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There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot'.

Larry Niven

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Larry Niven
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: April 30
Author
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Laurence van Cott Niven
Novel
Mistake
Technical
Opinion
Literary
Term
Author
Belief
Opinions
Character
Beliefs
Idiot
Characters

More quotes by Larry Niven

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Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
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In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
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In a collaboration, each author will do 75% of the work.
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A civilization has the ethics it can afford
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My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.
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How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?
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Consider the true picture. Think of myriads of tiny bubbles, very sparsely scattered, rising through a vast black sea. We rule some of the bubbles. Of the waters we know nothing.
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The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.
Larry Niven
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And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.
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Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
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As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population in the next generation it's a quarter after that it's a childhood disease.
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Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.
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One mark of a good officer, he remembered, was the ability to make quick decisions. If they happen to be right, so much the better.
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The majority is always sane.
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Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.
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The Product of Freedom and Security is a constant (F X S = k). Giving up freedom for security is beginning to look naive.
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There were timelines branching and branching, a mega-universe of universes, millions more every minute. Billions? Trillions? The universe split every time someone made a decision. Split, so that every decision ever made could go both ways. Every choice made by every man, woman, and child was reversed in the universe next door.
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SF isn't a genre SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.
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The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim
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Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!
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