Limits (SSCol) -- Larry Niven -- (1985) (Version 2002.08.18) CONTENTS Introduction The Lion in His Attic Spirals by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle A Teardrop Falls Talisman by Larry Niven and Dian Girard Flare Time The Locusts by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes Yet Another Modest Proposal: The Roentgen Standard MORE TALES FROM THE DRACO TAVERN. Folk Tale The Green Marauder War Movie The Real Thing Limits INTRODUCTION Half my output used to be short stories. It's common knowledge in this field that the money is in novels; but it's also true that stories come in their own length. Stretching an idea beyond its length is even worse than over compressing it. Ordinarily I would have continued to write short stories, What happened was, I hit a bump in my career. A novice writer should try anything, not just to pay the rent, but because he needs practice, versatility, skills. Later he must learn to turn down bad offers: the first bump. The second bump comes when he learns to turn down good offers. I'm a slow learner. I learned to say no; but that was only a couple of years ago. Show me a contract and I flinch; but III committed myself years ago, it gets signed; and then the book must be written. Footfall, being written with Jerry Pournelle, is a year and a half overdue and finished. But everything else is backed up behind it. I didn't know whether The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring would be one book or two; it was conceived as Siamese twins. It's two, and The Smoke Ring is awaiting Footfall So are a children's book to be written with Jerry Pournelle and Wendy All; and The Legacy of Heoro4 with Jerry (again) and Steven Barnes. A collection of the Warlock stories needed rewriting to remove redundancies. I've been rewriting speeches into articles for the Philcon. Where would I find time to write short stories? But I did. In 1983, Fred Saberhagen wrote me with a strange proposal. How would I like to write a Berserker story? The idea: Fred will ask half a dozen friends to write tales of human Berserker encounters. Fred will shuffle them into the order he likes, and write a beginning and an ending to turn it all into a novel. Sure I wanted to write a Berserker story! I didn't have to do any research; it was all in my head. I've been reading them long enough. I wrote "A Teardrop Falls" and sent copies to Fred and to Omni, which bought it for an indecently large sum considering that I hadn't even built my own background. I've since seen other Berserker pastiches in the magazines, and I await the novel with some eagerness. There was to be a new magazine on the stands, a meld of fact and fiction aimed at the general reading public. Its name: Cosmos. Its editor: Diana King. Diana commissioned a story for that magazine from me and Jerry Pournelle. Topic: probably asteroid mining. Tone: space advocacy, and light. "What we'd really like to be writing," I said, "is 'To Bring Home the Steel,' by Don Kingsbury. Only it's already done." Call it a character flaw: I have to be inspired. Jerry and I gathered one evening to plot the story. I didn't get going until we realized who it was that scared Jackie Halfie into leaving Earth. What happened? Cosmos became Omni Diana King resigned and was replaced by Ben Bova. Ben rejected "Spirals" because it was too long. The story ultimately appeared in Jim Baen's Destinies. Collaborations are hard work. The only valid excuse for collaborating is this: there is a story you would like to write, and you don't have the skills you'd need to write it alone. Exceptions? Sure! Jerry and I wrote "Spirals" together because it was more fun that way. And there is a classic exception, a way of collaborating that holds no risks at all. Here's how it works. You've got a story in your trunk. Somewhere in there is a terrific story idea; but it never jelled. You broke your heart over it when you didn't yet have the skills, and now you can't throw it away and you can't bear to look at the damn thing either. Then you meet a writer who seems to have the skills you would have needed. Hand him the manuscript! "Can you do anything with this?" Look: you've already done your share of the work, and it's earned you nothing. He's done no work at all. If he says "No," you've lost nothing. He's lost nothing. If he says "Yes," it's his risk. Maybe you can get reinspired. It was that way with "The Locusts." I'd only recently met Steven Barnes. The direction he was taking, he would soon become the best of the New Wave writers. Well, I couldn't have that I handed him "The Locusts," and he made it work. Ultimately I watched that story lose him his first Hugo Award. We've since written two novels together. At the Phoenix World Science fiction convention in 1979, I told James Baen that I had run out of anything to say about the Warlock's Era. Jim made me a proposal. "We'll invite some good people to write stories set in the Warlock's world. You be editor. I'll do all the work, you take all the credit." I don't think either of us believed it would work out that way, and it didn't. (I didn't expect Jim to leave Ace Books!) I also had my doubts as to whether one writer would want to work in another's universe. But we tried it. I hoped, wistfully, that reading stories set in my own universe might reinspire me. It did. Dian Girard is an old friend, and writing "Talisman" with her was a delightful experience. I wrote "The Lion in His Attic" on my own, by moving my favorite restaurant and restauranteur 14,000 years into the past. (That's Mon Grenier, in Reseda, owned and run by Andre Lion.) Both stories have appeared in More Magic, three years overdue. "The Roentgen Standard" was party conversation among some of the crazier members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Most of what I did that night was listen. When Omni bought the article, I earmarked half the money as a LASFS contribution. The LASFS turned the money over to the Viking Fund, lest mankind sever communications with Mars. Beginning around 1970, Harlan Ellison enlisted a team to build a solar system and to write stories within it. The project was to become a book, Harlan's World: Medea. When the book appears, Harlan will assuredly tell the tale of Medea's creation in detail; and so I need not. But my patience is legendary-read: half imaginary-and I don't write stories to be read only by an editor. "Flare Time" must be ten years old by now. I managed to get Harlan's reluctant permission to publish "Flare Time" in a British anthology, Andromeda, and, some years later, in Amazing Stories. I took the right to publish it here. I like bars. Gavagan's Bar, Jorkens and the Billiards Club, the White Hart, Callahan's Saloon: I like the ambience, the decor, the funny chemicals. I wanted one for my own. I wanted a vehicle for dealing with philosophical questions. I wanted to write vignettes. How else would I find time to write anything but novels? I found it all in the Draco Tavern. The chirpsithra In particular claim to own the galaxy (though they only use tidally locked worlds of red dwarf stars) and to have been civilized for billions of years. It may be so. If confronted with any easily described, sufficiently universal philosophical question, the chirps may certainly claim to have solved it. Best yet, the Draco Tavern reminds me of those wonderful multispecies gatherings on the old Galaxy covers.~ On the subject of limits: We are the creators. A writer accepts what limits he chooses, and no others. Often enough, it's the limits that make the story. And we know it. In historical fiction the author may torture probability and even move dates around if it moves his main character into the most interesting event-points; but he would prefer not to, because events form the limits he has chosen. In fantasy he makes the rules, and is bound only by internal consistency. In science fiction he accepts limits set by the universe; and these are the most stringent of all; but only if he so chooses. One penalty for so choosing is this: the readers may catch him in mistakes. I've been caught repeatedly. It's part of the game, and I'm willing to risk it. I've also been known to give up a law or two for the sake of a story. I've broken the lightspeed barrier to move my characters about. I gave up conservation of rotation for a series of tales on teleportation. You'll find fantasy here too; but observe how the stories are shaped by the limits I've set. Most of my stories have puzzles in them, and puzzles require rules. I seem to be happiest with science fiction, "the literature of the possible," where an army of scientists is busily defining my rules for me.