"At the Core" is an English language science fiction short story by American writer Larry Niven, published in 1966. It is the second in the series of Known Space stories featuring crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer. The short story was originally published in Worlds of If , November 1966, and reprinted in Neutron Star (1968) and Crashlander (1994).
The novel Fleet of Worlds is set in the aftermath of the story, from the Puppeteer point of view. The story is retold, from the point of view of Sigmund Ausfaller, in Juggler of Worlds . The events are also referred to in Ringworld .
Four years after the events in the other short story "Neutron Star", spaceship pilot Beowulf Shaeffer is on Jinx, a planet orbiting Sirius B, when he is again contacted by the Puppeteers, this time by the Regional President of General Products on Jinx, who offers him a chance to guide a cramped (but very fast) experimental ship to the center of the galaxy as a promotional stunt. Shaeffer is offered one hundred thousand stars to make the trip, plus fifty thousand stars to write about it; he is also given the rights to sell the story. Shaeffer, seeing the value of such a promotion (as well as the value of his pay) agrees to go, naming the ship Long Shot.
The Long Shot is built into the hull of a Number 4 General Products hull, a transparent sphere a thousand-odd feet in diameter. However, the Quantum II hyperdrive took up all of the volume of the ship, leaving only a few cubic yards of space for crew, cargo, or passengers. The cost, according to the Regional President of General Products on Jinx, was 7 billion stars. As it stood, the ship was a failure, unless the promotional run to the core and subsequent publicity generated the necessary interest for research funds.
The actual trip becomes more problematic. Shaeffer quickly realizes that he must maintain a constant watch over the mass pointer, the device that warns of a too-close approach to a star while in hyperdrive. At Quantum I hyperdrive speeds, Shaeffer only glanced at the pointer every six hours or so. At Quantum II speeds, however, he dared not take his eyes off the pointer. After three hours Shaeffer is exhausted and drops out of hyperspace, and attempts to abort the mission, but the Puppeteer reminds him that if he stops for other than mechanical failure, he forfeits twice his pay. As there are cameras watching him, he cannot sabotage the ship without the Puppeteer knowing he has done so. Shaeffer surmises that this is payback for the million stars he blackmailed out of the Puppeteers in Neutron Star.
By the second day Shaeffer realizes he cannot make the trip in the four month time limit, and will be forced to pay two thousand stars for each day he exceeds that limit. He estimates it will take him six months to complete the trip, forfeiting about 120,000 stars and leaving him in about the same state of near insolvency he is in now. However, he suddenly realizes that if he can make some of the trip to the core between spiral arms of the galaxy where the stars are far apart, he will not have to dodge stars quite as frequently. He requests this information and one of the Puppeteer’s assistants provides him with a course to exit the spiral arm. In three weeks’ time he travels to the end of the gap and begins to enter the central portion of the galaxy.
Within three days he breaks through the obscuring interstellar dust and gas and sees the Core. As he continues toward the Core he encounters more problems: brightness and radiation, both of which continue to climb as he approaches closer and closer to the Core itself. He attempts to talk to the puppeteer about this but the puppeteer is uninterested in abstract knowledge that does not directly contribute to Puppeteer profits or survival.
Finally, Shaeffer halts, unwilling to go on. He contacts the Puppeteer via hyperphone and tells him that the galaxy is exploding: the Core stars have gone supernova and are causing other stars to do the same as the impinging radiation heats them up. The Puppeteer asks if Shaeffer wishes to be released from his contract without pay and Shaeffer declines, amused. The Puppeteer explains that if Shaeffer does not enter the Core, he forfeits on the contract. Shaeffer explains that he will show the radiation readings and brightness levels, and if questioned under truth drugs, any court in Known Space would know the Puppeteers tried to get Shaeffer to fly into the center of the holocaust, and it would rule against the Puppeteers. The Puppeteer concedes, and tells Shaeffer to return home.
Returning to Farside End on Jinx, feeling persecuted since his hyperphone calls have gone unanswered during his return trip, Shaeffer discovers the following: First, General Products has paid 150,000 stars into his account at the Bank of Jinx, with a note that whether he wrote an article about his trip was solely up to him. Second, the General Products corporation has disappeared, paying off all penalty clauses on all known worlds two months before. Third, a stock market crash is imminent, resulting from the disappearance of General Products and the lack of starship hulls. Fourth, the secret of the General Products hull is up for sale; bids are being taken by human representatives for one year, the minimum bid, one trillion stars. Fifth and finally, no one knows why any of this is taking place.
