Integral Trees

No cover

Larry Niven: Integral Trees (1996, Blackstone Audiobooks)

Audio cassette

English language

Published May 24, 1996 by Blackstone Audiobooks.

ISBN:
978-0-7861-0967-8
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
35020561

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4 stars (31 reviews)

The Integral Trees is a 1984 science fiction novel by American writer Larry Niven (first published as a serial in Analog in 1983). Like much of Niven's work, the story is heavily influenced by the setting: a gas torus, a ring of air around a neutron star. A sequel, The Smoke Ring, was published in 1987. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1984, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1985.

9 editions

reviewed The integral trees by Larry Niven

The Integral Trees: Second-tier Niven in an imaginative setting

3 stars

The Integral Trees is good second-tier Niven, from early in the latter portion of his career, when his writing ability was just starting to fade. Call it his "Silver Age", if you like. In a fractional rating system, I'd give it a 3.6 out of 5.

The story is set in the "Smoke Ring", which is another typical Niven Very Big Object - in this case, one that dwarfs even his Ringworld. Essentially, it's an inhabitable band of oxygen, other gases, water, and life which exists in free fall around a star. It's not stable in the long term, of course, but Niven worked out the physics and apparently it could remain habitable for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

It's a fascinating setting. No gravity! Profoundly alien lifeforms! And, of course, some rather radically changed human beings for characters. The problem is that the characters aren't very …

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