by Larry Niven
By then I had been giving the question some hard thought at my end. There was a kind of moral question involved. I believe that science-fiction writers have a duty to be careful about the science in their stories (and over the years I rejected a good many otherwise good stories, most of which sold elsewhere, because of scientific flaws).
On the other hand, I don’t believe that science-fiction writers have to be more right than the scientists themselves are. Larry had done his homework. At the time he had written “The Coldest Place” the science in it was fine; it wasn’t his fault that the scientists had changed their minds. (We can still read, for instance, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom stories with as much pleasure as ever, in spite of the fact that the Percival Lowell picture that he based them on of a somewhat habitable Mars turned out to be all wrong.) Besides, for any writer his very first sale is a major landmark, and I didn’t have the heart to ask him to unsell it.
In any case, the story was already well along in the assembly line, and so I let it go through and it appeared as written. No one seemed to mind.
The key thing that struck me about Larry was that he not only wrote well, he had gone to the trouble of getting his science right, and even of making the science an important part of his stories. He still does. Larry is a member of that sub-class of the class of science-fiction writers which I particularly admire: He doesn’t just like science fiction, he likes science, and he even does his best to keep up with and understand it.
Finding somebody like Larry Niven was a delight for me, because I could suggest science-based story ideas to him, and rely on him to make the most of them. He was a natural. Writing science fiction asks more of an author than getting the science right; the characters have to be good, the settings have to be imaginative, the societies and psychologies involved need to be worked out carefully and consistently. Larry was fine in all those ways.
For instance: Neutron stars were a new discovery in the 1960s, so I suggested he write a story about a neutron star. He sat right down and wrote it, and he put into it some grand picaresque characters with intriguing plot problems. Between us we thought of a wonderful title for the story about the neutron star—we called it “Neutron Star”—and it won him his first Hugo the following year. A little later Freeman Dyson, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, came out with his suggestion that a truly advanced civilization would want to capture all the energy radiated from its parent star by building a sort of shell around the star to trap it for their use—what came to be called a “Dyson sphere.” And of course I immediately asked Larry to write me one of those.
I’m sorry to say that I never got to print that one. The magazines I edited were sold to another publisher around then, and I didn’t want to go along. Actually, the story never quite got written quite the way Dyson had in mind, either, because when Larry got down to serious thinking about it he redesigned the concept. Instead of a sphere, the artifact became a sort of hula-hoop around the star, peopled with Larry’s always intriguing aliens. He called the story that came out of it RINGWORLD, and it remains one of his best novels.
I think I did one other important thing for Larry Niven around that time. I wanted to encourage his interest in science—not that he needed much encouragement—and, most of all, to make it easier for him to keep in touch with the up-to-the-minute developments, even the developments that hadn’t quite happened yet, by getting a chance to talk with some of the actual scientists who were doing the latest research. So I suggested to him a couple of research establishments he might want to visit, and in particular recommended he go and talk to some of my friends in the Artificial Intelligence labs at MIT.
I suspect that that was Larry’s first encounter with the MIT people, which led to coming to know the MIT Science Fiction Society…which led to his meeting a member who chanced to be a pretty young female fan called “Fuzzy Pink.” A few years later I was delighted to be an usher at the wedding which transformed Fuzzy Pink into Mrs. Marilyn Niven—a marriage which still sturdily survives and shows every sign of having been made in heaven.
You will have noted from the above evidence of one of the great character flaws shared by almost all editors: They love to brag about the writers they have “discovered,” and the ways in which through their fond parental guidance and instruction the writers attained success.
Partly that’s jealousy; a successful writer generally winds up with a lot more success than the editor who buys his stories. Editors have expense accounts, but writers have more fun. (That’s the main reason why, years ago, after decades of being a split personality as both editor and writer, I finally gave up editing entirely and went straight.)
The fact is that editors aren’t always as important as they think they are. Actually, very few good writers need to be discovered. They discover themselves. They write. They keep on writing. They do their best to get better at writing with everything they write, and they send out what they have written to people who may want to publish it; and they keep on doing those things, no matter what. They may have to endure periods of accumulating rejection slips and unrewarded effort, but if they are any good at all somebody or other, sooner or later, will notice, and publish, and then they’re on their way.
And yet it may be that, to some small extent, Larry Niven was an exception to that general rule.
The special circumstance in Larry’s case was that his family were quite important to him. They were also quite hard-headed about what sort of careers their offspring chose to devote their lives to, and they didn’t really thrill to his fascination with science fiction. They had viewed with no great pleasure his devotion to reading all those crazy science-fiction stories from an early age, and they took active alarm when he told them he had decided to make a profession out of writing the stuff.
So when he proudly showed them that first tiny check for “The Coldest Place” they were probably moderately pleased, but they certainly were not greatly impressed by the amount. Fortunately, things soon began to get better. As it happened, the second story I bought from Larry was a little longer and I was able to up the rate a bit, so the check was several times as big as the first…and the third also got a rate raise and was a good deal longer still and thus the payment check grew accordingly…and, all in all, it turned out that he was getting better paid by an order of magnitude or so with each new sale.
