Larry Niven: "Neutron Star," "A Relic of the Empire," and "At the Core"

In our last episode, we read Larry Niven's 1967 story "Handicap" and I liked it so much I was inspired to read a few more of Niven's Known Space stories published in the same general time period.  So today let's read three 1966 stories by Niven, the first three tales in Neutron Star, a 1968 collection that would be reprinted time and again in many languages.  All three of these stories debuted in Frederik Pohl's If, but I'm going to read them in a scan of a paperback edition of the collection.

"Neutron Star" 

Having won a Hugo and appearing in three or four anthologies credited to Isaac Asimov, there is no denying that "Neutron Star" was embraced by the SF community.  I have to admit to being a little bewildered by the science in this very science-heavy story  and finding my confusion diminishes my enjoyment of it.

His employer having gone under, a skilled pilot is unemployed and deep in debt, so he accepts a dangerous job when it is offered him by one of the manipulative puppeteer people who figure so prominently in the Known Space stories.  Recently, a couple of human scientists investigated a neutron star, and were mysteriously killed in the process of their investigation.  Our narrator is provided a ship constructed to his own specifications by the puppeteers and repeats the dead scientists' mission.  He figures out what killed them, and how to survive, and reaps a rich reward.

This story is well constructed and the characters and their relationships and all that are fine, but "Neutron Star" leaves me somewhat unsatisfied because I am having trouble comprehending all at once the multiple strange phenomena resultant from flying a space ship impervious to most (but not all) radiation and equipped with automatic course-correcting rockets close to a neutron star as well as really grasping the solution to the locked room mystery of what killed the two scientists and almost kills the narrator.  The danger seems to be that tidal forces pull one half of the ship one way and the other half in the opposite direction and this can throw occupants against a bulkhead at dangerous velocity, and that the narrator figured out how to secure himself in the exact center of the ship where the tidal forces are balanced, and thus avoid the death that befell his predecessors, but I don't really grok why an dhow this is the case and the way the different clues and different factors run in circles in my mind when I make an attempt to really "get" it is uncomfortable.  

If I was as smart as the Hugo voters of 1968 who apparently ate this stuff up I'd probably give the story a thumbs up, but I can't pretend the story is really working for me and I thus have to give it an "acceptable" rating.

"A Relic of the Empire"

This one was chosen to represent the Known Space series in a 1980 anthology of sample stories from many famous SF series.  It also was reprinted in a 2020 anthology of space pirate stories.

"A Relic of the Empire," like a lot of these Known Space stories apparently, revolves around the influence of the cowardly puppeteers and the long extinct Slavers, and humans' pursuit of money.  A lone human scientist who has suffered a lifelong fear of poverty is investigating plants on an uninhabited planet, plants of a species created by the Slavers via genetic engineering many millions of years ago.  He hopes to secure his financial health by writing a book about the Slavers and their Empire.

A space ship lands and the 15 or 20 men aboard it take the scientist captive.  These desperate characters are on the run from the law; they have learned the location of the puppeteer homeworld, and their ship is full of cash looted from puppeteer ships--in most star systems, piracy is impossible because of the presence of security forces, but the cowardly puppeteers don't fight, so are easy prey within their own system.  Back in human occupied regions, they have to find a place to hide.

The leader of the pirates describes his adventures to the scientist, and the scientist then takes advantage of the pirates' ignorance of the plants he is studying to destroy them.  Niven came up with interesting animal life forms in "Handicap," and here he has conceived of an interesting plant, one which is an organic rocket--it propagates itself across the surface of planets, and even throughout the galaxy, by taking off and exploding, spreading seeds hither and yon.  The scientist tricks the pirates into detonating these plants, killing them and making his fortune.  Niven does a good job of making the reader both a little suspicious of the scientist and a little sympathetic to the pirate leader, adding depth and tension to the tale.

I like "A Relic of the Empire" unreservedly; the pace, characters, style, and SF elements all work quite well.  It is a good representative of the Known Space series.

"At the Core"

The star of "At the Core" is the same pilot who investigated the neutron star in "Neutron Star."  This guy loves to spend money, and like four years after that risky operation we see him taking on another dangerous job for the puppeteers.

The area of space familiar to the human race, the puppeteers, and the kzin is on the edge of the Milky Way and like 60 light years across.  The galactic core is thousands and thousands of light years distant, and it would take current craft like three centuries to get there.  The puppeteers have invented a huge ship with huge hyperdrive engines that, they claim, can get to the galactic core in like 25 days, and they hire the narrator to make this test run, a publicity stunt to drum up interest among other intelligent species in the project of developing still better ships--this ship they just invented is stuffed full of engines, and has no room for cargo or passengers, just a pilot, so it is not useful for trade or colonization or anything else profitable.

As the narrator approaches the core he discovers something mind-blowing--the core of the Milky Way galaxy is exploding, a chain reaction of supernovae that is generating a wave of radiation that will exterminate all life it touches.  This wave of radiation will reach Known Space in 20,000 years.  This discovery initially means little to short-term thinkers like most humans, but the puppeteers, long-term thinkers, are shaken.  They immediately retool their entire society to focus single-mindedly on building a fleet of ships to escape the Milky Way, meaning they stop trading with other races, which causes a major stock market crash and economic downturn in all of Known Space.

Pretty good; Niven describes the technology stuff, the journey to the core, and the sight of the core entertainingly, and the twist ending is good, philosophical and with a touch of the old sensawunda.  

Among the numerous places "At the Core" was reprinted are If editor Frederik Pohl's The Second If Reader and a Dutch magazine where Niven's tale sat beside A. E. Van Vogt's "Fulfillment," a story we read some time ago and quite liked.

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Three engaging stories full of high technology and strange aliens that offer interesting glimpses of Niven's history of the future.  We'll read more from Neutron Star soon.