Books: Fleet of Worlds Books 1, 2, and 5

Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
Juggler of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
Fate of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

Summary: As a physics loving kid growing up in rural Northern California my sources for physics were few and far between. Mostly there was the county library. I learned calculus from a textbook in the library (when I went back a decade later, my checkout date was still stamped on the circulation slip, only ten people or so had checked it out after me over the course of a decade.) The first edition of Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler taught me hyperbolic trigonometry before normal trigonometry. But there was no physics text book. Instead I turned to the vast archive of Scientific American magazines, the pop-sci physics books, and eventually, for Christmas one year, I got a college physics textbook.

In addition to this, of course, there was also the science fiction section. Hard science fiction in particular was something I ate up. In this mode I first encountered Larry Niven. His Ringworld is a wonderful novel, but more importantly Niven did try to bring in valid theoretical physics to his novels. So, when November of 2016 hit, and I found myself in need of withdrawal from news, I decided reading some Niven would be my comfort food. It was this that led me to pick up book 5 of the Fleet of Worlds pentalogy. Oops, wrong order. So then I read book 1. And discovered that I head read it years before. So then I read book 2. Book 1 is the story of the revolt of captured humans from Puppateers. Book 2 is the other side of a bunch of “known space” stories from the perspective of paranoid detective Sigmund Ausfaller. Book 5 is the final cleaning up.

Rating: Book 2 is very disjointed if you haven’t read much other work set in Niven’s “known space”. Book 1 and 5 are both big plot focused, there is still a bit of the hard science fiction in both that I enjoyed. I’ve never read Niven for his characterization, but I did enjoy the attempt in these books to show events from different alien perspectives. If your a known space junky these books are a good read, otherwise, I’d recommend other Niven material like Ringworld or the Mote in Gods Eye.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *