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The Ringworld Throne
''The Ringworld Throne'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Larry Niven, first published in 1996. It is the direct sequel to his previous work ''The Ringworld Engineers'' (1980). He wrote it as a replacement after being unable to finish his contracted novel ''The Ghost Ships'', the sequel to '' The Integral Trees'' and '' The Smoke Ring''. Plot summary This book consists of two main plot threads, which only come together towards the end of the book. A variety of Ringworld hominid species, led by the Machine woman Valavirgillin (from ''The Ringworld Engineers''), join together to kill a large nest of vampires (the shadow nest) which has been feeding on all of them. With the help of two Ghouls, who know that the nest is located under an abandoned floating factory, they manage to cast out the vampires. The Ghouls find one of the Hindmost's spying devices in the factory and transport it all the way to the rim, to ask for help against the Protectors who rule the rim. Mean ...
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Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are '' Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, '' The Mote in God's Eye'' (1974) and '' Lucifer's Hammer'' (1977). 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'', rational fantasy dealing with magic as a non-renewable resource. Biography Niven was born in Los Angeles. He is a great-grandson of Edward L. Doheny, an oil tycoon who drilled the first successful well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field in 1892, and also was subsequently implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal. Niven briefly attended ...
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Louis Wu
Louis Gridley Wu, a fictional character, is the protagonist in the ''Ringworld'' series of books, written by Larry Niven. Louis Wu was born in 2650 to Carlos Wu and Sharrol Janss. When he appears in ''Ringworld'', Louis is 6′2″ (188 cm) tall. Without "Flatlander" bodypaint, his brown eyes show no discernible slant and his yellow-brown skinned features are a blended fusion of Earth's many races. Born a "Flatlander", Louis is best known among his friends for inventing the "Sabbatical"—going off alone in a spaceship outside the boundaries of known space until one can tolerate human company again. Louis was the first human being to make contact with the Trinoc species. He is also the only hominid ever to become a Protector and return to normal (Breeder) state afterward. Birth and childhood Louis Wu is the second of two children born to Carlos Wu and Sharrol Janss. Sharrol was married to Beowulf (or "Bey") Shaeffer at the time but the Fertility Board of the United N ...
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Sequel Novels
A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same fictional universe as an earlier work, usually chronologically following the events of that work. In many cases, the sequel continues elements of the original story, often with the same characters and settings. A sequel can lead to a series, in which key elements appear repeatedly. Although the difference between more than one sequel and a series is somewhat arbitrary, it is clear that some media franchises have enough sequels to become a series, whether originally planned as such or not. Sequels are attractive to creators and to publishers because there is less risk involved in returning to a story with known popularity rather than developing new and untested characters and settings. Audiences are sometimes eager for more stories abo ...
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Novels By Larry Niven
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ...
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Known Space Stories
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief, many controversies in philosophy focus on justification: whether it is needed at all, how to understand it, and whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified due to a series of thought experiments by Edmund Gettier and have provoked various alternative definitions. Some of them deny that justification is necessary and replace it, for example, with reliability or the manifestation of cognitive virtues. Others contend that justification is needed but formulate additional requirements, for example, that no defeaters of the belief are present or that the ...
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American Science Fiction Novels
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the " United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soc ...
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1996 Science Fiction Novels
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on board; Eight people die in a blizzard on Mount Everest; Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to have been cloned from an adult somatic cell; The Port Arthur Massacre occurs on Tasmania, and leads to major changes in Australia's gun laws; Macarena, sung by Los del Río and remixed by The Bayside Boys, becomes a major dance craze and cultural phenomenon; Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crash-ditches off of the Comoros Islands after the plane was hijacked; the 1996 Summer Olympics are held in Atlanta, marking the Centennial (100th Anniversary) of the modern Olympic Games., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Centennial Olympic Park bombing rect 200 0 400 200 TWA FLight 800 rect 400 0 600 200 1996 Mount Everest disaster rect 0 200 ...
