The Smoke Ring

 

By Larry Niven

Sequel to The Integral Trees

First, a note about the "world" of the Smoke Ring. This is from Wikipedia, since it explains it much better than I could ever hope to. 

"The story occurs around the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star (abbreviated "Voy"). The gas giant Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits this star just outside its Roche limit and therefore its gravity is insufficient to keep its atmosphere, which is pulled loose into an independent orbit around Voy and forms a ring that is known as a gas torus. The gas torus is huge—one million kilometers thick—but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life. No "ground" exists in the Smoke Ring; it consists entirely of sky. Furthermore, the Smoke Ring is in orbit and therefore in free fall: there is no "up" or "down"."

The settlers of Citizen Tree are unexpectedly introduced to tree logging when a logger vessel approaches their tree. The logging vessel is on fire and the settlers rush  to help the loggers battle the flames. Four people are rescued but one doesn't make it, too badly hurt in the explosion that caused the fire. 

The newcomers are welcomed and it is assumed they will become part of Citizen Tree's small community. But the settlers didn't know about the logging and the propulsion system used to pilot the logging vessel. Most of which is centered around equipment brought to the Smoke Ring five hundred years ago by their ancestors from Earth. As the newcomers tell of their life of harvesting the integral trees and of bringing the wood to be sold at the market at the Admiralty, the settlers are intrigued. The Admiralty uses technology that came from Earth and it has quite a large population of several thousand humans compared to most of the communities surviving in the Smoke Ring. 

But Citizen Tree has technology too. It has a Silver Suit and a CARM vehicle which stands for Cargo And Repair Module. The Silver Suit is an armored space suit. 

Due to their five hundred plus years inhabiting the Smoke Ring, which is a weightless environment, most human have become much taller and much thinner. So the average person cannot fit into one of the Silver Suits. But occasionally a throwback is born which they call dwarfs. The dwarf humans are of a size to comfortably wear the space suit. 

Sailing above the Smoke Ring is the Discipline, the ship that brought humans to the Smoke Ring. It is being piloted by a computer that goes by the name of Kendy and Kendy is in contact with a few of the people of Citizen's Tree. Kendy wants to help humans survive more successfully and so it encourages a small group of settlers to take the CARM and travel to the Admiralty. They will be accompanied by two of the tree loggers who are familiar with the life and customs of those who run the Admiralty. 

They will have adventures and learn many things and meet many people and as Kendy monitors from above, it comes to realize that they don't really need its help or guidance and are quite capable of figuring things out on their own.

This was a more enjoyable read than the first book, The Integral Trees, simply because it concentrates less on the science and more on the story. It's really an adventure story and a bit lighter in tone than the first book was. It's a strange weird place for humans to be living, the Smoke Ring. And it does strange weird things to human bodies as they gradually adapt to life in a weightless environment. Certainly well worth reading.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Footfall

By Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

A new object appears in the night sky and it becomes apparent that it is no natural object and that it is headed to our planet. Humans are excited and fearful, especially as the object does not respond to human efforts to communicate.
Upon arriving, the object, a massive interstellar spaceship, attacks the space station, killing some of the astronauts and capturing several others, mostly Russians and one American congressman.
The aliens are large beings, looking somewhat like a baby elephant, except they have two trunks and their feet are clawed. They are herd animals and have strong herd instincts, even to going insane if separated from their herd for too long.
The alien home world is in trouble, and this ship has been sent out to establish a new home. They intend to conquer Earth, enslave humanity and incorporate them into their herd.
Their weaponry is better than anything humans have and they pretty much rule the sky, blasting anything that they deem offensive. They establish a beachhead in Kansas and force people to surrender to them. Once surrender is accepted, the aliens expect you to stay surrendered. They are shocked and very angry when surrendered humans launch attacks guerrilla attacks against occupying forces. The aliens respond harshly, destroying everyone they consider to be connected to the renegades.
Meanwhile, the captives from the space station and a few more taken from Earth are put to work on the spaceship doing menial chores, mainly cleaning ducts and working in the garden. They use this limited freedom to spy on the aliens and plot against them.
Back on Earth,  the Americans and Russians pool their remaining resources and launch several nuclear bombs on the alien foothold in Kansas. The surprise attack works and the alien base is destroyed. But in response, the aliens launch a large asteroid against the Earth, which smashes into the Indian Ocean and kills millions and throws Earth's climate into chaos.  They promise to send down more asteroids if humans do not stop fighting and surrender. So humans surrender. Or do they? Maybe humanity has one more act of defiance up its sleeve.

