Larry Niven earned a BA in mathematics. So adding him to the list of my evidence that studying mathematics is the best preparation for being a science fiction author.
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@futurebird Have you read anything by @gregeganSF?
@futurebird two kind of tenuous precursors to SF with maths backgrounds:
Lewis Carroll was a logician (he also wrote a whole book in dialogue form railing against non Euclidean […]
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Well, considering Niven's style and politics, I'd refrain from claiming him...
@futurebird As a counter example: So did Stephen Baxter, yet he still wrote an entire book based on a misunderstanding of basic statistics.
@futurebird If you are a writer. I have a Bachelor of Mathematics. I don’t think I could write a science fiction story to save my life
2024-12-16 StephanMatthiesen ┃ edited
@futurebird I read Inferno as a child - it was one of the very few sci-fi books in our school library - and was very impressed... But I heard that Niven is unpleasantly conservative.
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I mean, when I inventoried my books in 1995, I had everything he had published up to that point, and I had read most of it more than twice, so I have a great many thoughts, but I […]
@futurebird Larry Niven is very good evidence that being a science fiction author does not necessarily require the ability to write well.
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Don't forget Eric Temple Bell ("John Taine"):
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