Scatterbrain (2003) SSC

by Larry Niven

  I’m told I don’t have to buy such a limited right. I don’t care. Your supplementary material is easily worth the price in terms of the time you’ve saved me.

  I deem the $500 flat fee to cover not only your material from the Ringworld Game (of which I photocopied just about every section on your list) but also your letters and the material that came with them. By cashing this check you express yourself to be in enthusiastic agreement.

  Chaosium have expressed themselves as delighted with the use I intend to make of their material. They also suggested (as you did) that you should be asked to write one of the stories. God knows you’ve researched the background. I’ll pass the suggestion to my coeditor, Jim Baen.

  Be braced for the possibility that we will plan for two books. We may take the stories in order of appearance; or you may be invited to submit for the second book. If you’re asked to submit a story, be aware that it may be turned down. That happens even to me.

  Best wishes,

  Larry

  3/3/2003: Nine tales of the Man-Kzin Wars are published with a tenth in the pipeline.

  Larry Niven

  Epilogue: What I Tell Librarians

  It’s an August day, hot outside, air-conditioned in. The pool is open. I’ll try it in a minute. Swimming is good for the recovering muscles of my leg.

  I tore up my left knee April 12, 2001. One Dr. Friedland opened it up April 18, drilled holes in the kneecap, and reattached the quadriceps tendon along a Dacron strip. This was the same thing President Clinton did to himself during his first term. He was recovered six months later, I’m told.

  Today is August 14. I’m rid of the leg brace. That means I can wear long pants! The brace runs from hip to ankle, and it always slips down; in shorts I can reach to adjust it.

  This whole four months has been a string of rites of passage.

  There was the day I could make my own breakfast. I wrote up the experience and sent it out as e-mail afterward, to everyone I’d complained to after the accident. I’m printing it here in full:

  Breakfast

  Though I’ve lost count of the weeks, it strikes me that I owe all of you a progress report on my life. Trouble is, nothing much changes when you’re laid up.

  I’m still not allowed to bend my left leg.

  For 21/2 weeks I was in a cast. I’ve been in a leg brace for 3. The brace is just like a cast except I can open it and wash my leg.

  I can’t go upstairs, so I’m camping out in the den downstairs in a rented hospital bed. Jerry Pournelle and Eric Pobirs have set up my computer equipment in the library.

  I can write. I did 1600 words yesterday on Burning Tower. Friday the Pournelles took me on a research mission to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, claiming that museums are wheelchair-friendly. They were dead right, and the display of Olmec history was invaluable.

  My skills as an invalid grow. I hope my knee is growing back together too. So I wait.

  What I want to tell you about is making breakfast.

  Six weeks after the accident, five weeks after the operation, yesterday Marilyn asked, “Can I sleep late tomorrow morning?” She hasn’t done that since the accident. She was even leery about sleeping upstairs.

  I said, “Sure.”

  “Can you make your own breakfast?”

  “Sure.” I’d done it before, up to a point.

  It’s morning. Marilyn bought a papaya; I saw it in the fridge. I want half the papaya, toast with peanut butter and jam, and a cappuccino.

  Step one: use the walker, hopping on one foot. I can’t carry anything with the walker, but I can turn around with something in one hand, the other on the walker. I go to the refrigerator and get the papaya, peanut butter, jam, putting them on the island. (It’s an island kitchen.) I get a knife from the knife rack. (From the wheelchair it’s too high.) Cut the papaya. Clean out the seeds. I bag half and put it back in the fridge. I put toast in the toaster oven.

  Forget any of that and I lose two or three minutes.

  Step two: hop back to the den, transfer to the wheelchair. Marilyn found me a box-shaped carry thing with a strap. The strap goes around my waist. I can carry anything solid in my lap now. I can’t carry fluids.

  I put a plate in the carry thing. The toaster pops and I put that in the plate and move it to the island. I deal with the toast. I roll into the dining room where there’s a new translation of the Odyssey. Eat and read.

