Previous News Announcements

27th December 2002

• Anyone who follows Larry Niven's personal fanac knows that he is a great filk afficianodo and can often be found in filk rooms at SF Conventions. According to Eli Goldberg of Prometeus Music, the new CD of Science Fiction music by Julia Ecklar, Divine Intervention features a dedication by Larry Niven.

• Sample tracks (MP3) and ordering information at http://mp3.com/ecklar. Not having ordered it yet, we would enjoy any review from someone who has listened to it. It sounds like Ecklar's new release carries Niven's seal of approval.
  

12th December 2002

• Another update letter from Larry this month, telling everyone on the progress of his latest projects including Burning Tower and Ringworld's Children. Larry also can't wait to see the Two Towers movie.

• A new Draco Tavern story called "The Ones Who Stayed Home" is now available in January's Analog Magazine.

• If you can't find this title on your local magazine racks, as before, Fictionwise are offering the magazine as an Ebook edition. Click on the Magazine cover (right) for ordering information.

  This new story is set In the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the Draco Tavern, Rick Schumann and the Chirps discuss the risks of transport and suitable punishments for the "vandals". Larry's response to 9/11.

• As fellow webmasters, Ted Carol and myself (Nesssus) would like to wish all of Larry's fans a very merry Crhistmas! Here's some Niven-inspired carols to get in the spirit of the season!

21st November 2002

• An update letter from Larry to his friends and family. Larry reports that Ringworld's Children is finished, except for an additional Prologue required by the publisher, Bob Gleason of Tor.

• Houses of the Kzinti - a new Man Kzin Wars compilation is now shipping from Amazon.

12th November 2002

• WIP (Work in Progress) correction: "Teacher's Pet" due for publication in Man Kzin Wars 10 - no dates announced yet - has been written by Matthew Joseph Harrington and NOT Larry as was previously stated on this and the Kzin Website(s).

  Sorry Matthew!

2nd November 2002

• Today's Trivia contest was a lot of fun (albeit with a colour recognition problem in the Java window) and Dave Agincourt was the undisputed Niven Trivia champ answering almost a third of the questions correctly himself. The scores were as follows:

Rank	IRC nick	Real Name	Score	Best Streak
1	Kawaresksenjajok	Dave Agincourt	101	6
2	SuperfluidBlob	Martin DeMello	60	3
3	Nesssus/Nessus	Not Telling!	49	2
4	Chmeee	Steve Sloan	20	2
5	The_Holmesian	Allyn Gibson	17	2
6	LouiseSchuFrazer/RedFlame	Carol Phillips	17	2
7	JemmyBloocher	Sean Pratz	4	1
8	GregPelton	Nick Edwards	5	1
9	renner	John in Alabama	4	1
10	Harry	Frank Gasperik	2	1
11	The_Monk	Ed Scribner	2	1

Check back on this page or here for information about the next Trivia Session.

9th October 2002

• Houses of the Kzinti" is scheduled for a December 2002 release by Baen Books. This is a collection of some of the best Kzinti stories previously released in the Man Kzin War Volumes containing stories such as "Cathouse" by Dean Ing and "The Childrens' Hour" by Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling.

• Larry attended the October First Saturday Chat. You can Read the log here.

• Ted and Carol return from World Con armed with Pictures of Larry.

• Three new pieces of Ringworld artwork by Bill Spitzak. They are located in the Ships and Vehicles Gallery and include an impressive shot of the Liar laying on the reflective scrith.

• Nivens Laws has been updated for 2002. It features in Analog's November 2002 Edition (which can be downloaded as an Ebook from Fictionwise.com) and is also available on our Exclusive Stories page.

29th August to 2nd September

• Ted and Carol finally meet in the flash and attend Con Jose (World Con 2002) with Larry. A full report expected on their return.

24th August 2002

• Carol Phillips attended Comic Con in San Diego and resumed her costuming hobby by dressing Larry as a Jedi Knight. Read her full convention report for further details.
• Larry has also commented on Comic Con, read his latest letter to friends and fans.

30th July 2002

• A Kind of Murder has been released by Fictionwise.com as an Ebook.

23rd July 2002

• The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club has been released by Fictionwise.com as an Ebook.

16th July 2002

• Two new stories short stories have been published in Dell Magazines:

  The first, "Free Floaters" (co-authored with Brenda Cooper) is available in the August 2002 edition of Asimovs Magazine , can be downloaded as an Ebook from Fictionwise.com if you cannot find the magazine on a news stand.

