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
We learn only to ask more questions.
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.
My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
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.
Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
There is no cause so good or noble that it will not attract fuggheads; and the fuggheads will get all the press.
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.
There were timelines branching and branching, a mega-universe of universes, millions more every minute. Billions? Trillions? The universe split every time someone made a decision. Split, so that every decision ever made could go both ways. Every choice made by every man, woman, and child was reversed in the universe next door.
In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.
Ethics change with technology.
The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.