Short Stories by Collection

This page lists short stories and articles by Larry Niven, which have been published in anthologies and compendia.

There is a complete bibliography of Larry Niven's works, available on the bibliography page. The links below will display the entries in the bibliography for each particular work.

Bridging the Galaxies

Illustrated by Alicia Austin, San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions Inc. 1993. A special publication for ConFrancisco, the 51st World Science Fiction Convention at which Larry Niven and Alicia Austin were Honoured Guests. It is extremely rare. Ted Scribner proudly owns a copy signed by the author.

Very Rare, but sometimes seen on amazon.com as a used book. Click the book cover to check availability.

The Convergent Series, Ballantine, 1979.

In the introduction to this volume of some of Larry's older works, he mentions that the anthology The Shape of Space is now very difficult to find, having been out of print for many years. Many of the stories originally published in that collection can also be found in this book, and they are well worth a read. There are no real Known Space stories in the collection, and in fact the settings and styles are very diverse, but the overall readability is excellent and this collection is highly recommended.

This collection is currently out of print but is usually available used from amazon.com.

Click on the book cover to check availability.

Crashlander

A collection of all the Beowulf Shaeffer stories including background later stories, including Ringworld. This is an excellent book and highly recommended. All but two of the stories have appeared previously in Neutron Star.

This book also contains new material which connects the five older stories into a more consistent narrative. The new story, Procrustes (previously published only in the comparatively rare Bridging the Galaxies) contains the ultimate use of the ultimate autodoc!

The Draco Tavern,Tor, 2006

Sometime after humanities' first contact with an advanced alien race called the Chirpsithtra, Rich Schumann opened a bar at Mount Forel Spaceport which served as a watering hole for wandering spacers and aliens alike.

Larry Niven has collected twenty seven stories set in the universe of the Draco Tavern, in this great collection, including six new stories. This volume is a must. Highly recommended.

The Flight of the Horse, Ballantine, June 1971. (#64).

This collection contains Flash Crowd, a teleportation story with links to a current phenomena, the Flash Mob. This story explores the problems encountered by society with the advent of cheap and widespread teleportation used for public transport. The other stories are all concerned with Niven'sunique perspective on time travel, except for the last story which is set in the same fantasy setting as The Magic Goes Away.

This collection also serves as a backdrop for Rainbow Mars and in some editions of Rainbow Mars the stories listed on the right are included as a bonus, which is just as well because the original collection is out of print.

This collection is currently out of print but is usually available used from www.amazon.com.

The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton

Three SF detective stories featuring Gil Hamilton, the cop with an invisible arm. Although this title is out of print, each of these stories was later published in the Flatlander collection which was published in 1995 and is in print.

This collection is currently out of print but is usually available used from www.amazon.com.

Click on the book cover to check availability.

N-Space, Tor Books, September 1990.

This is a collection of stories from a variety of timelines and some stories from no timeline. There are a few Known Space stories and some excerpts from Known Space novels. There is some other stuff like Niven’s Laws and Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex. Other material includes anecdotes about Larry Niven by various other authors such as Steve Barnes and Frederick Pohl.

Niven’s Laws, Owlswick Press

Published for the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, 1984. Like Bridging the Galaxies, this was a special publication for a Science Fiction Convention, in this case PhilCon, 1984. The image to the right is the title page of this book which Carol Phillips got Larry to sign as a present for Ted.

Very Rare, but sometimes seen on amazon.com as a used book. Click the book cover to check availability.

Playgrounds of the Mind, Tor Books, October 1991.

This book is more or less a sequel to N-Space. Like N-Space, there is not much here that isn’t published elsewhere. It contains short stories, exerpts from novels (some collaborative), essays and anecdotes. The significance of the title is a reference to the notion that creative sf writers such as Larry Niven make future universes and populate them with characters, human and alien, of their own devising. People come after and fiddle around with the lives and deeds of these and other characters, some tacking on annexes to the universe, others adding new alien species. This is analagous to playing in someone else’s playground. It is quite OK if you comply with the rules of the owner, and Larry Niven’s playground is his under the terms of copyright laws. So popular has it become, however, that it has been opened up to a limited extent for other authors to make their own creations and these have been published in the Man-Kzin Wars series (now numbering eight plus a "best of"), The Magic May Return and More Magic.

Scatterbrain, Tor, August 2003

A round up of Larry’s short stories and articles which have been published in recent years. Great for the Niven fans who managed to miss an issue of Analog, or Asimov and missed a new Niven short story.

When compiling this anthology, Tor discovered that they had way too much material, so expect a second volume - provisionally entitled Scatterbrain II - to be published next year.

Tales of Known Space, Ballantine, August 1975.

This collection is an invaluable guide to the entire assortment of Known Space stories and novels. Not only does it include short stories set from our present time through to far in the future, but it also includes various general information supplied by the author and a timeline which fits all of the stories into a chronology of future history, with the major social, political and technological developments also indicated.