The short story is about a small crew being hired to make contact with an alien species which exists on a "free floater", i.e. a gas giant planet which has formed out of an interstellar cloud without the heat and life of an accompanying star system.

Secondly, "Chrysalis" another Draco Tavern story which is available in the September 2002 edition of Analog Magazine, which is also available as an Ebook.

Lacking a waitress with Gail off to the Orion Nebula (Convergence of the Old Mind), Rick Schumann is approached by a member of a species called Flutterbies who is offering her services as an alien waitress.

• Another update letter from Larry to his Friends and Fans.

• And the last item of news this month is that Larry attended our regular monthly chat. Read the log file.

17th June 2002

• New Feature: Graphical Guest Map added. Which part of the world do you come from?

• Review section updated.

21st May 2002

• A new Draco Tavern tale "The Convergence of the Old Mind" has just been published in the bumper 556-page July/August edition of Analog magazine. Click on the magazine cover to download your ebook copy exclusively available now from Fictionwise.com

• We now have permission from Larry to add two more stories to our "Exclusives" page: "Cloak of Anarchy" and an old article called "Words in Science Fiction".

• Another Draco Tavern tale entitled “Ssoroghod’s People”, has been published in "Redshift : Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction" edited by Al Sarrantonio. This 544 page anthology contains 29 other stories by well-known science fiction authors including Catharine Asaro, Stephen Baxter, Ursula K. LeGuin, Joyce Carol Oates, Harry Turtledove, Joe Halderman and Catherine Wells. If you buy now, Amazon are currently offering a 30% discount of this book.

17th May 2002

• Complete redesign of "Known Space" site layout, hopefully making it far more easy to navigate.

• Two new artworks from Tim Russell are an image of one of the Ringworld's Great Oceans and also a shot of Fist of God from space. Also this month a new link was added to the site: a scale model of The Angel's Pencil by Alanoodle. This image has been added to the Kzin Gallery. If you aren't aware, the Angel's Pencil was the first ship to encounter the Kzin.

Tim Russell
Alanoodle

17th April 2001

• Larry's 64th birthday is coming up at the end of the month. Leave your birthday greetings for him here.
  
  
• Finding Myself, a new short story from Larry's writing partnership with Brenda Cooper has just been published in the June edition of Analog Magazine. This magazine is also available as an Ebook, but will only be available till 30th June.
  
  Finding Myself is a sequel to Choosing Life (published in the January edition of Analog) and both stories are set in a burgeoning cyberworld where older people can have their personalities digitally encoded and live on in a cyberworld. Finding Myself explores what happens when a backup personality walks off and has a life of its own.

12th April 2002

• Larry attended April's First Saturday Chat. Larry talked about the game Halo and also provided snippets about a couple of books that he is working on, confirming that the fourth Ringworld Novel previously known as Ringworld's Child will be called "Ringworld's Children" instead. Larry is also working on "Creation Myth" with Brenda Cooper, who also attended the chat. You can read the full transcript log here.
• For information about the regular monthly chats try the Chat Guide page.

21st February 2002

• Man Kzin Wars 9 has now been reviewed by Nesssus. Read the review here.

9 February 2002

• A new poll has been launched. "What was your first Niven read?" Try it out here:

 



• The old poll "Which of Larry's stories (apart from Ringworld) do you think would make a great film or tv show?" has now been closed. The results are available here.

15 January 2002

• Larry Niven was the second highest selling and rated author at Fictionwise.com for 2001, coming in behind the author of the year, Mike Resnick and in ahead of Robert Silverberg who came third in the annual rankings.
• Milo Black has produced another Ringworld-inspired MP3 called The Tower of Heaven, it can now be downloaded from MP3.com
• A new search engine for accessing the information on this site from Pico Search has been added: Try is out using the search form below:

31 December 2001

• Holiday and New Year greetings from Larry in his latest year-end round up letter to Carol Phillips and his fans of the site.

  The Manager of the Larry Niven Mailing List, Jonathan Andrew Sheen has not been idle this holiday period, instead he has put the time on his hands to good use and has created a model puppeteer which he manufactured from Barbie's horses' legs, modelling clay among other varied construction items.

  If you browse this page you can see the puppeteer in its various stages of construction.

