Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "Convergent Series" (1979) by Larry Niven
Age Range: 15 to adult
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories
As I've said before, Larry Niven is probably the top hard-SF author of all time. His "Known Space" stories and novels are outstanding. But he didn't ONLY write SF. "Convergent Series" collects some of his fantasy short stories along with one gem-like piece of ordinary modern fiction and some non-Known Space stories as well. I think many of them are better than some of his Known Space tales!
"Convergent Series" (the story that the book is named for) is a classic pact-with-the-Devil tale. It's striking and memorable.
There are five stories from Draco's Tavern, a bar to which aliens and some humans come to drink or otherwise imbibe. They're clever and different science fiction stories. They're narrated by the proprietor of the tavern.
My favorite story in the collection, though, is "Transfer of Power". Niven wrote it after binging stories set "at the edge of the world" by Lord Dunsany, and it turned me into a Dunsany fan for life. It's a great story!
[Fifty-three men and eight women rode away from the edge of the world. They were a mixed group; that was obvious at a glance. Forty men were armed and armored; they rode on the outside. Thirteen men and eight women rode enclosed within a moving picket fence of spears. They carried only eating-knives, and their horses were loaded with waterbags and provisions, and they were the better riders.
Forty armored men bubbled over with good spirits. They joked among themselves, they reminisced, they told stories. They avoided the subject of a certain bloodless revolution, except that they sometimes forgot, and sometimes it was on purpose. The unarmed group said nothing, and their expressions varied between anger and despair, with one exception.
Ex-King Sarol had lost his home and his status and his profession. He smiled gently as he rode away from the edge of the world, like a man lost in pleasant thoughts.
At first Guppry was relieved. He’d had his transfer of power; all he wanted now was a smooth transition. The sooner Sarol and his hangers-on were over the border in Zarop-Opar, the better. Then he began to wonder what Sarol could have to smile at.
Wondering, he pulled his horse up next to Sarol’s.]
[He glanced sideways to see Sarol’s reaction, and found none, and was annoyed. “I don’t see why your great-great-grandfather built a palace right at the edge of the world,” he said.
“King Charl had his reasons,” Sarol said tranquilly. “Don’t you like the view?”
The palace had been carved—by magic, or by enormous labor; that detail had been lost to time—into a granite knob that was the highest point in Halceen. it was part of the cliff that formed the world’s edge. Bedrooms and breakfast nooks opened onto balconies at the edge, and one great open ballroom, and a door that King Sarol had had plainly labeled; but some of his predecessors had had a brutal sense of humor.
Yesterday, a conqueror surveying his realm, Guppry had stood at the edge of a balcony and become less than a gnat in his own eyes. A stairway with a railed landing ran a little way down; then miles and miles of naked cliff pocked with caves; then no more cliff. Just blue sky swirled with clouds, and flocks of legless birds, and a sinuous cloud-streamer, gilded by sunset, that might almost have been a golden dragon except for its size. Eternity was down there. You could fall until you died of thirst, and who would bury you then?]
I don't know if it's still physically in print, but it's available as an ebook from the usual providers (please don't use Amazon). You might find it in a used book shop or a library. And you can borrow it for free from the Internet Archive!
https://archive.org/details/convergentseries0000unse
Happy reading! 🤓📖
Here's a complete spreadsheet of all the books I've recommended on Mastodon to date (along with links to each post):
#Books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #ShortStories #Fiction #BookRecs #BookRecommendations #DailyBookRecs #QuasitBookRecs
