"Larry Niven - Limits" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

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