  Jonathan has adapted his skills into a hobby and if you check out other pages on his webspace you will see that other comic book characters have undergone a similar likeness of being.

  And finally, in the last news report of 2001, Man Kzin Wars 9 is now available for purchase from your local bookseller. Man Kzin Wars 9 contains a story called "Fly-by-Night" by Larry himself about the continuing adventures of Beowulf Shaeffer, as well as a story by the late Poul Anderson, Hal Colebatch and Paul Chafe.

 

26th December 2001

New artwork this month comes from Angus McIntyre which is used with permission from his website.

The images were produced using an Apple Mac in Angus' first attempt to use Extreme 3D to construct objects for use in Bryce. Nessus, the puppeteer from "Ringworld" and "The Soft Weapon" was the inspiration for this artwork. 

To view enlarged versions of these images please go to the Dangerous Creatures Gallery.

More new artwork comes from Dave King of scifiimages.com:

• Any origami fans out there - ? How about trying to make your own?  Christopher Thomas has designed his own origami puppeteer which you can make following his instructions, Christopher recommends that you start with a frog base and then follow his instructions.
• The Editors of the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary have launched a project to identify and collect words associated with the field of science fiction. Larry has been suggested as the progenitor of several science fiction buzzwords and phrases:
  • Belter [1967]
  • Corpsicle [1971]
  • Dyson Sphere (the phrase, not the object :) [1970]
  • FTL [1964]
  • Gravity Well [1966]
  • Light Sail [1976 but might go back to 1974 once they get a confirmation from the 1974 print]
  • Offworlder [1967]
  • Stasis Field [1965]

  However in a post dated 12th December, Larry posted corrections to the Larry Niven-L Mailing List that:

  • Belter - That's mine.
  • Corpsicle - I borrowed that. Might be from Pohl and Williamson, THE REEFS OF SPACE.
  • Dyson Sphere - Freeman Dyson invented the Dyson Shell concept: a civilization that blocks all the output of its star to use it for industry. See Fritz Leiber, THE WANDERER, late 1960s, for probable first use in fiction (predating Dyson?) Dyson Sphere predates Niven: it's a golf ball with a star at its center.
  • FTL - Earlier than Niven.
  • Gravity Well - Might be mine, or not.
  • Light Sail - Not my concept, though I've used it extensively.
  • Offworlder - Might be mine, or not.
  • Stasis field - Borrowed.

  If anyone reading this can find earlier instances of the buzzwords which Larry is not certain of (Gravity Well and Offworlder) please email the editors.

10th December 2001

• Borderland of Sol is Fictionwise's Ebook of the Week.  Claim your 15% discount before the 17th December.

17th November 2001

• Known Space has been given permission to publish a draft article by Larry Niven which should be appearing in a future collection of short stories and articles entitled "Scatterbrain".  

The Albacon Trip Report relates Larry's experiences of flying following the events of September 11th, of visiting New York and the offices of his agent, and also comments briefly on the announcement he made at the Albacon Convention about the forthcoming Ringworld Movie.  

As the latter is of prime interest to most readers of this site I have inserted bookmarked links into the article which skip directly to these points of the article.

• http://www.larryniven.org/stories/Albacon.htm#albacon_announcement
• http://www.larryniven.org/stories/Albacon.htm#agents_opinion

31st October 2001

• Another letter from Larry.  Larry and his writing partner Jerry Pournelle have been out to Arizona and New Mexico to do some research and find inspiration for BURNING TOWER. Jerry and Larry drove past Meteor Crater and spent some time at the Petrified Forest National Park.  Jerry says "This and Chaco will be key parts of Burning Tower". 

Jerry Pournelle has posted some pictures from the trip on his website together with a more detailed description of the trip.

• Other news at the moment is that Larry's writing partnership with Brenda Cooper has now produced another story, CHOOSING LIFE.  

This short story about nanotechnology and advances in digital technology which have the ability to extend "life" appears for the first time in Analog's January 2002 edition.  It should be hitting your newstands anytime soon, however if you haven't got access to an outlet that sells Analog you can now download it as an Ebook from Fictionwise.com.

And in case anyone has been wondering there is still nothing further to report on the status of the Ringworld Movie.