This was an OK story. It was very long and had way too many characters to keep track of. Plus I liked the aliens, I thought they were interesting and had a lot to offer. I would have liked a different ending, with the two sides coming together instead of one defeating the other.

 

The Mote in God's Eye

By Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Set in the far future, at a time when people have spread out into the galaxy, by virture of the invention of an almost instantaneous starship drive, the Alderson Drive. Another piece of priceless technology is the Langston Field, a kind of energy field used to protect ships and cities from attack.
Humankind had never found intelligent aliens before. So news of an alien ship required careful investigation. Sent out to meet the ship is the MacArthur, a battlecruiser. But the alien ship fires on the MacArthur and the alien ship is then captured, but no one is left alive on board.
So the MacArthur and another ship, the Lenin, are sent to the system where the alien ship originated. The MacArthur is to make contact and the Lenin is to insure that valuable human technology does not fall into alien hands, even to the point of destroying both the MacArthur and itself.
Upon reaching the asteroid belt around the home planet of the Moties, as they are being called, the MacArthur is approached by a Motie mining vessel, manned by a lone Motie Engineer and a bunch of small Moties, called Watchmakers. The Motie engineer consents to board the MacArthur and brings along two of the small Moties. These Watchmaker Moties are tinkerers and have a knack for improving the workings of machinery and tools. The humans mistakenly dismiss the small Moties as mere pets of the engineer and are not too concerned when they get loose on the MacArthur.
Meanwhile the ships move in closer to the Motie home planet and are greeted by a ship carrying a delegation of Moties assigned to communicate with and study the aliens (humans) entering their home territory.
At first, it seems like the Moties are gentle and welcoming and many of the human experts feel they are mostly harmless. But some have reservations, especially when a plague of Watchmaker Moties irrupts aboard the MacArthur.
What the humans don't know and the Moties don't want them to know, is that the Moties have a secret, a secret that could threaten the very survival of the human species.

This was a pretty good story, if rather long. It has a kind of sad ending, as the Moties secret results in the humans blockading the Motie system to keep the Moties penned up. Moties are very appealing aliens and it is too bad the authors couldn't think of a happier ending for them.

The Legacy of Heorot

By Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes

Beowulf came to Heorot Hall to fight Grendel, the monster plaguing the people there. He was a professional monster killer and he soon took care of the terrible Grendel.
Like Beowulf, Cadmann Weyland is also a professional, a security expert with a military background. He alone of the 200 people settling on an island of the planet Tau Ceti Four sees a need for caution and defensive measures. But most of the settlers believe they have landed in a near paradise with a benign climate and no predators beyond a pterodactyl-like flying animal. They sneer at Cadmann's warnings and precautions and claim he is creating problems to justify his position.
But after months of calm, Cadmann is proven correct when a monster makes its presence known and many settlers die before it can be overcome.
Once this fierce predator is revealed, the settlers proceed to hunt down and destroy them all. What they don't know is that they have disturbed their island's ecosystem and that, as far as monsters go, they ain't seen nothing yet...

This was an OK story, typical science fiction horror story. It's not a genre I usually read or enjoy. It's a lot like the movie Alien, brave humans struggling to outwit and survive a terrible and strange beast bent on killing them all.

A Gift from Earth

By Larry Niven

A colony has been established on a hostile planet. The only place fit for humans is on a high plateau. Below the plateau, the atmosphere is deadly and it is boiling hot.
After being established, a peculiar social system arose in the colony. The space ship crew became the elites, and the settlers the downtrodden masses. As a result, the punishment for crimes, even fairly mild crimes, such as traffic tickets, was death. The reason for the harsh punishment was to supply the crew with body parts for transplants to extend their lives beyond the normal seventy to eighty years. Needless to say, this created a lot of anger and resentment among the settlers. And of course, rebels.
Matthew Keller, a miner, accidentally fell in among the rebels when he came to a party at rebel headquarters. The police raided and captured most of the rebels but Matthew managed to escape. Problem is, he is now a hunted man. And since he now has nothing to lose and nowhere to run he decides on a bold plan: he will try to rescue the captives before they are executed and cut up for their organs. And why does he decide to risk his life for a bunch of people he barely knows? Because there was this really cute girl at the party and he just has to get to know her better.

The premise of this book doesn't really ring true and neither does Matthew's decision to stage a one-man raid on police headquarters to rescue his lady love who seemed completely indifferent to his charms. But despite that, this is an interesting and exciting story even though set in a rather unlikely location. I mean, why would any one establish a colony on a planet that only has one small location that is livable? However, if you can accept the premise, it makes for a very good read. I liked Matthew and his weird talent and I enjoyed reading his story.