@RUTGERS.ARPA:A.ANDY@SU-GSB-HOW.ARPA (02/02/85)
From: Andrew"Droid"Gideon Office Phone: (415) 497-4816/9717 I read this when it first came out in hard bound. I am a dedicated Niven fan, and very impatient. Nowadays, I rarely wait for the paperback version of ANYTHING (nowadays being out of college, and having money). Unfortunately, I must comment about Integral_ Trees that while I DID enjoy it a good deal, it was not up to the usual Niven story. The characters were not solving a puzzle, or dealing with any difficulty. Rather, they were tossed about on the winds of fate, and given almost no control of their destiny. The story was mainly an exploration of the Smoke Ring, showing the reading how diverse and fascinating this place is. So, while I highly recommend it (as I said, it is great fun...it truly is a strange new world the reader gets to see), I do not feel that it is up to the standards set by other works from Niven. I hope that the sequel presents a more interesting 'story', now that the world has been at least partially explored. Query: What is this new collection of short stories from Niven? Are these new stories? -Andy Gideon Gideon@SU-Score.ARPA "Any sufficiently advanced technology is obsolete" -------