Not so much stories as intellectual conjectures wrapped around paper thin plots. Entertaining at times but mostly dry and tedious...definitely not his best work. ( )

This 10-story collection is unbalanced inasmuch as eight of the stories are readable and half of thole are musts. But Niven inclujded two "Stories," one of which is no story, but an explanation of interstellar travel and sustanence abilities using severing forms of energy, and it seemed to be an essay developing his RINGWORLD concept and series. I thing Niven is a heluva imaginationist, but a bit weak of the craft of writing. ( )

Indeholder "Rammer", "The Alibi Machine", "The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club", "A Kind of Murder", "All the Bridges Rusting", "There Is a Tide", "Bigger Than Worlds", "$16,940.00", "The Hole Man", "The Fourth Profession".

"Rammer" handler om en optøet der tilbydes valget mellem rumpilot og sletning.
"The Alibi Machine" handler om tilvænning til instant transport selv som flugtmetode.
"The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club" handler om lommetyve og andre der udnytter flash crowds.
"A Kind of Murder" handler om hvordan man begår et mord og bruger en dislocation box.
"All the Bridges Rusting" handler om kolonisering af fremmede planeter med dislocation boxe fra JumpShift Inc til hjælp.
"There is a Tide" handler om Louis Gridley Wu på jagt efter en stasis box. I stedet finder han og en alien en klump neutronium med en farligt stor tyngdekraft.
"Bigger Than Worlds" handler om spekulationer over dyson spheres og endnu større konstruktioner.
"$16,940.00" handler om pengeafpresning.
"The Hole Man" handler om et meget lille sort hul på Mars.
"The Fourth Profession" handler om en bartender og en Monk der sælger viden på pilleform fx viden om at stjerneskibskaptajner kan udløse en nova med vilje.

Novellerne er godt håndværk og godt fortalt ( )

A very nice collection of short stories (and an article) by the creator of the Ringworld. In fact, some of them seem to be set in the same reality stream as that vaunted construct. Perhaps all of them.

The majority of these stories were previously published in a variety of magazines, but that doesn't make them any less entertaining. They may have also been published elsewhere, as a couple of them seemed familiar, but I had not read this volume prior to now, and I have not read any of the magazine issues they were previously published in. ( )

This is another collection of Niven short stories. Many of these stories delve into the social consequences of teleportation, and these are what you would expect from Niven - good technical stories.
There is two stories here that are worth the entire book in my opinion. The first is "The Fourth Profession".
This story starts off as a mystery: an alien that sells skills in pill form has given four pills to a bartender. The first three skills are easily figured out, but the fourth one is a more difficult, and raises ethical dilemmas. (One of which is that the overweight waitress that the bartender likes is now programmed to lose weight and become the perfect woman for him). None of these problems are given short-shrift - they are all well thought out, and weighed ethically.
The other story is "The Hole Man". This story is also not set in Niven's standard "Known Space" Universe. It starts out as a murder story, and ends up as something unsettling enough to be written by Stephen King.

As a signpost of changes within myself I use "The Fourth Profession" - how I respond to the dilemmas changes with time, and reveals how I handle dilemmas associated with free will and survival.