Well, that didn’t go on forever. Still, it had its uses. “That sort of growth impressed them,” he told me later. “From then on I didn’t have to worry as much about opposition from my family, and so I could get on with writing in a more supportive environment.”
As it happens, that subject came up again just a few months ago. I didn’t bring it up. Larry did. We were on a panel in Pasadena, California, discussing the future of space exploration; we had all just been spending a wonderful weekend at the Jet Propulsion Labs to watch the pictures from the flyby of Neptune come in. We were accordingly all juiced up and, for once, happy about the way the world was going—and, during a lull in the debate, Larry leaned over to me and whispered, “You know something, Fred? I think you’re entitled to about half the credit for my whole career.”
I whispered back, “Thank you. Does that mean half the money, too?”
“No, no,” he said, “just half the credit. But thanks.”
—Frederik Pohl
• • •
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Frederik Pohl. The Famous Writers School taught me how to know when I was a writer. I knew it when I saw the check.
It was signed by Frederik Pohl.
Fred bought my first four stories, and many others, for the Galaxy chain. The third was a novella called “Relic of Empire.” He retitled it “World of Ptavvs,” got Jack Gaughan to do a stack of interior illos for it, and paid in peanuts. He also took it to Betty Ballantine (the science fiction arm of Ballantine Books) and suggested that it
could become a novel.
Fred has figured large in my life.
He was an usher at my wedding.
At my first science fiction convention I was a lost neofan; but a writer too, because Fred Pohl knew me.
Early on, he suggested that I write stories about odd astrophysical domains: very hot and cool stars, hypermasses, Hal Clement’s kind of thing; we’d pair them with articles on the same, and paintings…That notion fell through, but he set me to looking for the odd pockets in the universe.
When Fred left the Galaxy chain, someone should have warned me to go with him. His replacement, Ejler Jakobssen, was a recycled editor from “pulps” days. Ejler rejected a story months after “buying” it (saying he’d take it, but not sending a check). He “bought” THE FLYING SORCERERS as a four-part serial, demanded references for all of the Tuckerized friends in the book (which ruined all the jokes for me), then rejected the first section! Then rejected the rest. I’d heard horror tales about the days of the pulps. I got to live through them.
Milford Writers’ Conferences. Tradition says that a novice writer learns nothing from a writer’s conference.
I knew this. I attended the Milford Conferences hosted by Kate Wilhelm Knight and Damon Knight; but for fear of losing my ability to write, I skipped every other year. Presently I dropped out, or was dropped; my memory won’t tell me which.
The Milford conferences were serious. Each attendee brought several copies of at least one manuscript. During the day the others would read it. The attendees would gather in a Vicious Circle to offer comments, criticism, suggestions.
Of three stories I took to Milford (and Madeira Beach, when the Knights moved there) only one was improved. That was “For a Foggy Night.”
It’s still true that the Milford Conferences were different. My urge to write did not die because I went to Milford. On the contrary, I always enjoyed myself; I always went home inspired, one way or another; and I met people I’d wanted to know since I was a little boy.
James Blish brought the first section of a novel, A Torrent of Faces, and described what he had planned for the rest. An asteroid is due for collision with Earth…an Earth inhabited by a trillion people, with no margin of error for any such catastrophe. Bombs are placed to blow away pieces of the rock; lasers fired from the Moon are to boil away some of the surface; but too much of it will touch down…
My turn. “Suppose you fire those lasers at just one side of the body? Boil one side. Vapor pressure, law of reaction. Couldn’t you cause it to miss the Earth?”
Blish said, “I hope not.”
It took me a moment to join the laughter…to realize that I’d suggested a way to shoot down the plot for his novel!
But Blish did what a professional would do (and I learned by seeing what he did). He made the laser just powerful enough to shift the impact point of the meteoroid from Chicago to a place not so heavily populated…and it still destroyed too much.
Arthur C. Clarke brought a Questar telescope and set it up on the Knights’ porch. It was early afternoon and we all took turns looking at Venus.
Many years later, during a radio interview in Los Angeles, Arthur was asked, “Who’s your favorite writer?” You know the answer to that, surely. You can’t name one, or many; you’ll offend all the rest.
He said, “Larry Niven.” And apologized to Jerry Pournelle that night at a Pournelle party.
But Jerry tells a similar tale, and in fact lots of us can do so. Arthur Clarke is the kind of man you want to kill someone for, just so he knows.
I’d discovered Lester del Rey’s juveniles at the same time as Robert Heinlein’s. Here he was in the flesh, generating wicked arguments on every possible topic.
I met Piers Anthony at the Madeira Beach avatar of KnightCon, but we never got to talking. We got a dialogue going many years later, because I sent him a fan letter after reading Omnivore.
Gordon Dickson and others talked about working for an agency for reading fees. He spoke of a novice writer whose wonderful characters never got involved in anything like a story, and another who mistook funny hats for characterization. They never got the point, and the readers-for-hire never stopped caring…and were not allowed to tell anyone to quit.