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1996 American Novels
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on board; Eight people die in a blizzard on Mount Everest; Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to have been cloned from an adult somatic cell; The Port Arthur Massacre occurs on Tasmania, and leads to major changes in Australia's gun laws; Macarena, sung by Los del Río and remixed by The Bayside Boys, becomes a major dance craze and cultural phenomenon; Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crash-ditches off of the Comoros Islands after the plane was hijacked; the 1996 Summer Olympics are held in Atlanta, marking the Centennial (100th Anniversary) of the modern Olympic Games., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Centennial Olympic Park bombing rect 200 0 400 200 TWA FLight 800 rect 400 0 600 200 1996 Mount Everest disaster rect 0 200 300 400 199 ...
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Speaker-to-Animals
This is a list of fictional characters featured in the '' Known Space'' novels by Larry Niven. Individual characters Sigmund Ausfaller Sigmund Ausfaller, a native of Earth, is a member of the Amalgamated Regional Militia ("ARM"), working in the Bureau of Alien Affairs on Earth. To protect puppeteer (and Earth) interests, in "Neutron Star" Ausfaller plants a bomb in the lifesystem of Shaeffer's ship, the ''Skydiver'', so that Shaeffer will not attempt to steal it. Years later, in ''The Borderlands of Sol'', when Shaeffer encounters him on Jinx, he offers Shaeffer and Carlos Wu a ride home to Earth on his ship, ''Hobo Kelly'', in hopes of attracting the attention of whoever or whatever was causing ships to disappear when entering or leaving Sol system. Some years later, Ausfaller, having almost caught up with Shaeffer on Fafnir, is killed by Ander Smittarasheed in order to protect Smittarasheed's interest in the special nanotechnology autodoc developed by Carlos Wu, left on Fafnir w ...
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Pierson's Puppeteers
Pierson's Puppeteers, often known just as Puppeteers, are a fictional alien race from American author Larry Niven's '' Known Space'' books. The race first appeared in Niven’s novella ''Neutron Star''. Biology and sociology The sobriquet "Pierson's" comes from the name of the human who made first contact in the early 26th century in the ''Known Space'' timeline. According to the Niven story '' The Soft Weapon'', Pierson was a crewman aboard a spaceship at a time when there was a camp revival of the ancient ''Time for Beany'' TV show featuring Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, an animated character based on a hand puppet; Pierson accordingly described the alien he had met as a Puppeteer, given some resemblance of the head and neck with Cecil. Puppeteers dealing with humans usually give themselves the names of centaurs and other figures in Greek mythology, such as Nessus, Nike and Chiron. Puppeteers' names for themselves are reportedly highly complex, and unpronounceable by huma ...
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Barclay Shaw
Barclay Shaw (born 1949) is an American professional artist best known for his fantasy and science fiction artwork. He has been nominated five times for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist and has earned a top ten ranking six times in the annual Locus Poll Award for Best Artist. In 1995, his work "Wonderland (wood)" won the Chesley Award for Best Three-Dimensional Art. Early life Shaw graduated from Kent School in 1968. In the 1970s he studied at the New England School of Art and Design. He worked for an advertising agency before becoming well known as an illustrator. Sackmann, E. ''Great Masters of Fantasy Art'' Taco 1986 p.52 Career Since 1978, Shaw has painted more than 500 book and magazine covers, including covers for books by such science fiction luminaries as Isaac Asimov, C. J. Cherryh, Larry Niven, A.E. Van Vogt and Frederik Pohl. His work includes more than 20 cover paintings for ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction''. Beside his paintings, he works ...
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The Smoke Ring (novel)
''The Smoke Ring'' is a 1987 science fiction novel by Larry Niven. Like much of Niven's work, the story is heavily influenced by the setting: a gas torus, a ring of air around a neutron star. It is a sequel to ''The Integral Trees''. Setting The story is set at the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star (abbreviated "Voy"). The gas giant Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits the star just outside its Roche limit. While Gold's gravity is enough to keep it from being pulled apart by Voy's tidal forces, it is insufficient to hold its atmosphere, which has been pulled loose into an independent orbit around Voy. This orbiting air forms a ring known as a gas torus. The gas torus is huge—one million kilometers thick—but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life. Robert L. Forward helped Niven calculate the parameters of the ring. There is ...
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