Though Larry Niven is best known for the Hugo- and Nebula-winning novel Ringworld, Neutron Star is in many ways an even more seminal book, both to Niven's Known Space future history and to SF in general.

"I feel better when it turns out that there are still hard science fiction writers among the younger generation. Ben Bova, for instance, writes hard science fiction, and so does Larry Niven [who] made it big and won a Hugo with his excellent story, 'Neutron Star.' "
     

Niven never wrestles to set the stage.

Whereas much Golden Age SF forced the reader to choke down enormous jagged chunks of ham-fisted exposition in order to understand what was going on, the stories in Neutron Star substitute deceptively "throwaway" lines and engaging, conspiratorial, conversational asides that all place the reader so effectively in Niven's world that everything seems logical, even natural.

It's as if Niven were describing his own neighborhood. One gets the feeling that no matter how much Niven shows of Known Space, he knows much, much more, and you wish you could take a look behind the scenes.

In its rejection of heavy-handed narrative devices, Neutron Star is very much indicative of what was going on in its day in SF.

In Niven's case though, there's much more going on. The Known Space series also marks a major turning point in terms of setting development, raising the bar for alien species design in particular.

Neutron Star marks the first appearance in book form of most of the unforgettable alien species that made Niven famous.

The pathologically cowardly and capitalistic Puppeteers, the sessile Grogs with their "disturbing substitute for hands," the warlike Kzinti, the monstrous Kdatlyno, the practical-joking Dolphins and the mysterious information-brokers the Outsiders who inhabit the lonely expanses between the stars all emerge here.

Each species is both fully realized and fully alien, with individuals developed as thoroughly as any human character. Niven ensured that alien technologies were unique to their native species' psychology and physiology, crafting yet another facet of a thoroughly believable whole.

The incredibly cautious Puppeteers, for example, create invulnerable starship hulls and spacesuits that will sustain life for years on end. The Kdatlyno "see" with sonar and create sculpture best experienced by humans through the senses of touch or taste.

The Outsiders, who prefer to see where they are going rather than travel in hyperspace, have the most powerful inertialess drive in Known Space, capable of decelerating from 0.8 lightspeed instantaneously.

These are only a few scant examples of Niven's imaginative savoir-faire. Again we wish he could see his notebooks...

Though the title story in Neutron Star won the 1966 Hugo, it's easy to see that Niven had only himself to beat in order to take the prize -- there is no story in the collection that is not a delight to read and reread.

"Neutron Star," inspired by an Isaac Asimov essay about curious gravity effects around neutron stars, amounts to a puzzle that the protagonist, the 7-foot albino star pilot Beowulf Shaeffer, must solve or be killed.

Hired by the Puppeteers to discover what could reach through their indestructible General Products starship hull and kill two scientists, Shaeffer nearly finds out the hard way.

"A Relic of the Empire" explores the ethics of murder in self-defense as a xenobiologist uses his intimate knowledge of the local flora to trick an entire crew of space pirates into killing themselves through sheer ignorance.

In "At the Core," the Puppeteers hire Beowulf Shaeffer for another suicide mission (will he never learn?). This time it's a trip to the galactic core; what he finds there will change Known Space forever, and set the stage for the novel Ringworld.

"The Soft Weapon" is also of particular interest to Ringworld fans, who will find the first appearance of Nessus, that book's manic-depressive Puppeteer protagonist.

If I had to pick a favorite story from this volume, this would be it -- Nessus and his two human companions are kidnapped by the Kzinti, who hope that the ancient weapon contained in a 1.5 billion-year-old stasis box will turn the balance of power, enabling them to finally conquer human space.

Our heroes prevent this from happening through guile and deductive reasoning that happens just outside the reader's awareness, creating an astonishing degree of suspense.

Beowulf Shaeffer returns in "Flatlander," accompanying a wealthy, quixotic Earthman on a journey to a truly unique planet. It nearly kills them, of course.

"The Ethics of Madness" is the odd man out in terms of time period -- all of the other stories cluster in the 27th century; this one is set two centuries earlier, and follows a series of minor failures in supposedly foolproof 25th-century psychiatry to the edge of the universe at relativistic speeds.

"The Handicapped" is a detailed and insightful exploration of alien evolutionary biology and human fear.

The final story, "Grendel," brings Beowulf Shaeffer back once more to rescue a kidnapped Kdatlyno sculptor in a partial retelling of "The Most Dangerous Game."

Neutron Star is not merely a true classic of science fiction, it is a relic of a bygone age. It was a first book which was also a collection of short stories published by a major house, Ballantine.

That would not happen today.

Single-author collections of short fiction -- as opposed to anthologies that either collect the best short fiction of a given year or explore a common theme through the stories of many authors -- rarely appear from major publishers, and then almost exclusively as part of a multi-book contract given to an established author with a very persistent agent.

The conventional wisdom is that such books early in an author's career (if ever -- see comment above containing the words "persistent agent") and will not sell in sufficient numbers to warrant attention from a big publisher.

If the author is lucky, his or her short work might be picked up for publication by a small press or anthologized in Gardner Dozois' or David Hartwell's annual "Best of" anthologies -- otherwise it will languish in the pages of the magazine in which it was originally published, forever out of print.

What's worse, however, is that the appalling lack of support for the short form given by the merger-and-downsize culture of corporate publishing is slowly choking the life out of the magazines themselves.

When you pick up your copy of Neutron Star at your local bookstore (and if you have read this far, I hope you will), take a look at the title page to see what a ludicrous lack of foresight this mindset reveals. This book is currently in its 25th printing and, as of April 2000, will begin its 33rd year in print.

It must have sold hundreds of thousands of copies in that time. To be sure, not every collection is Neutron Star, but if no-one takes a chance on repeating this feat, who will ever know?