"Down in Flames" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

D O W N I N F L A M E S

OUTLINE FOR AN UNWRITTEN EPIC NOVEL
BY LARRY NIVEN

(c) 1977 by Larry Niven

The following requires some explanation. At least!
On January 14, 1968, Norman Spinrad and I were at a party thrown by Tom
& Terry Pinckard. We were filling coffee cups when Spinny started this
whole thing.
``You ought to drop the known space series,'' he said. ``You'll get
stale.'' (Quotes are not necessarily dead accurate.)
I explained that I was writing stories outside the ``known space''
history, and that I would give up the series as soon as I ran out of things
to say within its framework. Which would be soon.
``Then why don't you write a novel that tears it to shreds? Don't just
abandon known space. Destroy it!''
``But how?'' (I never asked why. Norman and I think alike in some
ways.)
``Start with the premise that the whole thing is a shuck. There never
was a chain reaction of novae in the galactic core. There aren't any
Thrintun. It's all a gigantic hoax. Write it that way. Then,'' Spinny
said, ``if the fans write letters threatening to lynch you, you write back
saying, `It's only a story . . . . ' ''
We found a corner. During the next four hours we worked out the
details. Some I rejected. Like, he wanted to make the Tnuctipun into
minions of the Devil. (Yes, the Devil.) Like, he wanted me to be
inconsistent. I can't do that, not on purpose.
The incredible thing is that when we finished, we did indeed have a
consistent framework. I wrote it up during the following week, as a set of
assumptions and a plot outline. It would have been the longest of my
novels up to that time.
What happened?
About April 1968, I ran into an idea called a Dyson sphere. It gripped
my imagination. I designed a compromise structure, less roomy, but with
some distinct advantages: the Ringworld is prettier, it's got gravity
without the unlikelihood of gravity generators, and you can see the sky.
So I wrote Ringworld, and then Protector, and then the three
SF-detective novelettes lumped under The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton. In 1968
the ``known space'' history included about 250,000 words. In 1977 it's
more than twice that large, and some of the assumptions in Down in Flames
have gotten lost.
So I was writing Ringworld, and I gave the Down in Flames material to
Tom Reamy for his fanzine Trumpet. The material wasn't all that consistent
or well organized; it was done for my own benefit, and I stopped halfway.
It's nine years later, and I can't resist the impulse to put the thing
into better shape. Those of you who haven't read any of the ``known
space'' series are going to find it incredibly cryptic, and what can I do