Re: Highlights and Lowlights - February 2025

On 3/4/25 5:07 PM, William Hyde wrote:

Tony Nance wrote:

Highlights and Lowlights - February 2025
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( ++ 1/2 - ) Flatlander - Niven (1995 collection of all 5 Gil the ARM stories)
The 5th Gil the ARM story (The Woman in Del Rey Crater) was written for this collection. Gil is a detective working for ARM (the elite UN police force). He was born on Earth, spent years in the Belt, and the last two stories have him on the Moon. The range of quality goes from the excellent Patchwork Girl down to I-didn't-read-it The Defenseless Dead. I only read a few pages of because it was clear that this was 1000000% about organlegging, which I find too dumb an idea to ignore when it’s the primary story driver.[1]
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Tony
[1] In the Afterword, Niven makes it clear that he (at that time, at least) truly thinks organlegging is inevitable, as are the social & legal changes he brings along with it. Meh.

 I believe that it was in this afterword in Dangerous Visions that Niven gave us his justification for thinking that organ transplant would in the long term win out over artificial organs, and this consisted of "its a simpler set of techniques".
 Which seemed to me like a good justification for organ transplantation winning out over the short, not the long, run. 

Agreed.

And in "A gift from Earth" he seemed to agree, showing us the first skin replacement, which grows naturally, without need of an operation.  Presumably more will follow in this future.
 William Hyde
 

I've completely lost the thread on the internal chronology of the Known Space stories, but I believe you are correct from the few things I remember.
Tony