Niven, Larry

• Series: Dream Park (with Steven Barnes)
  • Dream Park (8 r)
  • The Barsoom Project (6 r)
  • The California Voodoo Game (6 r)

    • A series about a futuristic amusement park that allows for live action roleplaying, including real combat and everything. In each novel, of course, there are many things going on outside the games, but the stories of the games themselves are very engrossing, especially the first one. I liked the series so much, I joined the IFGS for a while in Texas! Very good books!

• The Mote in God's Eye (with Jerry Pournelle) (7 r)

  • Series about the discovery of a new race (the Moties) and how the first tentative steps at contact go set a few centuries into the future (after we've colonized several dozen planets, of course). The reader isn't sure what is going on worth reading about until about halfway through the novel, and after that it gets pretty good. I haven't read the sequel yet.

• Footfall (with Jerry Pournelle) (8 r)

  • This one is about a race of weird elephant-like people who come to take over the Earth, starting by putting their proverbial "foot" down by smashing a great big asteroid into the Earth. Of course, humankind fights back, and the story is reminiscent of the movie "Red Dawn" in many respects. Probably my second favorite Niven-involved work next to Dream Park.

• Lucifer's Hammer (with Jerry Pournelle) (7 r)

  • This time, the rock that hits the Earth isn't alien-induced, but the story is good nonetheless. It is basically a story about how society would try to rebuild itself after a cataclysmic impact. The plot both before and after the impact is very good, and the book as a whole was almost as much a classic as Footfall.

• The Legacy of Heorot (with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes) (7 r)

  • Story about a human colony that settles on a seemingly uninhabited planet. Of course, we all know it isn't REALLY uninhabited...there's a friendly little guy called "Grendel" in hibernation. And he's only the beginning of the problems. I read through this like a torrent...quite exciting and scary.

• The Man-Kzin Wars (with Poul Anderson and Dean Ing) (3 r)

  • Yech. A series about an ongoing war between humans and a so-stupid-how-could-they-possibly-fly-spaceships race of Cat people. Laughable, but not intentionally so.

• Beowulf's Children (with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes) (7)

  • This is the sequel to "The Legacy of Heorot", occuring about 20-30 years after the first book. The colonists have found a (seemingly) safe area and learned how to avoid or deal with the Grendels, but a new generation has grown up and starts pushing the safe boundaries of the colony outward, with predictable results. Like the first book, good action and interesting ecological science fiction and speculation.

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