Niven, Larry 1938–

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Niven, Larry 1938–

(Laurence Van Cott Niven)

PERSONAL: Born April 30, 1938, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Waldemar Van Cott (a lawyer) and Lucy Estelle Niven; married Marilyn Joyce Wisowaty, September 6, 1969. Education: Attended California Institute of Technology, 1956–58; Washburn University of Topeka, A.B., 1962; attended graduate courses at University of California, Los Angeles, 1962–63. Politics: Libertarian. Hobbies and other interests: Science-fiction conventions, computer games, folk singing.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—11874 Macoda Lane, Chatsworth, CA 91311.

CAREER: Writer, 1964–. Co-founder, Citizen's Advisory Council for a National Space Policy.

MEMBER: Science Fiction Writers of America, Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Hugo Award, World Science Fiction Convention, 1967, for story "Neutron Star," 1971, for Ringworld, 1972, for story "Inconstant Moon," 1975, for story "The Hole Man," and 1976, for novelette "The Borderland of Sol"; Nebula Award, Science Fiction Writers of America, 1970, and Ditmar Award, 1972, both for Ringworld; E.E. Smith Memorial Award, 1978; Japanese fiction award for Ringworld and "Inconstant Moon," both 1979; Inkpot Award, San Diego Comics Convention, 1979; L.L.D., Washburn University of Topeka, 1984.

WRITINGS:

"KNOWN SPACE" NOVELS

World of Ptavvs, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1966.

A Gift from Earth, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1968.

Protector, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1973.

A World out of Time, Holt (New York, NY), 1976.

Three Books of Known Space (includes World of Ptavvs, A Gift from Earth, and short stories), Ballantine (New York, NY), 1996.

Destiny's Road, TOR Books (New York, NY), 1997.

"MAN-KZIN WARS" SERIES; AND EDITOR

(With Poul Anderson and Dean Ing) The Man-Kzin Wars, Baen Books (New York, NY), 1988.

(With Dean Ing and S.M. Stirling) Man-Kzin Wars II, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1989.

(With others) Man-Kzin Wars III, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1990.

(With others) Man-Kzin Wars IV, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1991.

(With others) Man-Kzin Wars V, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1992.

(With others) Man-Kzin Wars VI, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1994.

(With others) Man-Kzin Wars VII, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1995.

(With others) The Best of All Possible Wars: The Best of the Man-Kzin Wars, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1998.

(With others) Man-Kzin Wars IX, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 2002.

(With others) Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 2003.

(With Hal Colebatch and Matthew Harrington) Man-Kzin Wars XI, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 2005.

"RINGWORLD" SERIES

Ringworld, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1970.

The Ringworld Engineers, Holt (New York, NY), 1980.

The Ringworld Throne, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1996.

Ringworld's Children, Tor (New York, NY), 2004.

"INTEGRAL TREES" SERIES

The Integral Trees, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1984.

The Smoke Ring, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1987.

"GIL HAMILTON" SERIES

The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1976.

The Patchwork Girl, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1979.

Flatlander, Del Rey (New York, NY), 1995.

COLLABORATIONS

(With David Gerrold) The Flying Sorcerers ("Svetz" series), Ballantine (New York, NY), 1971.

(With Jerry Pournelle) The Mote in God's Eye, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1974.

(With Pournelle) Inferno, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1976.

(With Pournelle) Lucifer's Hammer, Playboy Press (Chicago, IL), 1977, reprinted, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Steven Barnes) Dream Park, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1981.

(With Pournelle) Oath of Fealty, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

(With Barnes) The Descent of Anansi, Pinnacle Books (New York, NY), 1982.

(With Pournelle) Footfall, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Barnes and Pournelle) The Legacy of Heorot, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Barnes) Dream Park II: The Barsoom Project, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Barnes) Achilles' Choice, illustrated by Boris Vallejo, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Pournelle and Michael Flynn) Fallen Angels, Baen Books (Riverdale, NY), 1991.

(With Barnes) The California Voodoo Game, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1992.

(With John Byrne) Green Lantern: Ganthet's Tale, DC Comics (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Pournelle) The Gripping Hand (sequel to The Mote in God's Eye), Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Pournelle and Barnes) Beowulf's Children, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Pournelle) The Burning City, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Barnes) Saturn's Race, Tor Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Gerrold) The Flying Sorcerers, BenBella Books (Dallas, TX), 2004.

(With Brenda Cooper) Building Harlequin's Moon, Tor (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Pournelle) Burning Tower, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2005.

STORY COLLECTIONS

Neutron Star, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1968.

The Shape of Space, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1969.

All the Myriad Ways, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1971.

