Known Space: The Future Worlds of Larry Niven

Nesssus's Top 10 Nivens

Ringworld
Ringworld is and has got to be really my favourite Niven tale, ok, so my namesake gets beheaded at the end of the story but you can't have everything!
A World Out of Time
I first read this story when I was 13, it was my first Niven and will always have a special place on my shelf.
Neutron Star
The fast pace of this short story collection is probably the best example of Niven's early writing style.
Lucifer's Hammer
This asteroid-hits-the-earth tale beats Armageddon and Deep Impact put together, its just a shame that it didn't get made into a film first.
Ringworld Engineers
A good sequel to Ringworld. I was disappointed with Ringworld Throne, but hope that the forthcoming "Ringworld Child", due out at the end of this year, lives up to this sequel.
Rainbow Mars
A very funny story. But don't forget to read the other Svetz stories in "The Flight of the Horse" first!
Legacy of Heorot
I've never been able to look at a tadpole in quite the same way since reading this.
Long ARM of Gil Hamilton
Who could ever forget Gil "The Arm" Hamilton and his psychic arm?
The Integral Trees
It took me three attempts to finally read this story without getting lost and putting it down again, but I'm glad I didn't miss out on the wonders of the Voy star system.
Destiny's Road
This later Niven novel is a completely different writing style for Niven - the story follows the life of a young man through many changes.

Nesssus, who lives in England, and is currently dabbling in professional website design, prefers to remain anonymous on the Internet, so henceforth the Nickname. Note the additional "S" which denotes the difference between the Manager and the Mad Puppeteer.

Believe it or not, the whole extra "s" thing came about primarily through AOL!. When Nesssus was setting up her account with them, "Nessus" had already been taken by another user, and rather than be "Nessus493" or something similar, she decided to be different. She says "The extra "S" thing seems to take on a life of its own, sometimes people are discussing the real Nessus on the mailing list or on the newsgroups and they use my spelling instead!" :-)

Nesssus' first exposure to Larry Niven was at age 13 with "A World Out of Time", the 3 million years into the future scenario completely blew her mind, Ringworld was next on the list and after that she was hooked. Nesssus' top ten Niven favourite tales can be seen in the panel on the right.

Nesssus first created the Pierson's Puppeteer Home Page back in 1996, less than a year of first being on the net. She discovered the Larryniven-L mailing list at around this time too, from thereon Larry Niven's presence on the web would never be the same again. She later collaborated with Joel Nap (Keeper of the Paks to create the Kzin Home Page.

In May 1998, Duncan Galloway, the original creator of the "Known Space" website decided that he needed to devote more time to his studies for his Astronomy Doctorate and realised that he couldn't give the site the attention it needed to continue, but rather than just discard it, Duncan, realizing that other html-clued fans were out there too - offered Nesssus the chance to take over the management of the site.

Nesssus jumped at the idea - however, looking before she leapt, she invited Joel Nap (whom she had worked with on the Kzin Pages) and Ted Scribner, a fan from the mailing list to help with the management task. Sadly, we lost Joel's contribution after about 18 months due to the birth of his daughter, but Ted is still with us.

Known Space: The Future Worlds of Larry Niven

Site Credits:

Nesssus