Neutron Star
by Larry Niven

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Book Reviews of Neutron Star

Book Review: A collection of stories from Niven's golden age
Summary: 4 Stars

In 1966 Larry Niven created the ultimate tourist with his award-winning short story "Neutron Star." It was the tale of Beowulf Shaeffer, a laid-off pilot heavily in debt and easy to blackmail, and how the alien race the puppeteers convinced him to make a dangerous flyby of a neutron star. In "A Relic of the Empire," Shaeffer effectively creates the Known Space universe by binding his far-future stories to the near-future epoch of Lucas Garner. It deals with an xenoarchaeologist who uses his esoteric knowledge to defeat a band of pirates. In "At the Core", the puppeteers convince Beowulf Shaeffer to take an experimental hyperdrive all the way to the galactic core, where he makes a discovery that spurs the puppeteers into fleeing Known Space. "The Soft Weapon" is the only dud of the collection, a drawn-out struggle between husband and wife pilots with the mad puppeteer Nessus (who went on to become a major character in RINGWORLD) against Kzinti set on revenge. The third Beowulf Shaeffer story, "Flatlander", begins with the quixotic hero as a tourist on Earth, and takes him on a journey with a millionaire to a very unusual planet. "The Ethics of Madness" is the story set earliest in Niven's chronology, dealing with the creation of a Bussard ramscoop that can accomodate a human pilot, opening the galaxy for exploration. In "The Handicapped", the reader is introduced to the sessile Grogs on the planet Down, and given several clues as to the ultimate fate of the Slaver Empire. "Grendel", the last of the golden age of the Shaeffer stories, has Shaeffer foil a kidnapping on a newly-colonized world. These stories are all excellent and are recommended reading for any fan of science fiction.

Larry Niven was off a little in predicting the future, personal computing doesn't play any role in these stories and in fact one character even uses a typewriter. There are hardly any female characters, and the gender roles are certainly right out of the 1960's. The characters are all Americans and seem to have never heard of the metric system. Nonetheless, few science fiction writers have conjured up a future as colourful as Niven's, and with such fascinating hard science. Although the Beowulf Shaeffer stories can be found in the collection CRASHLANDER (a highly disappointing book because of the poor quality of Niven's recent material), I'd recommend NEUTRON STAR, which offers the golden-age Shaeffer tales with other Known Space wonders. It is also necessary back story for understanding Niven's great novel RINGWORLD.

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