The Flight of the Horse, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1973.

Inconstant Moon, Gollancz (London, England), 1973.

A Hole in Space, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1974.

Tales of Known Space, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1975.

The Magic Goes Away, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1978.

Convergent Series, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1979.

Niven's Laws, Owlswick Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1984.

The Time of the Warlock, SteelDragon (Minneapolis, MN), 1984.

Limits, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1985.

N-Space, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1990.

Playgrounds of the Mind, Tor Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Crashlander, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1994.

The Draco Tavern, Tor Books (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

(Editor) The Magic May Return, Ace Books (New York, NY), 1981.

(Editor) More Magic, Berkley Publishing (New York, NY), 1984.

(Editor) Alien Sex: Nineteen Tales by the Masters of Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy, Dutton (New York, NY), 1992.

Rainbow Mars ("Svetz" series), Tor Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Scatterbrain, Tor Books (New York, NY), 2003.

The Magic Goes Away Omnibus, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Also contributor to books, including Dangerous Visions: Thirty-three Original Stories, edited by Harlan Ellison, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1967; The Craft of Science Fiction, edited by Reginald Bretnor, Harper (New York, NY), 1976; N-Space; Playgrounds of the Mind; and other anthologies. Contributor of short stories to periodicals, including Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy, Playboy, and others.

SIDELIGHTS: "There is a certain type of science fiction story that is completely incomprehensible to the non-SF reader," Gerald Jonas wrote in the New York Times Book Review. "Devotees know it as the 'hard science' story…. [They] recognize Larry Niven as one of the masters of this rather specialized subgenre." Niven's novels are speculations about the technologies of the future, but his speculations closely follow current trends in scientific research to their logical, if optimistic, conclusions. According to Raymond J. Wilson writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "much of Larry Niven's fiction reveals a love affair with technology. Niven's pro-technology heroes take the positive position that the problems raised by technology can be solved and are, in any case, a small price to pay for the benefits of technological advance." Niven's heavy emphasis on science is acknowledged by the author himself. Speaking to Jeffrey Elliot in Science Fiction Review, Niven explained: "I wait for the scientists' [research] results and then write stories about them…. I try to make my stories as technically accurate as possible."

Born in Los Angeles, Niven was raised in Beverly Hills and attended school both there and at the Cate School in Carpinteria. He graduated in mathematics from Wash-burn University in Kansas and did a year of graduate work in math at the University of California at Los Angeles before he decided to devote himself to writing. By 1964 he had sold his first story, "The Coldest Place," to Worlds of If. Two years later he turned another short story into his first published novel, World of Ptavvs, the book which initiated his "Known Space" series. In World of Ptavvs, the planet Thrintun wants to enslave all other races through their power of mind control. The "ptavv" in the title is their word for slave, and that is the plan for the planet Earth: to create a world of slaves. Kzanol is the alien representative marooned on Earth, and his human opposite is Larry Greenberg, who executes a memory transfer with the Thrintun alien. According to Wilson, "The novel's success lies in its differentiation of human and alien perspectives."

In his Hugo and Nebula award-winning book Ringworld and its sequel, The Ringworld Engineers, Niven creates an artificial planet shaped like a giant ring. It has a diameter of 190 million miles, and is built in orbit around a sun. Along its outer edge is a range of thousand-mile-high mountains, which keeps the atmosphere from spinning off as the planet rotates. The top surface of Ringworld—an area three million times larger than the surface of the Earth—has been terraformed to sustain life, while the underside is made of an incredibly strong material. Between Ringworld and the sun are a series of orbiting screens, which serve to block sunlight at regular intervals to simulate night and day. The planet is, Bud Foote wrote in the Detroit News, the "greatest of fictional artifacts."

Ringworld is based on speculations first made by prominent physicist Freeman Dyson that in time humanity will acquire the necessary technology to convert the gaseous planets of the solar system into heavier elements and use this material to construct a string of artificial planets in Earth's orbit. This project would provide humankind with more room for its expanding population. While strictly adhering to scientific possibility, Niven's Ringworld takes Dyson's idea a step further, envisioning a single huge planet rather than many smaller ones. As Niven states in The Ringworld Engineers, Dyson "has no trouble believing in Ringworld."

By the time Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers take place, the builders of the planet are long dead, and Ringworld is populated by barbarian descendants of the builders who no longer understand the advanced technology that created their world. Because of the immense space available on the planet, an area impossible for any human to explore in a lifetime, a wide variety of races and cultures have evolved.

