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
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum
A civilization has the ethics it can afford
Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.
Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends, but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere.
There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and genuflecting before their masters.
It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.
There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.
The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!
Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!
The majority is always sane.
Sometimes there's no point in giving up.
Stupidity is always a capital crime.
Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.