24th October 2001

• First some site admin news: Bravenet have informed their members that they will be moving their servers this coming weekend (26th to 29th October), this essentially means that the Known Space Guestbook, Poll voting facilities, the FAQ and other interactive services will not be operating at the weekend.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

• Speaking of the Poll - it has now been updated - the new topic is: "Which of Larry's stories (apart from Ringworld) would make a great film or tv show?".  Find out the results of the previous poll here.

• Man Kzin Wars IX will now be out in January 2002 and can now be pre-ordered from Amazon.com.  

A sample chapter from the 9th Kzin collection, "Pele" written by the late Poul Anderson, is currently available here to read online, courtesy of Baen Books.  

Unusually for the Man Kzin Wars, this edition is coming out in hardback format first and will contain 320 pages.  One of the stories is by Larry Niven himself entitled "Fly-by-Night" and contains the continuing adventures of one Beowulf Shaeffer.

• More new photos of Larry (taken at PhilCon) are now available in the Gallery. The pictures are courtesy of Steven R Station and Deltos Fleet Computing.

• We also have Steven to thank for a recording he made of a Panel discussion that Larry attended at the convention.  The Panel was entitled "The Phlogiston Belt: Changing Science and the Hard SF Writer" where they discuss how *real* recent  scientific discoveries invalidate their stories. Larry comments on how his first story, The Coldest Place was obsolete almost before it was published when the first space probes approached Mercury and found that it was not a one face planet, and also on the phenomenon of Flash Crowds on Internet websites.  The recording is in MP3 format and can be downloaded here (20MB).  Web hosting and the recording itself courtesy of Deltos Fleet Computing.

15th October 2001

• Rumors were circulating last week that Larry, Robert Mandel and James Cameron ....... (yes JAMES CAMERON), had signed a deal to make the Ringworld Movie.  

• Unfortunately the this rumor turned out to be false - Larry has said that it is "not accurate" and according to the "Ain't It Cool" Website, Larry's agent is denying everything.  This AICN page has a discussion forum on the bottom of it where people have posted their opinions on the movie project.

• Last month, Larry also attended the recent World Science Fiction Convention (PhilCon).  Our own Carol Phillips was there to report on the events.

• There is now a Known Space Encyclopaedia available online.  This has been produced by Bruce O'Neill.  Although currently still under construction the site looks to hold some future  promise, and is now also a member of the Larry Niven Webring.

17th September 2001

• Larry comments on the events of 11th September in his latest letters, 15/9/01 and not to be deterred, reveals his travel plans, 16/9/01. An example that we should all live by.

18th August 2001

• Jonathan Andrew Sheen was voted as the administrator of the new Larryniven-l list.  Jonathan has set up his own domain for the list, you can subscribe yourself here:
  www.larryniven-l.org

• Other news:  New Ringworld Art by Tom Gordon, have a look in the Ringworld Artwork Gallery.

14th August 2001

• The members of the Larry Niven Mailing List have decided to vote on the hosting solutions for the future of the mailing list.  The poll will close on the 17th August, so hurry!

12th August 2001

• After over 6 years, the Larry Niven Mailing List - currently hosted by Bucknell University will be closing unless it can find a new home.   The List - originally set up by Frank Wilson in 1995 has been the home to some of the most thought-provoking Larry Niven discussions in its six-year history.  In the last year, Larry himself joined he list and has contributed to the discussions, indeed shortly after he had subscribed, hypothetical discussions started about Teela Brown (Ringworld), producing a child, the concept for the forthcoming novel, Ringworld's Child was born in his mind.

Unfortunately, the original list owner and Niven fan combined, Frank Wilson, left the University several years ago and now no one at Bucknell University will assume ownership and responsibility for the list, and it will therefore, be defunct after 31st August this year.  

So now the list is currently looking for a new home so that it can move elsewhere.  List members have already discussed plans for a successor to that list. It may be accessible (wherever it is hosted) through the address larryniven-l@larryniven.org but don't send mail to this address yet. Watch this space, and check back here and at the List's Home Page at http://members.optushome.com.au/nivenl for further details.

• Larry is now free of the leg brace - read his latest note to us.

4th August 2001

• Larry wins a Locus award for "The Missing Mass" which is available on this website on via our Exclusive Stories page.

• Science Fiction Artist, Paul Marquis has been creating more Ringworld-inspired artwork (see right) and also, Django Shagnasty has been trying his hand at some more Ringworld from Space shots.  All four images are newly added to the Ringworld Art Galleries.  Also the Ringworld Companion Gallery and Magic Goes Away Gallery have now been revamped and are now back online.

