Talk:Larry Niven

Stemming hospital losses by spreading rumors in Spanish?

This sounds like a load of BS, and its only source is "boingboing.net".. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.232.107.82 (talk) 00:13, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah - I removed it. I've been following Niven for years; this is the kind of thing that if he said it, it was a good example of his twisted sense of humor, and of course it refers to a series of stories of his. A joke - if he said it. Certainly makes no sense to include it here. MikeR613 (talk) 14:08, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

While Boing Boing can be a reliable source, this is an opinion piece reporting what was likely a joke out of context. - Dravecky (talk) 14:53, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Huh, it's back. Reverted again? MikeR613 (talk) 16:50, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Expand the bio

Niven likes to talk about himself a lot. Surely someone who has the books or the magazine articles can expand the bio, and detail his work for NASA and the US govt. Niven was on the team that invented Star Wars (SDI) when Reagan invented it. Someone out there must have the hardcopies of everything he said in the 80's and 90's. Would a link to Space.com be enough? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 19:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC) I strongly disagree

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bandersnatch_(Known_Space)_(2nd_nomination)

FYI. Ikip (talk) 23:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I don't have the Bandersnatch article on my watchlist, so I would never have known about this. --Human.v2.0 (talk) 01:06, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't know the right way to broach this, but the megastructure known as Halo is emphatically not a Ringworld. It's very clearly an Orbital of the Banks variety. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.188.147.34 (talk) 13:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Niven's Ringworld concept preceded Bank's by roughly 17 years by their bibliographies. The article calls it "ringworld-like," which I think is an accurate description. Ignignot (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, yeah... except Niven's Ringworld concept is of a colossal structure with a 2AU diameter, far, far bigger than Halo, in fact so much bigger than Halo as to be ridiculous, whereas Banks's Orbital concept (admitted by Banks to have been borrowed/ripped off from Niven) is of a far, far smaller structure not coincidentally exactly the sort of size Halo is. Halo is "Ringworld-like" in the same sense that a pygmyshrew is elephant-like. Also, one of the defining features of the Ringworld is the rather important presence of a star at its centre. Orbitals and Halo both lack that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.188.147.34 (talk) 12:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

A Larry Niven talk page?

Is there one?

I remember adding information to the Fleet of Worlds articles years ago that seems to have been deleted. I'm kind of a hard core fan of Niven with 30+ years and tons of knowledge and I can see and appreciate the humor and the retcons in the current trilogy. Seeing as how Niven never intended to write anything in Known Space after Ringworld until in his own words "forced to" by the fans, readers of the new series should not be surprised that what he wrote in the 60's & 70's needs to be "updated" to make the series coherent.

"Official" web site?

When I clicked on the "Official" web site, I was sent to a web site which was self described as a fan site for Larry Niven. Should such a site be described as an "official" web site? --Fredrik Coulter (talk) 19:10, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Is it endorsed by Niven? Does he engage with it? --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Template

Template:Larry Niven is not to be found at each article in the template. I may do this, but its worth anyones time to add the template to each article.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:30, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

His fantasy includes the series The Magic Goes Away, rational fantasy dealing with magic as a non-renewable resource.

There's something wrong with this sentence. I'm not even sure what it means, nor that it belongs in the opener. Does anyone have strong feelings about it? Can you fix it? I'm thinking about just dropping it.Doceddi (talk) 12:59, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

It's grammatically and logically correct; the problem is that it's trying to compress too much information into one sentence. The series is about a fantasy world where magic is treated like a science, and follows rules of its own. In the stories magical power starts getting depleted; this is compared to the "energy crisis" in the real world during the 1970s, which was when Niven was writing the stories. 2001:558:6011:1:44D7:622C:B419:A2A0 (talk) 01:11, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Larry Niven/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Rated C class: well written well organised too much trivia Far too few citations for B class

Substituted at 01:13, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

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