In both books, this immense diversity is lavishly presented. In Ringworld a human expedition crash-lands on the planet and is forced to journey across its width to safety, encountering many different peoples along the way. In The Ringworld Engineers some stabilizer rockets that keep the planet in proper orbit have been removed by a culture using them to power their spaceships. An Earthling and an alien set out to find the repair center of Ringworld so they can make the repairs needed to get the planet back in orbit again. Their search takes them through a host of cultures. Reviewing The Ringworld Engineers, Galen Strawson of the Times Literary Supplement stated that "the book is alive with detail. There is rishathra, sex between species; there are silver-haired vampires with supercharged pheromones; there are shadow farms and flying cities, quantities of different social forms and incompatible social mores. Faults of construction cease to matter in the steady stream of invention. This is in part a guidebook to (a minute fragment of) the Ringworld."

Despite some criticism, the "Ringworld" books have proven enormously popular, and Niven has written more books in the series. In The Ringworld Throne, Louis Wu returns to the artificial planet as its Central Protector. Seeking to discover who is destroying incoming spacecraft, he soon finds himself joining with other humanoids to battle protectors who have transformed into vampires.

Niven returned to his Ringworld series after a ten-year absence with Ringworld's Children, which features the exploits of Louis Wu, a human who has traveled to Ringworld and become embroiled in the Fringe War, a battle between newcomers to the planet and the protectors who guard it. Louis has been injured in a battle with a vampire, but now his body is rejuvenated. He teams up with a powerful protector, Proserpina, and they enact a plan to end the war. The story, with its "action and clever world building should captivate" new readers, wrote Regina Schroeder in Booklist.

Niven is also the author of such popular sci-fi novels as A World out of Time and the fantasy The Magic Goes Away. The former, a story about cryogenics in which Jaybee Corbell awakens in the twenty-second century after being frozen for two hundred years, is a mixture of "hard science with mind-boggling concepts of time and space," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. Niven departs from his usual hard-science format in The Magic Goes Away, in which four magicians team up to attempt to replenish the supply of mana, the source of magic in the world. Algis Budrys of Booklist noted that Niven, though prominent for his "excellent science fiction," is "equally deft with fantasy."

In The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring, Niven takes readers to a ring of breathable air surrounding a neutron star. It is here that a group of mutineering space adventurers have set up a new civilization. The humans have adapted to life in a low-gravity environment. Reviewing The Integral Trees, Roland Green of Booklist noted that the "world described here is almost too rich" for a book of this size and called the work "a major sf novel, likely to be in demand almost everywhere." A Publishers Weekly reviewer agreed, describing the novel as "marvelous, sense-of-wonder, hardcore SF." With the sequel, The Smoke Ring, Niven produced a more character-oriented book, relying less on raw adventure than usual. Reviewing that book, Booklist reviewer Green commented that it is a "solid, well-paced story, featuring a richness of scientific concepts."

Niven has also written short-story collections with tales that introduced well-known Niven characters such as Gil Hamilton and Beowulf Shaeffer, as well as stories that deal with time travel, warlocks, and hard science. His award-winning stories appear both in individual volumes as well as in anthologies such as N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind. Niven is also well known for his collaborations with other science-fiction writers. His "Man-Kzin Wars" series consists of shared-world anthologies in which noted science-fiction authors set original tales in a world of Niven's creation: namely, Known Space, which is constantly under attack by the aggressive and catlike Kzin. The novels The Mote in God's Eye and its sequel, The Gripping Hand, were both penned in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle. In The Mote in God's Eye humans have their first contact with another sentient species, the Moties, which are monkey-like creatures living in a highly developed social system. Fredric Jameson, writing in New Republic, described The Mote in God's Eye as "foreign policy Sci-fi, insofar as it raises the basic policy issue: is peaceful coexistence with the Mote desirable or even possible, and at what cost?" Echoing the conclusion that the United States reached about communism, The Mote in God's Eye "sets out to demonstrate that in spite of the possible good will of individual moties, the danger lies in their system itself," Jameson noted. In The Gripping Hand the Moties are reproducing rapidly and are on the verge of breaking free of their star system. Two humans who survived the original onslaught of the Moties, Horace Bury and Captain Renner, patrol the galaxy to make sure that does not happen. When two researchers discover a possible solution to the population boom, Bury and Renner are convinced to take a crew that includes the researchers' children and go to the Mote system. "The Niven-Pournelle touch is as sure and as golden as it has ever been," Tom Easton wrote in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Niven has also collaborated with Pournelle on several other books, including Inferno, a take-off on the work by Dante Alighieri; Lucifer's Hammer, a best seller about a comet striking Earth; and the highly acclaimed Footfall, in which an alien invasion forces the United States and Russia to join forces to defeat them.