• More Niven Ebooks now available from Fictionwise.com:
  • Becalmed in Hell - Niven's very first published story, and
  • The Fourth Profession - the story featuring the alien race of the Monks and their miraculous training pills.

• New Links: Starshipmodeller.com held a competition for Vehicles from the Science Fiction Written World and the works of Niven have not been overlooked.  There are two entries of interest to fans.

   

  • 
    Phssthpok's Ship from Protector 
    by Aviel Tochterman the interior comes complete with its own tiny "Pak" figure.

   

  • 
    I.N.S.S. MacArthur from The Mote in God's Eye 
    by Christopher Doll. Christopher says that he had the opportunity to show the model to Larry in person. "Larry looked at it and said "You've done a model of Lenin!". I was cracking up - it's possible I've included elements from the Lenin design, I'm not sure. Either way he was pretty jazzed to see the model and even signed the base for me".

   

• Different views of the two ships are available on their respective pages, as well as descriptions from the two modellers.

17th July 2001

• A new letter from Larry - he sounds a lot better, with his knee fully on the road to recovery.  He managed to get in his pool during his 4th July party.    

• A new poll has been created - "What Niven story would you most like to see a sequel to?"  Vote here.  If you want to know who definitively built the Ringworld, the previous poll results are published here. 

• Puppeteers have been sighted in Indiana! - check out this story on the Puppeteer Web Site

• New Sections added to Known Space:
  • Search - yes you can now search this site - looking for an obscure title, and can't see it on the A-Z page?  Try entering a keyword here.
  • Browse our old Update Newsletters - yes in changing from the old text only Listbot update mailing list, we can now make some pretty swanky little round up newsletters - check out our first one here!  If you want to subscribe and receive your own copy - subscribe here.
  • A new page - Nivenisms in the News has been created - just a little somewhere to put all those space and organlegging stories.
  • Want to find Niven stories, but none of your local stores have an out of print service?  Well you can try advertising your needs here, this page also allows people to advertise their Used Niven stories for swaps or for sale, please note - out of print titles only.  (If a title is still in print the ad won't be approved by the webmasters).
  • Download Niven Ebooks from Fictionwise.com, or read Fan Fiction.
  • You can now exchange links with Known Space, Add-a-Link here or display our banner on your own website.
  • Finally, meet the web weavers themselves together with our Niven top 10 favourites.

6th July 2001

• An old Niven short story entitled "In the Cellar" has been added to our Exclusive Stories section (with permission from Larry).  This story, first published in Asimov's (February 1979) edition has not been reprinted in any short story collection since, so it appears here somewhat exclusively for the first time.

• The Ringworld Art Gallery has now been re-modified and is now back on-line!

• A new guidebook of the Man Kzin Wars has been written by Alan Michaud.  The Guide is called Annals of the Man-Kzin Wars: An Unofficial Companion Guide.   You can read an excerpt from this Guide here.  However, I am wondering how much of this information was "borrowed" from the Kzin website.

23rd June 2001

• Micro$oft Swallows Listbot - yes, the good old listbot, one of the only alternative mailing list systems to Yahoo! has been swallowed by Micro$oft who will want $149 to keep our existing update mailing list functioning after 6th August.  

If you were formally a member of the old Update Mailing List you should have received an invitation to join the new list, or if you weren't a member you can join by submitting your email address on the Newsletters Page.

15th June 2001

• An update from Larry, feeling slightly better and more maneuverable than his condition last month.

• Saturn's Race review (by Nesssus) now available, also, new Ringworld MP3 from Milo Walsh, entitled Under the Waterfall, now can be downloaded via the Media page.

• Ringworld Merchandise available online - (ok its a T-shirt) - click on the picture for further information.

• And finally, a thank you to everyone who signed the 2Gig Petition on the former BTInternet Known Space page:

We thank you because BTInternet have finally realised the error of their ways and granted more webspace (50 mb to be exact).  It only took 3 and a half months, and a letter writing campaign to their Complaints Department and the Office of Fair Trading for BTI to see the error of their ways.  

Never fear though, this site won't be moving back to BTI, we are quite happy with this new web space provider (oneandone.com), which offers really good visitor analysis tools,  and our own domain, although we may use this reclaimed BT webspace for additional file storage.

