From: YANJUNA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: Re: Niven/Mote in God's Eye
Organization: Yale University
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 92 21:43:38 EST

   Went to the mall today to pick up today's newspaper, and I decided to drop
by the local Waldenbooks, and I found a copy of a fannish interview of
Niven and Pournelle on a Waldenbooks commercial flyer.  The important news,
is that _The Gripping Hand_ will be available (blame them if this ain't true)
in early January (mere WEEK or TWO!!!) by Pocket, at $22.
ISBN 0671795732.
   I don't have the strength to type out the whole interview, and most of you
probably know a lot of this already, so here is some of the points:
   _Mote_ came about because Niven had "a four line sentence about an
asymmetric alien" left over from a pervious novel.  "Except for the actual
appearance, the whole creature was Jerry's.  It had to have evolved
intelligence, a wily intelligence."  "At the start, Larry was very much the
senior author and so it started that he had the veto over what happened
because it was basically his reputation that was up."  "[Heinlein] did a
full proofreading job on that book.  It is something nobody could have paid
him enough money to do.  And it's an incredible piece of work that will
belong to the future.  Obviously Mrs. Heinlein has the right to publish
that first, but if she doesn't then one of these days, we will.  But
obviously, we are not going to assert rights over a letter to us until she's
ready to give it up."
   For _Gripping Hand_; "We get together, we decide what has to be written,
and one of us volunteers or persuades the other to volunteer.  We have
certain domains.  If one of us feel inspired, that's it.  Otherwise, if
it's Navy and politics, it's Jerry's and if it's aliens, it's likely to be
mine.  And it's a matter of who can persuade the other that it needs doing."
  Misc: "Jim Baen is one of the several publishers who has been deliberately
introducing junior authors to seniors in the hope of getting more work out of
the senior workers.  He has encouraged me [Pournelle] to invent _War World_
as a playground for people to write in and Larry did the same thing in his
_Man Kzin Wars_, and oddly enough, I can't write _Man Kzin Wars_ unless I have
somebody like STeve Stirling because I can't make myself believe in it long
enough to do it."
   "I {Pournelle}'m writing one of the last books in the _Codominium_
mercenary series.  The reason it's got to be one of the last ones is because
it is becoming increasingly harder to sustain the notion that the United States
and the Soviet Union got together and divided the world between them.  AT the
time I wrote that, it looked like as good a prediction as any as to what would
happen.  I mean assuming we didn't have a war.  A codominium of these two
countries running the world was not all improbable.  Indeed I think if George
Bush had his druthers, he and Gorbachev would have gotten together and done it.
The only thing that kept it from happening was Reagan's SDI program... so,
since Larry and I were fairly influential in getting the SDI policy adopted,
I suppose you can say we killed the Codominium series."
 
   Pournelle is writing a Codominium mercenary book as stated above, and has
finished a draft for the fourth Jannissaries book (ho-hum.)  Niven is working
on _Destiny's Road_ based on Michael Whelan cover.  (Don't ask me; I don't
know what it is)
   The interview also contains a black and white picture of the cover (boring),
and it features a three-fingered hand which looks suspiciously like the hand
of the alien in the movie _Total Recall_.
 
    FINISH INTERVIEW:
 
    Personal Comments:  Waiting for _Gripping_ has sort of made me realize
that while I really enjoy Niven and Pournelle collaborations, I'm not all
that crazy about their solo work.  I enjoyed _King David's Spaceship_,
and the first two mercenary novels (though they owe a hell of a lot to
Dickson's first four Dorsai books...) and various Niven's short stories,
their solo works just don't grab me as much as their collaborations.
    I would also love to see exactly what RAH contributed to _mote_.
Any comments?
     Junsok Yang