knob of rock must have been

Crown Hill...Oh, Karskon, I wish you could have seen it." She shuddered,

though her face still wore the mask of eager interest. "Maybe the riding-birds

survived. Nihilil kept them on the roof."

"You couldn't have been more than...ten? How can you remember so much?"

A shrug. "After the Torovan invasion, after we had to get out Mother

talked incessantly about palace life. I think she got lost in the past. I

don't blame her much, considering what the present was like. What she told me

and what I saw myself, it's all a little mixed up after so long. I saw the

traveling eye, though."

"How did that happen?"

"Mother was there when a messenger passed it to the king. She snatched

it out of his hand, playfully, you know, and admired it and showed it to me.

Maybe she thought he'd give it to her. He got very angry, and he was trying

not to show it, and that was even more frightening. We left the palace the

next day. Twelve days before the quake."

Karskon asked, "What about the other-?" But warning pressure from her

hand cut him off.

Thone had finished rolling up the sail. As the boat thumped against the

stone wall he sprang upward, onto what had been a balcony, and moored the bow

line fast. A girl in her teens came from within the tower to fasten the stern

line for him. She was big as Thone was big: not yet fat, but hefty, rounded of

feature. Thone's sister, Karskon thought, a year or two older.

Durily, seeing no easier way out of the boat, reached hands up to them.

They heaved as she jumped. Karskon passed their luggage up, leaving the cargo

for others to move, and joined them.

Thone made introduction. "Sir Karskon, Lady Durily, this is Estrayle, my

sister. Estrayle, they'll be our guests for a month. I'll have to tell Father.

We bring red meat in trade."

The girl said, "Oh, very good! Father will love that. How was the trip?"

Niven Larry - Limits.pdf

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