30th May 2001

• Another letter from Larry to his fans reporting on his progress and the changes to his lifestyle that the injury has brought.

• The other main news this month is that The Burning City and Saturns' Race are now available in paperback.

5th May 2001

The official site moving day!!!  Yes, Known Space is proud to now have its own domain, www.larryniven.org.  All thanks must go (somewhat ironically) to BTInternet's extremely crap customer service!   (or Bitternet - as Carol Phillips once said (g)

• Speaking of Carol Phillips.....
  We are now proud to have Carol Phillips as an official co-manager of this site.   
  
  As fellow members of the Larry Niven Mailing List already know, Carol lives in Houston, Texas, US.  She is married to a bonafide genuine rocket scientist (he works for NASA) and has two small children.  Carol is an avid convention-goer, filker and is a regular attendee to our First Saturday Chats.  In fact, Carol was pretty instrumental in getting the chats organised into a regular event in the first place!
  
  Carol has helped us out with Niven-related news and gossip for many years and is simply a wealth of information.   For some time she has been working on the complete Larry Niven Bibliography, which we will feature here when it is complete.  Ted and myself (Nesssus), are very pleased to roll out the official welcome wagon to her.  If you wish to know more, Ted very kindly maintains Carol's own website.

30th April 2001

• Happy Birthday Larry!! 
  Larry is 63 today - our very own Edwin A Scribner has created his own birthday greetings page for your birthday messages, send him your submissions there!.

22nd April 2001

• Larry is now out of hospital and recovering from the surgery.  Here is a letter from Larry's wife Marilyn (a.k.a. Fuzzy Niven), explaining what's been happening.

18th April 2001

• Larry has suffered a minor leg injury and is today undergoing surgery to repair it.   Larry has given permission for this letter explaining exactly what he did to his knee to be displayed here.....  
  
  The site maintainers Nesssus and Ted wish Larry a speedy recovery.
  

16th April 2001

• Well, despite BTInternet, we're still here, (just barely) ...... the site will shortly be moving to its brand new domain, www.larryniven.org.  Keep coming back for the latest news and updates, or join our update mailing list!!!  ...... anyway speaking of news, this is what's been happening in the last two weeks:
• Ringworld the Musical?
  Well not quite, but Milo Black has created his own Ringworld-inspired MP3 songs, which are free for download at mp3.com.  Milo hopes to create an album of music inspired by the novel.  Currently 9 tracks are available for download, which have been inspired by key events and characters in the novel.  As this is a work in progress, new tracks are being added periodically. 
  
  Click here for a review of all the tunes currently available.
• Ringworld Fan Fiction
  Yes it exists.  Apart from our very own Edwin A Scribner's Many Kinds of Loving (which he co-authored with Carol Phillips) Ringworld Fan Fiction has been pretty patchy of late.  But now thanks to Kutyo the "Sword of Eden" is now on its way to completion.  The prologue and the first two chapters are available on the Exclusive Stories page (right at the bottom) if you wish to read them.

31st March 2001

• Changes imposed by BTInternet, (the ISP of this site) in the webspace allocation given to annual payment customers have seriously curtailed the webspace available and threaten the future of this site.  (A virtual unlimited 2gb down to a measly 10mb).  

  Known Space is currently running at just over 20 megabyes - not a large amount, but more than BTInternet can provide, my reasonable offer to them to purchase additional space was thrown back in my face, by their saying they had "no ability" to provide more.  No ability is right!!!!  My formal complaint to them, OFTEL and the Office of Fair Trading is in the post.   

  BT's attitude now is "well you can have 10mb now and that's all, tough luck".  

  No wonder BT are £30 billion in debt and their Board of Directors and non-executive Directors are being lynched by the shareholders.

  Known Space will shortly be on the move, yet again!  Check back for further news! 

  Other BTinternet customers also have strong views about this unpopular decision - if you want to help support this site - please sign the petition below (graphic removed - petition no longer active)

  Thank you for your assistance

27th March 2001

• Known Space gets two new Features!
  1. Its own FAQ
  2. Ringworld Movie Discussion Board

  FAQThis has been adapted from the original FAQ developed by Itamar Shtull-Trauring which is now no longer available.  Itamar decided to remove the FAQ because the information it contained was seriously out of date.The new FAQ (hosted by Bravenet.com) features a unique keyword searchable database which makes it very easy for the user to find information very quickly.  The FAQ currently contains over 50 questions and answers, but you, as fellow Niven fans can help us to add more!  If you cannot find an answer to your question, ask us directly.  Useful questions will be added to the FAQ database.