With Steven Barnes, Niven has written several books, including Dream Park, Dream Park II: The Barsoom Project, and the third book in the series, The California Voodoo Game. Set in California in the twenty-first century, Dream Park is the ultimate virtual reality: a computerized holographic theme park. It is a fantasy world into which murder as well as industrial espionage suddenly appear, "a good inventive SF with the makings of an excellent mystery," according to a Publishers Weekly critic. About its sequel, The Barsoom Project, a reviewer for Kliatt noted that YA readers would enjoy "the skillful and fast-paced blend of fantasy, SF, and mystery elements in this novel."

Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes joined forces on The Legacy of Heorot and its sequel, Beowulf's Children. Based loosely on the Beowulf legend, the books employ a monstrous Grendel for their action. Colonists from Earth are settling the planet Avalon, still in its prehistoric age. Things are idyllic on this untouched Eden until the entrance of the beast. A reviewer for Kliatt noted that characters and action in the first of the Beowulf books "involve the reader totally in this fast-moving, tension-filled story." The storyline progresses two decades for the second installment of the tale, Beowulf's Children, "an example of panoramic sf at its best," according to a Library Journal reviewer.

The twenty-seven short stories in Niven's collection The Draco Tavern take place in an intergalactic watering hole in Siberia owned by millionaire Rick Schumann that is frequented by humans and extraterrestrials alike, especially a race known as the Chirpsithra. Written over several decades, the stories—many of them brief, one-scene encounters—typically involve chance encounters between the tavern's patrons that involve philosophical questions, such as life after death and the limits of artificial intelligence. The stories "radiate Niven's wit and technological inventiveness," in the words of Booklist contributor Carl Hays, and fans of Niven's work will want to "savor their inventiveness," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Another of Niven's collaborations, Building Harlequin's Moon, written with noted short story writer Brenda Cooper, concerns a spaceship of colonists from Earth whose mission to populate the planet Ymir is sidetracked when their malfunctioning ship, the John Glenn, inadvertently lands them on Selene, a moon of planet Harlequin. They "terraform" the moon with hard work and with a new-born generation of children—the Moon Born—created specifically for the task, which spans 60,000 years. But when the Earth Born have achieved the means to continue their journey to Ymir by creating enough antimatter to power their spaceship, their goal to leave Selene and abandon the Moon Born, whom they have treated as slaves, spawns a crisis. Writing in Booklist, Regina Schroeder praised the novel as "an entertaining epic with subtexts concerning cultural obsessiveness and the fear and worship of science." A writer for Publishers Weekly appreciated the "complicated characters" and the authors' exploration of the moral dilemmas of artificial intelligence.

Niven teamed up with Pournelle again for The Burning City, an apocalyptic tale set in the world created for The Magic Goes Away. Whandall Placehold, the son of a murdered thief, is on the verge of manhood in a world where the old traditions of magic and gods are dying, and cities are being burned by those empowered by the god Yangin-Atep. Whandall, in an effort to save his family from destruction, sets off on a vision quest that will hopefully empower him with new truths but ends up involving him with the wizard responsible for his father's death. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly called the novel "fun in a formulaic kiss-or-kill fantasy kind of way."

Into the twenty-first century, Niven continues to be an active force in the science fiction literary world. His book Scatterbrain collects a career's worth of ephemera, from novel excerpts from Destiny's Road and The Ringworm Throne to three short stories, including a new Beowulf Schaeffer story, pieces written with collaborators Jerry Pournelle and Steve Barnes, and an assortment of nonfiction odds and ends, from e-mail correspondence with other writers to his reflections on attending conventions, promoting space exploration, and encouraging young people to read. All of it adds up to something akin to a blog, according to Deirdre Root in Kliatt, and should prove "essential" to Niven's longtime readers. It "is as eclectic a volume as Niven has ever issued," wrote Roland Green in a review for Booklist

In addition to offering readers a glimpse into his creative process with Scatterbrain, Niven also continues to publish the Man-Kzin "shared world" anthologies. Man-Kzin Wars IX features original stories set in Niven's Known Space universe by Poul Anderson, Stephen Hickman, Hal Colebatch, and Paul Chafe. Niven himself contributed "Fly-by-Night" to the collection, a Beowulf Shaeffer story. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that the collection develops the ferocious Kzin race as more "sophisticated" and "well-wrought" than in earlier volumes, and Roland Green, reviewing the volume in Booklist, commented that "the fast-paced stories will grab teen sf readers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 27, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction, Beacham (Osprey, FL), 1996.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 8, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1978.

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 8: Twentieth-Century American Science-Fiction Writers, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981.

