Laurence van Cott Niven 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.
Known Space is the fictional setting of about a dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories written by 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 Ringworld novels 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.
The Ringworld science fiction role-playing game was published by Chaosium in 1984, using the Basic Role-Playing system for its rules and Larry Niven's Ringworld novels as a setting.
Steven Barnes is an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. He has written novels, short fiction, screen plays for television, scripts for comic books, animation, newspaper copy, and magazine articles.
A flash mob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression. Flash mobs may be organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.
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.
Pak Breeders and Pak Protectors are two developmental stages of fictional life in Larry Niven's Known Space universe. The Pak first appeared in "The Adults", which appeared in Galaxy in 1967; this story was expanded into the novel Protector by Larry Niven (1973). The Pak also appear in several of Niven's later novels, notably those set in the Ringworld.
Louis Gridley Wu, a fictional character, is the protagonist in the Ringworld series of books, written by Larry Niven.
All the Myriad Ways is a collection of 14 short science fiction stories and essays by American writer Larry Niven, originally published in 1971.
The Man-Kzin Wars is a series of military science fiction anthologies and is the name of the first. 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.
N-Space is a collection of short stories by American science fiction author Larry Niven released in 1990. Some of the stories are set in Niven's Known Space universe. Also included are various essays, articles and anecdotes by Niven and others, excerpts from some of his novels, and an introduction by Tom Clancy. Its sequel is Playgrounds of the Mind.
Robert Mandell is an American animated series and film writer, director and producer. Mandell headed New Frontier Productions/New Frontier Entertainment and Red Sky Entertainment. He is now the head of the company Voyager.
The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, occurs when a popular website links to a smaller website, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily become unavailable. This has the same effect as a denial-of-service attack, albeit accidentally. The name stems from the huge influx of web traffic which would result from the technology news site Slashdot linking to websites. The original circumstances have changed, as flash crowds from Slashdot were reported in 2005 to be diminishing due to competition from similar sites, and the general adoption of elastically scalable cloud hosting platforms. The effect has been associated with other websites or metablogs such as Fark, Digg, Drudge Report, Imgur, Reddit, and Twitter, leading to terms such as being farked or drudged, being under the Reddit effect, or receiving a hug of death from the site in question. Google Doodles, which link to search results on the doodle topic, also result in high increases of traffic from the search results page. Typically, less robust sites are unable to cope with the huge increase in traffic and become unavailable – common causes are lack of sufficient data bandwidth, servers that fail to cope with the high number of requests, and traffic quotas. Sites that are maintained on shared hosting services often fail when confronted with the Slashdot effect.
Edward John Jones was a British science fiction illustrator; initially known as a fan artist, he later became a professional freelancer. He illustrated numerous science fiction book and magazine covers, some under the pseudonym S. Fantoni, and provided interior illustrations for books and magazines. Jones was active in the field from 1953 to 1985, and reprints of his artwork continued to appear on book covers until his death in 1999.
Teleportation is the theoretical transfer of matter and/or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction and fantasy literature, film, video games, and television. In some situations, teleporting is presented as time traveling across space.
The Flight of the Horse is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories by Larry Niven, first published in paperback by Ballantine Books in September 1973. The first British edition was published by Orbit Books in June 1975. Most of the pieces were originally published between 1969 and 1972 in the magazines The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Playboy. The others are original to the collection.
The Best of Larry Niven is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories written by Larry Niven and edited by Jonathan Strahan, first published in hardcover by Subterranean Press in December 2010. The pieces were originally published between 1965 and 2000 in the magazines The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, If, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Galaxy Magazine, Knight, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Vertex: the Magazine of Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Omni and Playboy, the anthologies Dangerous Visions, Quark/4, Ten Tomorrows, and What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires, the novel The Magic Goes Away, and the collections All the Myriad Ways and The Flight of the Horse.
This is a complete bibliography by American science fiction author Larry Niven:
Sean Lam is a Singaporean author and artist. He is best known for his two part graphic novel adaption of New York Times bestselling Larry Niven's sci-fi novel Ringworld and a 32-page Pope Benedict manga comic where 300,000 copies were distributed for World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid. He is also the creator of the graphic novel Geungsi.