  Ringworld Movie Discussion Forum Yes it had to happen - with the pre-production of the Ringworld Movie imminent, Known Space has developed its own Movie Discussion Board.  If you have an issue with the casting choices, fx shots or the producers not sticking to the plot of the original novel, and you want to make you're views known, this will now be the place to do it (because lets face it, I think the casting choice debate has been done to death on the Newsgroups and Mailing Lists).

28th February 2000

• Known Space gets is own poll, courtesy of bravenet.com.  The current voting topic is:  Who built the Ringworld?  Use the button below to cast your vote now!

• Larry will be attending Albacon as Guest of Honor on 5-7 October 2001, the convention that put Schenectady in the science fiction map.  The Conference will be held in the Ramada Inn in Schenectady, New York.   You can find more information at the web page: http://www.albacon.org.

7th February 2000

• Larry Niven has given permission for some of his most recent short stories to be published on this site.  These include:
  
  • The Missing Mass published in Analog Magazine's Dec 2000 issue, and 
  • Smut Talk, which appeared in Playboy the year before.  

  If you weren't lucky enough to pick up a copy of either magazine, you can read the stories here on the site's new Exclusive Stories page.

9th January 2000

• Larry participated in an on line moderated conference for SciFi.com. The subject was "Welcoming 2001: On the Legacy of Sir Arthur Clarke", and other participants were Charles Sheffield, Gardner Dozois, Yoji Kondo and Mary Doria Russell. 

  You can read a transcript of it at http://www.scifi.com/transcripts/2001/arthurclarketribute.html

27th December 2000

• Larry has now signed a deal with Tor to produce the sequel to The Ringworld Throne.  Ringworld Child is now underway and should be ready for publication this time next year - watch this space.   See our Work-In-Progress Page for more information.

10th December 2000

• The Armageddon Conference has now been cancelled due to its proximity to the Green Line (a few kilometers) and the Palestinian town of Gennin.  Larry pulled out fearing a real Armageddon in the middle east.  To quote Larry "it got too scary".  There is a possibility that the conference may be held next year instead. 

19th November 2000

• Joel Nap retires from the co-management of Known Space due to family commitments.  We wish him well.

6th November 2000

• Space.com reports that the movie rumors surrounding the long-heralded Ringworld Movie finally has names attached to the project: Phil Tippett & Robert Mandel.

  The Hollywood Reporter, states that Phil Tippett is to direct and co-produce the film with Robert Mandel and it will be action orientated like other movies he has recently been involved with such as the highly praised Starship Troopers.   According to the Internet Movie Database, some of Phil Tippett's other works include designing the deadly Bugs for Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers which he also co-produced, creating the Dragon in Dragonheart, he was also visual effects supervisor for My Favourite Martian and he was the dino supervisor for Jurassic Park.  Phil was associate producer of Robocop and assisted with the ED-209 sequence.  Although not exactly a claim to fame - he came out from behind the scenes at ILM (George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic Inc.) and acted as an extra (behind an alien mask) in Star Wars, he also did  stop-motion imaging for ..... Howard the Duck!No production or release schedule is yet available about the movie project.

6th October 2000

• Ringworld is currently enjoying its 30th Anniversary of publication, to celebrate this, the list members of the Larry Niven Mailing List will be having an on-line get-together on 7th October 2000.  Larry himself should be in attendance.  Find out more here.

16 September 2000

• NBCI has taken over Xoom and the changeover has resulted in so many server outages it would make a Kzin scream and leap.  Known Space is on the move again and Nesssus has set up a new home for it here on BT Internet.  (Little did we know!!!!) As part of the move a new framed interface has been developed as well as a brand new welcome page - ok you can't really have a lake in space (unless you're orbiting Voy), but its a nice effect.

9 September 2000

• The Webring is no more - well its still there but has been swallowed up by Yahoo!  A new Larry Niven Ring has been created by Nesssus using Ringsurf which operates in the same way as the old ring.  Site maintainers of other sites in the ring are urged to transfer over their pages by joining the new ring.
• Larry Niven has written a new Novella called "Fly-by-Night" featuring the infamous Beowulf Shaefer.  The story is a sequel to Procrustes which featured in the short story collection published last year called "Crashlander".  The Novella has been published in the October edition of Asimovs' which should be hitting your local newstand very shortly.