  What’s left? The cappuccino.

  I’ve got an expresso and cappuccino maker in the bar. The bar is two steps down. For weeks I thought that couldn’t be done. Then a trip to visit Tim and Shannon Griffin hit me with a two-step, and I found out I could do it with the walker.

  So: get the walker. Lunge to place the walker, hop two steps down. Pour grounds, run the coffee, add milk and sugar, steam it all. Marilyn has to keep milk and ground coffee supplied; I can’t carry anything with the walker. But I can turn around and put coffee on the bar proper.

  What I can’t do is take it anywhere.

  I can carry a magazine in the wheelchair. I put a magazine where I’m going to be. I try to use a normal chair there, but my straight leg defeats me. So I hop the walker to the wheelchair and sit in that while I drink my cappuccino.

  Somewhere in there the cat nags me into feeding her. All that takes is the carry thing, if the cat will only get out of my way and let me wheel into the pantry…

  Breakfast.

  It’s a lifestyle. I can hope it won’t last more than six months.

  When the cast came off I could wash my leg with a moisturizing wipe. Luxuries beyond your wildest dreams. The day I was allowed to set my left foot on the ground, I went upstairs to my own bed. A day later I fit myself into a dry bathtub, ran water, bathed, let the water drain and dried myself there, Marilyn supervising, and didn’t try to move until the leg brace was back on. One day I was allowed to bend the knee, not by bloody much, but still. One day I sat in a barber’s chair and got a haircut! Though the leg wasn’t quite that flexible.

  Getting independent was always the goal. I’ve been on the other side of this, when Marilyn’s back problem had her paralyzed. (An operation healed her. That’s rare, it seems.) So I knew I was holding her prisoner. Early on, she had to feed me. She had to drive me everywhere. Manipulating the wheelchair, lifting it in and out of the wagon, folding it, getting the footrests back in place, was a hell of a lot of work for her. We were glad to send it back.

  One day I knew I could still write fiction. I was afraid I’d lost that ability, grown too self-involved as a handicapped person.

  Today, stretching first, I can pedal a stationary bike, both feet going all the way around. “Go past the comfort zone,” my physical therapists have been saying. Right. I can drive (Marilyn is grateful). I can swim. A minute ago the cat lured me into chasing her in a sort of wobbling jog.

  Rites of passage.

  It’s like growing up. Every day it’s a little better. The leg stretches a little more, supports a little more weight. It’s the opposite of growing old.

  Next time you see a fogey grinning on crutches or a wheelchair, that’s the answer. He’s injured, but he’s learning new skills, and he’s improving. He can see it happening. If children knew what we knew, they’d grin all the time too.

  An hour ago I found myself jittery with the urge to be someone else. Symptoms: restlessness, a dither as to what to do next, mind running around inside its cage.

  I assume this is normal for a writer. I’ve had it all my life.

  What bothers me is that I noticed. I didn’t go straight into thinking like Twisted Cloud or Louis Wu or whatever character I’m currently working with. I learn to know my characters from the inside, rarely noticing what they look like, but learning how they think and react. Today, with three novels looking at me and several possible short stories, why am I thinking about who I am?

  Who a writer is, is not of primary importance. A writer who thinks writing is the only interesting profession, isn’t likely
to write well about anyone else, is he?

  But, being in an introspective mood, I’ll work on Scatterbrain.

  My first short stories were shaped by my presumption—not always a fact—that I know something the Reader doesn’t. Here, let me show you something wonderful! Pluto on fire…the inside of a telepath’s mind…the real Venus…Earth after time stops its rotation…the laws after organ transplants become easy…

  But several things have happened in the past thirty-five years.

  First, the science fiction field is crowded with fine writers. They’re popping up faster than I can learn their names.

  Second…well, the computer has changed the writing profession beyond recall. It’s a magic typewriter: it erases mistakes faster than they can be made. Writing has become much easier for me, and for all my competition too.

