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A review by jonathanpalfrey
A Hole in Space by Larry Niven
3.0
This is quite a decent collection, all the stories are just about rereadable, although my fondness for them varies. My favourite by a long way is “The Fourth Profession”, which I’d already read somehow before buying this book in 1976.
After buying it and reading it, as with all collections of short stories, I didn’t normally reread the book as a whole, but dipped into it and reread the odd story from time to time.
The “Rammer” story is OK as a bit of a curiosity. It’s also available as the first chapter of the novel [b:A World Out of Time|64725|A World Out of Time (The State, #1)|Larry Niven|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388988844l/64725._SY75_.jpg|1634535]; perhaps the best part? I seem to have read the novel twice but have almost no memory of it now.
The next three stories are about the social consequences of displacement booths: instantaneous matter-transmission technology. Mildly interesting.
Then “All the Bridges Rusting” is about the effect of matter transmission on space travel.
I’m quite fond of “There Is a Tide”, in which a man looking casually for Slaver stasis boxes finds something else that just happens to look like a stasis box. Slaver stasis boxes hark back to Niven’s first novel, [b:The World of Ptavvs|218463|The World of Ptavvs (Known Space)|Larry Niven|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1392285253l/218463._SY75_.jpg|1787391], which I’m also fond of.
“Bigger Than Worlds” is a non-fiction essay about Dyson spheres, Ringworlds, and the like.
The next two stories are fairly forgettable, and then the book ends with “The Fourth Profession”, which I’m very fond of—although it’s a hard science-fiction story with a mischievous touch of added fantasy, which I don’t approve of in principle but can’t help liking in this case.
After buying it and reading it, as with all collections of short stories, I didn’t normally reread the book as a whole, but dipped into it and reread the odd story from time to time.
The “Rammer” story is OK as a bit of a curiosity. It’s also available as the first chapter of the novel [b:A World Out of Time|64725|A World Out of Time (The State, #1)|Larry Niven|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388988844l/64725._SY75_.jpg|1634535]; perhaps the best part? I seem to have read the novel twice but have almost no memory of it now.
The next three stories are about the social consequences of displacement booths: instantaneous matter-transmission technology. Mildly interesting.
Then “All the Bridges Rusting” is about the effect of matter transmission on space travel.
I’m quite fond of “There Is a Tide”, in which a man looking casually for Slaver stasis boxes finds something else that just happens to look like a stasis box. Slaver stasis boxes hark back to Niven’s first novel, [b:The World of Ptavvs|218463|The World of Ptavvs (Known Space)|Larry Niven|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1392285253l/218463._SY75_.jpg|1787391], which I’m also fond of.
“Bigger Than Worlds” is a non-fiction essay about Dyson spheres, Ringworlds, and the like.
The next two stories are fairly forgettable, and then the book ends with “The Fourth Profession”, which I’m very fond of—although it’s a hard science-fiction story with a mischievous touch of added fantasy, which I don’t approve of in principle but can’t help liking in this case.