July 2000

• Saturn's Race by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes is released.  Read the Kirkus review posted on the Amazon website.

10 March 2000

• Brenda Cooper advised the webmasters of an interview with Larry Niven that is posted here.

20 February 2000

• The Burning City, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is now released. It can be ordered through Amazon Books (there is a short review at this site) but it is obviously also in some American bookstores.

1st February 2000

• Known Space awarded the Exploding Globe award by the Fans on the Web for Best Site by a Live Author. They note that Larry is their favourite Hard SF Author.
• Rainbow Mars now available in the UK in paperback. Unfortunately for his US Fans, Amazon Books don't expect a mass-market paperback release until May 2000.

January 2000

• Short story: "Smut Talk", by Larry Niven, published in Playboy, vol 47 no 1
• Short story: "Loki", by Larry Niven, published in Analog, vol CXX no 1

14th August 1999

• New Media Links section added to the site containing a Ringworld Windows Theme (Windows Themes compatible) compiled by Nesssus and a couple of movie files of Ringworld flybys from Mark Woolrich and Perry Papadopoulos.

16 May 1999

• This date marks the first anniversary for the management of the "Known Space" pages by the "Knownspace" multinational trio of Nesssus, Ted and Joel (please address congratulations and criticisms of the Known Space pages to the three of us collectively).
• 
• Coinciding closely as it did with the recent award of "Site of the Week" by "Science Fiction Weekly", we think that we have something to celebrate, look what it did to the hit count for the month:

• Break out the Irish coffee, Blue Fire 2728 and Vurguuz! (Niven newbies please disregard the foregoing).

7th March 1999

• Rainbow Mars is now available. The story is set in Svetz's time-travelling universe (See Flight of the Horse) and features a huge Beanstalk on Mars. To read our review of it, please click here.

22nd February 1999

• A release date for Larry's next release, a story called Rainbow Mars has been set for 1st March. The story is set in Svetz's universe (See Flight of the Horse) and apparently he grows a large beanshoot, which he uses to travel to Mars. The book features as many fictional Marses that Larry could cram in. The title of the story is probably a mickey take on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars) but it should be an interesting read. It is currenly scheduled for a March 1999 release by Tor but you can pre-order a copy from Amazon books by clicking here now.

7th June 1998

• New Ringworld graphics site discovered at: http://www.hollowworld.com/ringworld/ringworld.html. This new site designed by Mark Woolrich left the authors of this site very impressed to say the least. Mark Woolrich has worked in collaboration with John C. Atkeson, whose previous Known Space art work can be found in several of the Graphical Site links in this very site (specifically Mark rendered the 3d Puppeteer Image standing in front of Fist-of-God which Nesssus now proudly displays on her pages - see right), has now created a website of his very own detailing a tour of the Ringworld.Mark has also coded a Ringworld fly-by movie which is excellent and lasts quite a bit longer than you expect it to. His Ringworld Scale page is also worth a looksee, but you have to read the text of the main pages to understand the significance of the cigar!

16th May 1998

• Duncan Galloway retires from Stewardship of Knownspace.
• Nesssus, Ted and Joel take over the running of the site.
• Known Space moves to http://members.xoom.com/Knownspace/ For personal reasons, Duncan Galloway has retired from maintaining this site and, rather than lose this valuable Niven resource, he offered the reins to Nesssus. Nesssus already has a full portfolio of Niven-related material on the web including The Larry Niven Webring and The Pierson's Puppeteers' Home Page and is also co-author with Joel Nap of the Kzin Home Page. Nesssus decided she needed a little help in maintaining this site and offered co-management to Ted Scribner (Krenon), maintainer of the Krenon's "larryniven-l" mail list page and Joel Nap (Keeper of the Paks).[Offered??? She gave us Hobson's choice! - EAS][At least Hobson had a choice, Ted]All have agreed that "Known Space" should be more of a community effort and any information and assistance from the wide variety of Niven fans would be most appreciated to keep this site the Number 1 Larry Niven reference point on the WWW. For those who have already read every word Larry Niven has written in the past, and who are constantly awaiting the next title to be published, we've begun a Work in Progress page. This will have any & all information about what Larry's currently involved in writing, what's awaiting publication, and what other projects he may be working on. Check it out.

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