  Of this year’s contenders for the Hugo, each one would have been a sure thing when I began writing.

  Third, computer and Internet access have made knowledge available on every conceivable subject. Isaac Asimov once wrote of “the sound of panting,” the difficulty he had keeping up with advances in the sciences. Today he’d complain that everyone else learns it all just as fast as he does.

  What can I do? Writers don’t retire. What would I retire from, if every passing stimulus starts a daydream? We tell stories to ourselves. If we’re lucky, someone else wants to hear them too.

  Besides, sometimes I do see something nobody else has seen. Sometimes I can beat the rest of the field into print. I enjoy that.

  Another matter: how do I know when I’m at work?

  Everything I see or do could spark a story, or story scene, or character.

  Anything interesting in my life should be tax deductible, right? Right down to good restaurants, given the way all my main characters seem to be turning into chefs. (It happened after I quit smoking. My taste buds grew back.)

  Once upon a time I had myself persuaded that I was getting my best ideas in bars. I’m glad that didn’t last. It turns out that ideas come from everywhere. Take…ants.

  Ants drive Marilyn crazy. I don’t have to wait for them to drive me crazy; we do something about them long before that happens. Assuming that creation derives from a god or gods, that it all has some purpose, what is the point of ants?

  Thinking like this can be valuable.

  For instance: The Ringworld is a huge artificial habitat. Its ecology isn’t in balance, isn’t Gaea-esque. It never was intended to be. Protector-stage protohumans (a key invention in the “known space” series) seeded the Ringworld with whatever creations they thought would improve the comfort of their breeders. They didn’t bring mosquitoes or jackals. If the ecology got out of whack, they’d fiddle where needed.

  When the protectors disappeared, the breeders began to evolve, began to move into empty ecological niches. The author has had a lot of fun with that.

  I got quite a different answer when writing of the Warlock’s era, fourteen thousand years ago, when magic was running out on Earth. The Warlock’s world eventually evolves into our own. What are ants doing there?

  This is how the shaman Twisted Cloud explained it in Burning Tower:

  Twisted Cloud looked at her doubtfully, then at the Sage Egmatel, who was holding a perfect poker face. “Well. The god was Logi or Zoosh or Ghuju, depends on who’s speaking. His tribe didn’t like to clean up after themselves. Men tired of the women’s complaints, and leftover bones got too much attention from coyotes and other predators. Logi made a tiny creature to clean up after them, to carry garbage away. But ants are supposed to stay out of sight, and they’re not supposed to swarm over food that’s ready for the evening meal!”

  Roni said, “So you send a message (to the queen). And what if they don’t take the hint?”

  But that’s another story.

  A few years ago the Chicago in 2000 Committee printed up some cards to advertise their bid for the World Science Fiction Convention. The cards resemble bubble gum cards honoring science fiction’s professional writers, artists, and editors. Yesterday’s mail brought me hundreds of copies of my card. The face shows me in dark glasses in a glare of sunshine, with the DC-X1 experimental rocket ship in the background. Jerry Pournelle took this shot before the first public flight. The back displays some biographical material.

  What shall I do with these? I like Marilyn’s suggestion: take them to signings and give them away there.

  A writer’s perks are wonderful and strange.

  My e-mail for yesterday included this:

  Please pardon the intrusion.

  I recently borrowed your book “Lucifer’s Hammer” from a friend of mine…managed to leave it on a plane and it is lost.

  Diana…immediately began joking with me that it was a hardcover 1st edition, signed by the authors. It was really a somewhat worn paperback, but I would certainly love to surprise her with what she “claimed” it was.

  Well, I managed to find a hardcover copy of it in beautiful condition…My request is that if I send the book to you with a self-addressed, stamped book carrier, would you be willing to sign it and send it back? I could also use some assistance in contacting Mr. Pournelle.

  My point is, doing favors and repaying debts can often be done with just a signature or a dedication. I wasn’t born gracious; I grew up socially inept. This makes life a little easier.

