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Larry Niven Listen to this show
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On Monday - February 21st, 2005 - our guest on Hour 25 was noted author Larry Niven chatting with us about his books and the art and craft of writing. Larry Niven is an author whose writing has played a big part in making science fiction what it is today. He has done this by gleefully exploring the implications of ideas arising from science, history and just about every phase of human activity. And he does this with such insight that his stories make you think about the world around you in ways that might otherwise not have occurred to you. But more than that, his stories are well crafted and entertaining. Fiction doesn't get any better than that. |
 Image Copyright © 2005 Suzanne Gibson All Rights Reserved |
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Larry Niven is the master of the art of asking the next question. His stories explore the implications new ideas, and follow them to their natural conclusion. For example... Lots of people have imagined that organ transplants would become affordable and reliable and used that as an element of their science fiction. But Larry asked the next question. How large would the demand for fresh organs become if anyone could extend their life by replacing their organs as they failed? Where would the raw material for all those transplants come from? How would society keep the organ banks full? Certainly criminals who had committed murder might repay their debt to society by becoming unwilling organ donors. Unfortunately that would probably not provide enough fodder for the organ banks. But murder isn't the only way to destroy someone's life. You can rob them of their life's savings or destroy their livelihood in some other way. So those people would, with little argument, end up in the organ banks. But where would it stop? How would society balance the almost unlimited demand for organ transplants with the limited supply of organs? For Larry's take on this problem you should check out his short story "The Jigsaw Man". And then hope that when the problem of organ legging becomes even bigger than it currently is, society will have found a better answer. Or what about alternate history? That's a popular sub-genre of science fiction and one that I enjoy. But Larry had to go and ask that next question. What if people really understood that every choice they made was remade on an infinite number of worlds with all of the possible choices playing out somewhere, sometime. How would they react? Would they change the decisions they made? Would their ideas of right and wrong change? Go read "All the Myriad Ways" and see if you ever think about alternate history in the same way again. Larry's approach to science fiction is a model of the scientific method. There you observe the world, form theories to explain what you see and then test those theories by asking the next question by requiring them to make a testable prediction about something else you might observe. And that is how Larry crafts his stories. He takes an idea and then asks the next question, and the next one and the one after that until he has followed that first idea to its logical conclusion. While making sure that the journey is filled with interesting events and characters, plot twists and resolutions and all those other things that are a part of great fiction. Don't miss any of his books. They are all most highly recommended. |
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Dateline: Mars
NASA is releasing all of the images from the two Mars Exploration Rovers almost as soon as they arrive at JPL. The raw images for the Spirit rover can be found at the following Web Page and raw images for Opportunity can be found here. The images that have been released to the press, along with animations and explanatory text, can be found here. You can find larger versions of the images shown below at that last NASA Web Site.
Opportunity |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Here's a picture of an unexpected discovery that was recently made by the Opportunity rover. A meteorite on the surface of Mars. When you think about how rare such finds are on the Earth, it is truly amazing that such a discovery should be made on another world by a spacecraft exploring just a tiny fraction of that planet's surface. But like Harry Turtledove has said, "Real life does not have to be believable, it just has to have happened". |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Here you see an overhead view of Endurance crater showing the heatshield that protected Opportunity when it entered the Martian atmosphere. Now that Opportunity has completed its exploration of Endurance crater it will be spending some time checking out that heatshield so that engineers back on Earth can learn how well it worked and come up with even better systems for use on future spacecraft. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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In this image you see that heatshield and some other debris. That orange 'splotch' is where the heatshield hit the ground and created a small crater that dug up light colored material from just below the surface of Mars.
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 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Here is a close up image of the heatshield. The impact actually turned the heatshield inside out like an umbrella that has been popped open by a strong wind. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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This picture shows two images of the color calibration target on Opportunity taken approximately a year apart. There has been some accumulation of dust, but not much. This is probably because a chance gust of wind cleaned off the rover a few months ago. Compare this picture to the corresponding picture from Spirit shown below and you'll see just how dirty a spacecraft can get on Mars. {I guess exploration really is a dirty job.} |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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I love pictures of the rover's tracks on the sands of Mars. They point the way back to the places we have been and remind us of the wonders that await us in those places where no tracks have yet been made. |
Spirit |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Here's a true color image of the surface of Mars showing the tracks left by Spirit as it continues its exploration of Mars. Don't you wish you were seeing this with your own eyes directly, and not in a picture taken by a robotic surrogate? |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Shown in the image above is a cable tie, it's a cousin to those 'twisties' you use to tie up your trash bags back on Earth, that has been jiggling around on the top of Spirit while it roves about on Mars. The tracks left by this cable tie provide a unique, if hard to interpret, record of the rover's travels. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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This image shows the dust that has accumulated on the color calibration target on Spirit over the course of the last year. Notice how the colors are obscured by the red dust of Mars. The accumulation of dust on Spirit is starting to interfere with the rover's ability to operate since this dust is severely reducing the amount of power that can be generated by the solar panels on the rover. |
Dateline: Saturn/Titan
Information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, including the newest released images from Huygens, can be found at this ESA Web Site. The University of Arizona Web Site for the imaging system used to take these pictures has much information about how they were obtained and processed as well as a collection of processed and unprocessed images.The Huygens probe carried a microphone and recorded the various sounds that it heard while descending to the surface of Titan. You can listen to those sounds at this Web Page sponsored by the Planetary Society.
Information about the Cassini mission can be found at the Project's Official Web Site at JPL. Pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft can be found by going to this JPL Web Page.
 Image Credit: ESA/NASA/University of Arizona |
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This mosaic of three images was taken while the Huygens probe was descending to the surface of Titan. It clearly shows what looks to be a river channel, fed by smaller streams, that flows into a smooth low lying region. Might that smooth area be the shore of a lake? Or is it a smooth plain, perhaps the remnant of a vanished ocean or other body of liquid. Only time - lubricated by hard work and lots of analysis - will tell. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Craters are common on most planets in the solar system. It is only on places like the Earth, where active geology and erosion can erase them, that craters are rare. Very few craters have been seen in the images and radar maps created during Cassini's flybys of Titan. This suggests that Titan, like the Earth, may be geologically active. None the less, there are craters on Titan. This image shows one of them and it's big, over 400 km in diameter. If you look in the lower left corner of this picture you can see what looks like a stream channel on the rim of the crater. This shows that the geology of Titan promises to be an interesting combination of features seen on Earth and other planets. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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This image shows another crater on Titan, though this one is much smaller - less than 40 km in diameter. Studies of these craters and how they have been modified by various geologic forces promise to tell us much about the geologic history of Titan. |
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 Copyright © 2003 Suzanne Gibson All Rights Reserved |
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Larry Niven
Tsunami Relief PO Box 37243 Washington, DC 20013 (800)-HELP NOW PO Box 17090 Baltimore, MD 21203-7090 800-736-3467 PO Box 2247 New York, NY 10116-2247 (888) 392-0392 Asia Earthquake Fund PO Box 1211 Albert Lea, MN 56007-1211 Space News - Mars Space News - The Cassini Mission to Saturn For On-Going Updates on Space News ISS News Space Related Organizations If you are interested in learning more about current space activities there are many local and national organizations you might want to know about. Joining these organizations and taking part in their activities is a good way to stay abreast of things going on in space as well as a way to show your support for those activities. Listed below are some of those organizations. Click here for information about the audio files used for Hour 25 and for information about configuring your browser and downloading audio players. |
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