Gunn, James, editor, New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

Legends in Their Own Time, Prentice Hall (New York, NY), 1994.

Platt, Charles, Dream Makers, Volume II: The Uncommon Men and Women Who Write Science Fiction, Berkley Publishing (New York, NY), 1983.

Reginald, Robert, Science-Fiction and Fantasy Literature, 1975–1991, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

Science-Fiction Writers, 2nd edition, Scribner's (New York, NY), 1999.

St. James Guide to Science-Fiction Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1995.

Stringer, Jenny, editor, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Vrana, Stan A., Interviews and Conversations with Twentieth-Century Authors Writing in English, Scarecrow Press (Metuchen, NJ), 1986.

PERIODICALS

Analog Science Fiction & Fact, July, 1993, Tom Easton, review of The Gripping Hand, p. 250; January, 1996, Tom Easton, review of Beowulf's Children, p. 273; June, 1999, Tom Easton, review of Rainbow Mars, p. 134.

Booklist, February 1, 1979, Algis Budrys, review of The Magic Goes Away, p. 856; February 1, 1984, Roland Green, review of The Integral Trees, p. 770; March 1, 1987, Roland Green, review of The Smoke Ring, p. 948; December 15, 1992, Carl Hays, review of The Gripping Hand, p. 699; March 1, 1999, review of Rainbow Mars, p. 1160; December 1, 2001, Roland Green, review of Man-Kzin Wars IX, p. 636; October 1, 2003, Roland Green, review of Scatterbrain, p. 293; July, 2004, Regina Schroeder, review of Ringworld's Children, p. 1829; June 1, 2005, Regina Schroeder, review of Building Harlequin's Moon, p. 1769; January 1, 2006, Carl Hays, review of The Draco Tavern, p. 74.

Detroit News, April 20, 1980, Bud Foote, review of Ringworld.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1992, review of The Gripping Hand, p. 1472; January 15, 1999, review of Rainbow Mars, p. 111.

Kliatt, January, 1989, review of The Legacy of the Heorot, pp. 22-23; January, 1990, review of Dream Park II: The Barsoom Project, pp. 20-21; May, 1994, review of The Gripping Hand, p. 18; July, 1988, review of Destiny's Road, p. 20; July, 2005, Deirdre Root, review of Scatterbrain, p. 30.

Library Journal, September 15, 1995, review of Beowulf's Children, p. 97; May 15, 1996, Sue Hamburger, review of The Ringworld Throne, p. 86; February 15, 1999, review of Rainbow Mars, p. 188; October 15, 2003, Jackie Cassada, review of Scatterbrain, p. 102; June 15, 2005, Jackie Cassada, review of Building Harlequin's Moon, p. 66.

Locus, April, 1999, review of Rainbow Mars, pp. 25, 29.

New Republic, October 30, 1976, Fredric Jameson, "Science Fiction as Politics," pp. 34-38.

New York Times Book Review, January 12, 1975, review of The Mote in God's Eye, p. 32; October 26, 1975, review of Tales of Known Space; October 17, 1976, review of A World Out of Time, p. 43; January 31, 1993, Gerald Jonas, review of The Gripping Hand, p. 25.

Publishers Weekly, September 16, 1974, review of The Mote in God's Eye, p. 54; August 23, 1976, review of A World out of Time, p. 61; February 22, 1980, review of The Patchwork Girl, p. 107; March 13, 1981, review of Dream Park, pp. 86-87; January 4, 1985, review of The Integral Trees, p. 68; December 28, 1992, review of The Gripping Hand, p. 70; December 6, 1993, p. 70; October 16, 1995, p. 46; May 13, 1996, review of The Ringworld Throne, p. 60; January 25, 1999, review of Rainbow Mars, p. 77; February 28, 2000, review of The Burning City, p. 67; December 3, 2001, review of Man-Kzin Wars IX, p. 44; May 16, 2005, review of Building Harlequin's Moon, p. 45; November 7, 2005, review of The Draco Tavern, p. 58.

School Library Journal, March, 1975, Joni Bodari, review of The Mote in God's Eye, p. 112; March, 1980, K. Sue Hurwitz, review of The Ringworld Engineers, p. 147.

Science Books and Films, Volume 32, 1998, review of Ringworld, p. 22; September, 1999, review of Rainbow Mars, p. 207.

Science Fiction Review, July, 1978, Jeffrey Elliot, "An Interview with Larry Niven," pp. 24-27.

Times Literary Supplement, November 7, 1980, Galen Strawson, review of The Ringworld Engineers, p. 1265.

Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 1981, review of The Ringworld Engineers, pp. 38-39; June, 1999, review of Choosing Names, p. 108.