  It has been twelve years since I hung the title Playgrounds of the Mind on a retrospective collection from Tor Books. That book, and its companion volume N-Space, were made up of excerpts from novels, every short story I couldn’t stand to leave out, and any neat stuff that just didn’t fit anywhere else. Political sniping. The script for a Masquerade presentation. Some notes on rishathra—sex outside one’s species—illustrated by obscene cartoons from Bill Rotsler. A letter from an ex–Soviet Union publisher.

  The books make great calling cards.

  The notion of an imaginary playground now seems downright ordinary, given today’s rapid improvement of computer games. It was never strange to me. When I was a child, fantasy stories by L. Frank Baum about the land of Oz turned every aperture into imaginary doorways to another world. When I got a little older I loved Andre Norton’s science fiction. She doesn’t exactly write stories. They don’t have endings. She’ll set up a situation and environment, drop some people or mutated animals or aliens into it, and then leave the playground wide open.

  As we grow up, we learn to demand that stories have an ending and a point to make. But we don’t have to stop thinking after we close the book.

  I read Dante’s Inferno for a college course. Then I read it again. Then spent some time daydreaming. How would you get through Hell if you couldn’t call on angels? Ultimately I made Jerry Pournelle write a sequel with me, because he had the theological background I needed.

  Years have passed since N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind. Now Tor Books is publishing a new collection of my stuff. With any luck at all, you’re holding it: a book called Scatterbrain.

  We had hoped to include a CD in the book. Instead, Aldo will be selling that separately. Aldo Spadoni is a rocket scientist who paints on a computer. The first I ever knew of him was a handful of glorious paintings of Lying Bastard, the spacecraft from Ringworld. He’s been painting the spacecraft I’ve spent thirty-five years writing about, not just slowboats and General Products designs from known space, but ships and habitats from the Empire of Man and the Mote Prime system, the hastily built warship Michael from Footfall, and the primitive ground-to-orbit ships from Destiny’s Road. Now Aldo plans to market the CD.

  I’m a scatterbrain. It’s something I came to terms with long ago. My retrieval system is a mess. I can’t remember your name. If I try, my brain follows a nightmare maze.

  I’ve somehow persuaded myself that this is a not a bug, but a feature. That is, I need the scatterbrained state to write. Things link in my head that barely belong in the same universe.

  Rainbow Mars shows how far the deterioration has gone:
Time travel as fantasy, links up with fantasy Mars. Orbital tethers link with Jack and the Beanstalk and the legend of Phaeton. I loved writing Rainbow Mars, but I wish I could remember phone numbers too.

  Last October, Kathleen Doherty of Tor Books arranged for three of us—Vernor Vinge, Pat Murphy, and me—to address a convention of 130 Los Angeles County librarians. My mission: to tell them anything librarians might need to know, that even Pat Murphy and Vernor Vinge couldn’t tell them.

  Kathleen told them that I would speak about my work. I fudged on that one. I only had twenty minutes to talk; let them read the damn books. If my work needs a critic to explain it, it means I should have fixed it in rewrite. The story I tell should speak for itself.

  I jumped around a lot in that speech, and I’m doing that here too. My emphasis is on science fiction, of course. Why should librarians give special consideration to science fiction?

  I can tell you something specific.

  It’s very difficult for a black man to get out of South-Central Los Angeles, and get out civilized. Women may find it easier, for all I know. The only men I know who have escaped, all began reading Robert Heinlein at age ten.

  Of those men, I’ve written nine books with Steven Barnes. I see Ken Porter every few weeks. The third guy was installing my copier when the subject came up. It’s a tiny sample, and all three men were in their forties.

  So even if I’m right, the book that rescues a ten-year-old child from a bad environment may not be Heinlein anymore.

  Robert Heinlein’s planets have become fantasy due to half a century of exploration by NASA probes. He was always a teacher of moral lessons, but if his worlds have become unrealistic, his lessons will be suspect too—though to me they still hold true.