[.ca] Flatlander (ISBN 0345394801)

Three excellent SF short stories, two lackluster duds:
FLATLANDER is a collection of the five "Gil the Arm" short stories that Larry Niven has written between the late sixties and today. Set in the 2120s, these stories chronicle the adventures of Gil Hamilton, an agent with the UN police force, who fights against "organleggers," criminals who commit murder to sell the organs for transplant. Gil spent seven years mining in the asteroid belt before an accident resulted in the loss of his arm. He found out, however, that he had developed the psychic power of telekinesis, which he calls his "invisible arm." These stories are part of Niven's "Known Space" universe and revolve around the themes Niven thought important in that series, such as organ transplanting, psychic powers, and the ramifications of fusion power. These are also the only mysteries that Niven has written. The first three short stories are decent reading, and highly entertaining. In "Death By Ecstay," the reader is introduced to Gil as he investigates the murder of an old friend while working to bring down a major West Coast organlegging ring. In "The Defenseless Dead," the UN decides to liquidate people placed into cold storage decades before to harvest their organs; the plentiful supply of legal organs drives organlegging temporarily unprofitable, and Gil tracks down a retired organlegger, with a surprising ending. In "ARM," Gil investigates the murder of a famous inventor, and tries to unravel how a new time-accelerating invention was used in the crime. The final two stories are highly disappointing. "Patchwork Girl" and "The Woman in Del Rey Crater" date from after Larry Niven's decline in the mid-70's. Both set on the moon, they suffer from goofy, lackluster writing and don't have the gritty edge and emphasis on novel ideas that made Niven's late-60's works so revolutionary. The book has an afterword by Niven in which he explains how organ transplanting will inevitably lead to a future in which even petty crimes are punished by death. Written in 1995, this afterword is already out-of-date with the advances in cloning and alloplasty. If you enjoy Niven's writing, especially the Known Space series, I'd recommend FLATLANDER. The first three stories are really gripping reading. The last two stories, however, will probably disappoint.

The true spirit of Larry:
This book is in Niven's truest tradition. Excellent!

SPACE GUMSHOE.:
The short stories collected in this book represent Larry Niven's brief experiment to fuse science fiction with the format of a mystery/police procedural. The last two stories are pretty dull, because they deal with trivial issues. But the earlier stories are MUST READ works which seriously examine medical ethics which we will one day have to face. These stories depict a future in which the state of medicine is so advanced that human life can be indefinitely prolonged by organ transplants. This has led to the adoption of harsh criminal codes, whereby the smallest infraction can cost a person their lives. The value of fresh organs has also led to illegal 'organleggers' who murder people for their organs. This is a world that Niven has written entire books about, but it is no better realized than in these stories, which are truly chilling in their implications. You can't help but realize that we will have to face the moral dilemmas proposed in these stories one day. Will we pass the draconian laws imagined in these stories?

SF/Mystery at its best:
SF/Mystery is one of the hardest subgenres to write convincingly - as Niven points out in his introduction to this book, SF/Mystery, to work, must follow the rules of both genres, which makes for quite the writing challenge. But in Flatlander, the collected stories about Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, Niven does a masterful job of meshing science, technology, and mystery. These stories were written over quite a range of time, and that's obvious, in both the social and moral overtones and the writing itself. However, the quality is fairly consistent, and it ranks up there with the very best Niven work. Most important, the puzzle aspect - the mystery component - is very well done, in every case; the mysteries are fair (the reader could solve them with the information given) and good (the reader has to work fairly hard to solve them before the main character does). It's a pity there aren't more Gil Hamilton stories; I'd love to see another book of these. Whether you're a fan of mystery, or SF, and especially if you're a fan of both, you'll love Flatlander.

Larry Niven's always keeping it real.:
Flatlander encompasses the stories in The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton, but adds two new stories that focus more on Gil Hamilton's personal life, though there's still plenty of murder mystery and futuristic intrigue involved. I like this book.