Harlan Ellison wanted unqualified praise. Any suggestion that a story could be improved was met with verbal vitriol. The circle of critics saw a lot of that. This grated. If a story didn’t need fixing, why bring it?
Then again, he brought very good stories, and his suggestions for improving others’ stories were pointed and useful.
Years later, my whole attitude flipflopped.
I sent “Inconstant Moon” to Damon Knight for Orbit. He rejected it.
Damon Knight was then one of the foremost critics of speculative fiction. The other was James Blish. Judith Merril was taking a break; Algis Budrys was making a reputation; Spider Robinson didn’t exist. And Orbit was definitive: it was the literary end of the spec-fic spectrum throughout the New Wave period.
What I write was never New Wave; but there’s never been a time when I didn’t want to expand my skills. I thought I’d made it this time. A solid study of character; no visible hardware; a love story. “Inconstant Moon” was New Wave for sure, even if I was writing in complete sentences.
I recently unearthed Damon’s long rejection letter. He made a good deal of sense, more than I remembered. Even a Hugo Award-winning story can be improved.
At the time I was furious. I questioned his critical skill. This story was perfect, and only an idiot would have questioned etc.
Maybe a writer needs that much arrogance. Else he’ll never send out his first story, never make his first sale.
Judy-Lynn del Rey. Judy-Lynn Benjamin entered the field as an editor under Fred Pohl at Galaxy Science Fiction. When Fred quit, she continued with Ejler Jakobssen for awhile. She wound up at Ballantine Books and became one of the most powerful editors in the field.
She was a dwarf. One got over noticing that. She was charming, intelligent, enthusiastic, competent. She was tactful within limits: she generally wouldn’t lie to an author.
She liked stuffed animals. When I introduced her to the cat-tail (see WORLD OUT OF TIME) which Takumi Shibano had brought me from Japan, she fell in love with it. Takumi got me another, and I passed it on.
She wanted to chop hell out of THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE. Jerry and I wouldn’t have that, so the book wound up with Simon & Schuster and Bob Gleason. In later years her comment on that decision was, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
She never bid on books at auction. Thus she lost FOOTFALL to Fawcett Books…and got it back when Ballantine bought Fawcett!
Let me tell you about the last time I noticed her height.
We were walking along a Philadelphia sidewalk, talking: me and Marilyn and Judy-Lynn and Lester, who is kind of short himself. Suddenly I was sitting on the sidewalk, dazed, hurt, looking up, with blood dripping down my nose from a wedge-shaped notch in my forehead. I saw something massive and metallic hanging over the sidewalk at eyebrow height.
In Philadelphia they put construction equipment where it can bite pedestrians. If I hadn’t been looking down I’d have seen it. As it was, I had to go into the construction site and borrow Kleenex and a Band-Aid.
William Rotsler. Bill was part of the LASFS crowd when I joined. He’s easygoing, curious about his fellow man, easy to get to know. His life follows his whims.
He collects epigrams for what will someday be an enormous volume; meanwhile he sometimes sends them to Reader’s Digest. (“Everything starts as someone’s daydream.” Larry Niven, fifty bucks for five words.)
He’s a photographer…of “fumetti,” of bottom-budget movies, of naked ladies. (Of models, that is. Naked ladies? “She gets the benefit of the doubt, just like you, dear.”) At science fiction conventions his tendency was to escort supernaturally beautiful women, “Rotsler women.”
If things get dull at a science fiction convention banquet, look for the cluster of in
terested, amused, excited people. Bill Rotsler has gotten bored. So he’s started drawing…on his notepad, the tablecloth…When things were slow to start at a banquet some years back, Bill began illustrating the butter dishes. The restaurant must have been dismayed at how many butter dishes went home with the guests. Mine was a dialogue:
“What does a collaborator do?”
“He adds his name to a work which would not otherwise have the luster.”
But I didn’t grab my favorite. It’s “The Memorial Vincent Van Gogh Coffee Cup,” with the handle for an ear and a bandage drawn on the other side!
Once upon a time his whim had him making badges. He made a great many. Some were for sale, for charities. Some, personalized, were for friends. So there were badges labeled Not Larry Pournelle and Not Jerry Niven. I wore Jerry Pournelle’s Voice Coach for awhile, and when I’d got my fair share of fun out of that, I gave it to Jerry’s wife. I wear LARRY NIVEN, Friend of the Great and Near-Great to conventions. (Which are you? Well, if you’re standing close enough to read the badge…) I no longer wear Have Sex Outside My Species because it’s been too long since THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS, and because I once forgot to take it off when I left the hotel.
You can identify inner-circle fandom by the Rotsler badges.
Tom Doherty. I met Tom Doherty by walking into the Ace party at the World Science Fiction Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, Labor Day weekend 1977. Tom had just taken over at Ace Books.
He met me at the door. He knew my name. He had a good smile and (I tend to notice) an impressively large head, roomy enough for the brain of a blue whale. He was talking to Adele Hull of Pocket Books, and he started to tell me how good she was…and caught himself. It occurred to him that he shouldn’t be praising the opposition in front of a solid author.
I said, “I have to tell you, it probably will never cost you a nickel.”