Shaeffer, however, knows. The Puppeteers are running, escaping the deadly radiation that will reach Known Space in 20,000 years. Puppeteers are considered cowards by other races, but Shaeffer wonders about the humans who are ignoring the threat simply because it's so far off. "Maybe," he thinks, "it's humans who are the cowards, at the core."
Known Space is the fictional setting of about a dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories by American writer Larry Niven. It has also become a shared universe in the spin-off Man-Kzin Wars anthologies. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) catalogs all works set in the fictional universe that includes Known Space under the series name Tales of Known Space, which was the title of a 1975 collection of Niven's short stories. The first-published work in the series, which was Niven's first published piece, was "The Coldest Place", in the December 1964 issue of If magazine, edited by Frederik Pohl. This was the first-published work in the 1975 collection.
Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. Ringworld tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, a rotating wheel artificial world, an alien construct in space 186 million miles in diameter. Niven later added three sequel novels and then cowrote, with Edward M. Lerner, four prequels and a final sequel; the five latter novels constitute the Fleet of Worlds series. All the novels in the Ringworld series tie into numerous other books set in Known Space. Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970, as well as both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971.
In astronomy, the term compact object refers collectively to white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. It could also include exotic stars if such hypothetical, dense bodies are confirmed to exist. All compact objects have a high mass relative to their radius, giving them a very high density, compared to ordinary atomic matter.
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.
Crashlander is a fix-up novel by American writer Larry Niven, published in 1994 (ISBN 978-0345381682) and set in his Known Space universe. It is also a term used in the Known Space universe, denoting a human born on the planet We Made It.
Louis Gridley Wu, a fictional character, is the protagonist in the Ringworld series of books, written by Larry Niven.
Solar Winds: The Escape and its sequel Solar Winds: Galaxy also known as Solar Winds II: Universe are top-down, space-themed role-playing action games developed by James Schmalz and published by Epic MegaGames in 1993.
"Neutron Star" is an English language science fiction short story by American writer Larry Niven. It was originally published in the October 1966 issue of Worlds of If. It was later reprinted in the collection of the same name and Crashlander. The story is set in Niven's fictional Known Space universe. It is notable for including a neutron star before their existence was widely known.
Fuzzballs are a hypothetical object in superstring theory, intended to provide a fully quantum description of the black holes predicted by general relativity.
The Man-Kzin Wars is a both the name of series of military science fiction anthologies as well as the name of the first book in the series. The short stories detail the eponymous conflicts between mankind and the Kzinti, set in Larry Niven's Known Space universe. However, Niven himself has written only a small number of the stories; most were written by other science fiction writers, as Niven opened this part of the Known Space to collaboration in the form of a shared universe. The cover art for the books in the series is created by Stephen Hickman.
"Flatlander" is an English language science fiction short story by American writer Larry Niven, published in 1967. It is the third in the series of Known Space stories featuring crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer. The short story was originally published in Worlds of If, March 1967, and reprinted in Neutron Star, and Crashlander.
"Grendel" is an English language science fiction short story written in 1968 by Larry Niven. It is the fourth in the series of Known Space stories featuring crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer. The short story was originally published in Neutron Star (1968), and reprinted in Crashlander (1994). It has no connection to the creatures called Grendels in Niven's Heorot series.
"The Borderland of Sol" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Larry Niven. It is the fifth in the Known Space series of stories about crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer.
"Procrustes" is an English-language science fiction short story written in 1993 by Larry Niven. It is the sixth in the series of stories about crashlander Beowulf Shaeffer. The short story was originally published in Bridging the Galaxies (1993).
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to black holes:
Starman's Quest is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert Silverberg. It was published in 1958 by Gnome Press in an edition of 5,000 copies, of which only 3,000 were bound. It was reprinted as a second edition in hardcover by Meredith Press in 1969.
Current observations suggest that the expansion of the universe will continue forever. The prevailing theory is that the universe will cool as it expands, eventually becoming too cold to sustain life. For this reason, this future scenario once popularly called "Heat Death" is now known as the "Big Chill" or "Big Freeze".
Juggler of Worlds (2008) is a science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, a sequel to their Fleet of Worlds.
This is a complete bibliography by American science fiction author Larry Niven:
