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. ( )

A very solid collection by Niven, this one. The average here being 3.39. So lots of standard quality stories and only a couple under that. The best work here is the last few stories in the book, barring the crime one, and perhaps Rammer, the first. The Fourth Profession I'd even call a 3.75, I think.

Good enough overall to round up to a 4 for the book as a whole, anyway.

Crime investigation is a recurring motif here, especially when coinciding with the stories with teleport booth technology, or 'flicking' as he terms it.

A Hole in Space : Rammer - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : The Alibi Machine - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : A Kind of Murder - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : All the Bridges Rusting - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : There Is a Tide - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : $16940.00 - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : The Hole Man - Larry Niven
A Hole in Space : The Fourth Profession - Larry Niven

Corpsicle pilot's increase Tau tour.

3.5 out of 5

Rocket pistol shooting silly mistake.

3 out of 5

Flash crowd flick-in bustup breakdown.

3.5 out of 5

Clubbing herself to death.

3.5 out of 5

"It's so bloody easy, with these interstellar drop ships." Slowship rescue expensive, but.

3.5 out of 5

Wu Pak Big lure.

4 out of 5

Hard to hide the cash.

2.5 out of 5

Quantum black hole is ridiculous overkill.

3.5 out of 5

Alien alcohol test case quad pill investigation.

3.5 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2008/03... ( )

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.

This is a reasonably entertaining collection of Niven short stories primarily from the early 1970s (plus a Louis Wu story from 1968). The stories all deal with unintended consequences, with several of them focusing on the impact of the teleportation technology that inhabits Niven's known space universe. These are stories driven by ideas and the clever working out of consequences of these ideas.

My favorite story in the collection was the last one, "The Fourth Profession," in which a member of an intersteller trading mission trades knowledge with a bartender. This was a nice combination of mystery, first contact, and even a touch of a love story (handled here better than you might expect from Niven). "The Alibi Machine," "A Kind of Murder," and "The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club" were three similar takes on the subject of how technology creates new opportunities for criminals, too. "$16,940.00" is a very short little crime story with nary a hint of scifi or fantasy, again on the theme of unintended consequences. ( )