Customer Reviews

Flatlander (Known Space)

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4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This Kindle item is not Niven book Flatlander but only a short story of the same name. Don't be fooled; although this claims to be 368 pages it is really about 30 pages. I complained to Amazon about the misleading info but they will not do anything .

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.

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.

Flatlander (1995) is a collections of five SF stories in the Known Space series. It incorporates the three stories in The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton (1976), a short novel -- The Patchwork Girl (1980) -- and another short story original to this volume. It also includes an Afterword.

Gil Hamilton was a native of Earth, but migrated to the Belt. For six years, he was a crewman on a three-man prospecting ship. Then they had an accident and one crewman was killed. Gil lost his right arm, but found that his mind was able to project an imaginary arm that could pick up small objects and reach through walls and phone screens.

Gil returned to Earth to receive a transplant for the missing arm. His imaginary arm did not disappear after the operation. He joined the Amalgation of Regional Milita (ARM) -- the UN police -- and spent most of his time pursuing organleggers.

- "Death by Ecstasy" (Galaxy, 1968, as "The Organleggers") brings a former comrade of Gil to Earth, only to die from a electric tap into his pleasure center.

- "The Defenseless Dead" (TLAoGH, 1973) has Gil searching for organleggers behind a new bill to salvage the parts of a few hundred thousand corpsicles.

- "ARM" (TLAoGH, 1975) involves Gil in a murder associated with a machine that accelerates time.

- "Patchwork Girl" (novel, 1980) takes Gil to Luna for a legal conference and involves him in the investigation of an attempted murder.

- "The Woman in Del Rey Crater" (original, 1995) has Gil checking out a spacesuit found in a highly radiactive crater on Luna.

- Afterword describes the author's experiences writing the first three tales and the subsequent updates provided by readers.

The title of this book has been a problem, since "Flatlander" (If, 1967) is another -- but unrelated -- story in the Known Space series. The works within this volume are the only Gil Hamilton stories to date. Each is a puzzle of some sort, as are many other tales written by the author.

Recommended for Niven fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of future detectives, advanced technology, and persevering heroes.

-Arthur W. Jordin

I bought the kindle version and to my surprise it was not the book I had read years ago. I estimate the kindle version is only 50 pages long, vs 350+ as advertised. What happened to the rest of the book?? I hope Amazon corrects this problem.
I gave it 3 stars because what I have of the story was a good story, so if you don't mind getting short changed then buy it, otherwise let's hope the rest of the book will make it to the kindle.

FLATLANDER is a collection of five stories featuring Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, a top operative of the 22nd century UN police force. The stories are set in Larry Niven's "Known Space" environment and find human society extending from Earth to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt. Overpopulation and organ transplantation gone wild have resulted in a major black market for human organs, organ banks, and the death penalty for even minor legal offences. Demand is so great that innocent victims can simply disappear off the streets, kidnapped and dismembered just to keep the illegal "organleggers" in business. Hamilton gets involved in five separate murder cases, resulting in the five stories presented in the book.

As Niven points out in a rather engaging "Afterward", writing scifi mysteries is a demanding task. The author must satisfy the requiremants of two different genres and maintain internal consistancy. Niven does a nice job of accomplishing the task here. Technology and environment come together in stories involving well-conceived mysteries that, as with any good mystery, give the reader enough facts to solve the case before the author presents the solution. Are these the best mysteries I've ever read? No. Are they the best scifi stories I've read? No, again, but they're as good a combination of the two as I've come across.

The first three stories in FLATLANDER were written during Niven's vintage years (i.e. the late '60s/early '70s when he wrote things like RINGWORLD and was a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author), and it shows. The latter two were written much later. I enjoyed them, too, but they are neither as tight or as well-conceived as the first three. Also, technological advances have rendered the ideas about organ transplanting presented here obsolete. Overall, however, this is classic Niven stuff and will provide scifi fans, in particular, with some entertaining reading. I found them to be great fun.

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.

Not sure about the previous reviewer who said he only got one short story when he bought this for his Kindle. I received the same 300+ page collection I have in paperback. But what I did not appreciate was reading it through, reaching the novella "Patchwork Girl," deciding I wanted to skip to the next short story, only to discover THERE IS NO TABLE OF CONTENTS. In a novel maybe you can get away with this. But in a collection of short stories and novellas it is unacceptable. I would expect this from a public domain release, not from a commercial one.

If you love puzzle stories (I'm still not sure whether I do or not) then Niven's Gil Hamilton stories are a must. Each story about "Gil the Arm" (his nickname is a two-level pun based on his profession and an odd psychic ability) involves a crime where a unique technological development is integral to solving "whodunit". Niven carefully leaves enough clues for you to figure "who" and "how", if you're paying attention. He notes in the forward just why there aren't more stories like this -- they're NOT easy to write. But all the Hamilton stories are VERY easy to read -- enjoy

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?