Red Tide

Stellar Guild

by Larry Niven, Brad R. Torgersen, Matthew J. Harrington

Loosely based on Larry Niven's 1973 novella "Flash Crowd," Red Tide continues to examine the social consequences of the impact of having instantaneous teleportation, where humans can instantly travel long distances in milliseconds.


This is a theme that has fascinated the author throughout his career and appeared in his seminal work Ringworld, where the central character celebrates his birthday by instantly teleporting himself to different time zones, extending his birthday. The author also discussed the impact of such instantaneous transportation in his essay, "Exercise in The Theory and Practice of Teleportation."


Larry Niven is joined by two younger writers, Brad R. Torgersen and Matthew J. Harrington, as they take on this challenging idea and further develop the theories and concepts that Niven originally presented in "Flash Crowd."


This is the seventh book in the Stellar Guild line.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

216 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 10, 2014

About the author

Laurence van Cott Niven's best known work is Ringworld (Ringworld, #1) (1970), which received the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. The creation of thoroughly worked-out alien species, which are very different from humans both physically and mentally, is recognized as one of Niven's main strengths.

Niven also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes The Magic Goes Away series, which utilizes an exhaustible resource, called Mana, to make the magic a non-renewable resource.

Niven created an alien species, the Kzin, which were featured in a series of twelve collection books, the Man-Kzin Wars. He co-authored a number of novels with Jerry Pournelle. In fact, much of his writing since the 1970s has been in collaboration, particularly with Pournelle, Steven Barnes, Brenda Cooper, or Edward M. Lerner.

He briefly attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, in 1962. He did a year of graduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has since lived in Los Angeles suburbs, including Chatsworth and Tarzana, as a full-time writer. He married Marilyn Joyce "Fuzzy Pink" Wisowaty, herself a well-known science fiction and Regency literature fan, on September 6, 1969.

Niven won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for Neutron Star in 1967. In 1972, for Inconstant Moon, and in 1975 for The Hole Man. In 1976, he won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Borderland of Sol.

Niven has written scripts for various science fiction television shows, including the original Land of the Lost series and Star Trek: The Animated Series, for which he adapted his early Kzin story The Soft Weapon. He adapted his story Inconstant Moon for an episode of the television series The Outer Limits in 1996.

He has also written for the DC Comics character Green Lantern including in his stories hard science fiction concepts such as universal entropy and the redshift effect, which are unusual in comic books.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/larryn...

Reviews

[Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stories exploring a shared world in one tidy little ebook. And two of them are by Larry Niven! Well, what more could we want?

Hmm... the first story ("Red Tide" by Larry Niven) is merely an update and expansion of his earlier classic, "Flash Crowd". It was nice to reacquaint myself with it, but the newer version didn't seem to have the same impact as the original story did way back when... I guess it could be that I'm older and harder to impress. The story is fine, but I think that some of the length could have been cut back.
3.5 stars

The next story ("Dial at Random" by Larry Niven) is a companion piece to the "Red Tide" story. I struggled to believe that a damaged card could work in this way. It sounds like a million to one shot to damage your card and have it switch to an alternate function. One could presume that if it were possible in this instance, then it should have happened in many other instances. But I'm sure that once they're aware that a damaged card could glitch, they would address that concern. The story is fine otherwise, but other than serving as "new fiction" it does little else in this volume.
3 stars

Third time is the charm! The best in the bunch is "Sparky the Dog" by Brad Torgersen. This was really quite great, and I applaud Brad for finding an area left that Larry didn't explore himself. Cleverly plotted, nicely characterized, and smoothly written, I'm quite enthused about Brad's contributions, and recommend it highly.
5 stars

The last story is a mess, unfortunately. The story is confusing and pointlessly meandering. The characters are indistinguishable from one another (each speaks with the same voice), and other than dialogue about engineering details, not a single person engages in any other conversation. At the very end, the story shifts from being clunky and flounderingly ineffectual to merely stupidly strange. Sorry, but no love for "Displacement Activity" by Matthew J. Harrington.
1 star

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike Resnick edits the Stellar Guild series and the idea is to pair a long established SF author with a younger, newer writer of his choosing. Together they write a pair of similarly themed novelettes. This one is a bit different in that Resnick had one writer in mind and Niven another.

They take an old tale by Niven, FLASH CROWD, and have the two writers write tales based on it's themes: which is an examination of the political, economic, and social changes of a teleportation system. Niven expands and updates his story(the new version mentions Wi-Fi and the BP oil spill in the Gulf for example), the title becoming RED TIDE, then writes his own new story for the book.

It works well.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant set of four stories revolving around a core of an idea published in 1973. The first and last were the best. None were great literature, but were fun reads.

[Julie Dawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Red Tide is a collection of four novellas by different authors all loosely related by the theme of teleportation and the social consequences such technology would have. As part of the Stellar Guide Series, the collection teams veteran sci-fi author Larry Niven with Brad R. Torgersen and Matthew J. Harrington. Like other books in the series, Red Tide is a great way to introduce yourself to authors you may have overlooked or revisit authors you haven’t read in a while.


These are all stand-alone stories but they do share a universe with Niven’s Red Tide, if not literally at least in spirit. Each story is tightly woven and well-paced, though the one problem I had with all of the stories is that most of the characters are rather flat and felt derivative. I never actually cared about any of the characters themselves. The plots, however, have enough meat on the them to keep you reading. The stories all do what good sci-fi should do; make us think about the direction technology is going and what that might mean for us as a society.

[Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book pairs Niven with a couple of younger writers who follow the more established Niven into the same story space.
The start of this book was rather nostalgic as Niven makes a story of his original essay on teleportation and its impact on society. He incorporates all the ideas I remember in the original essay in the story and was a fun reminder. His second story was a rather slight effort in the same vein of an event occurring during the early years when engineering solutions were developed for longer range teleportation. The third story by Torgensen is quite good in its adaptation of the teleportation theme in a story about a dog. The fourth story by Harrington starts out well further in the future with interstellar travel and a transfer point on Mercury where an alien suddenly appears in the transit station and then retransmits away. Good idea for a story. Unfortunately, the story beyond is nearly unreadable with what seemed a chaotic plot intermixed with unclearly written science fictional engineering explanations. While I have no problem with stories with a lot of "technicalese", much of this wasn't coherent even if I understood the references to current science and technology.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s the latest in the Stellar Guild Series, where, under the guidance of Mike Resnick, famous authors are teamed up with newer or perhaps lesser known writers.

I last reviewed this series with Kevin J Anderson and Steven Savile’s two stories in Tau Ceti, back in January 2012. This time around, there are not two but three authors involved as multiple award winner Larry Niven is joined by two younger writers. Although relatively new, both have a certain pedigree. Brad R. Torgerson is a regular in Analog and has been previously nominated for both Hugo and Nebula Awards, with most recently two stories nominated for the 2014 Hugo Awards. Matthew J. Harrington has most recently collaborated with Larry on the novel The Goliath Stone.

These are tales of a time when teleportation is possible, and the consequences of such activities. The collection starts with Red Tide, a re-written and expanded version of the 1973 novella Flash Crowd, re-examined and rewritten, as Larry puts it, “with a little help from Brad.”

Red Tide (the novella) is a mixture of a rite of passage tale, mystery story and romance as newstaper (think on-the-spot news reporter) Barry Jerome Jansen (aka ‘Jerryberry’) finds himself blamed in a ‘trial by media’ situation for a riot using instantaneous travel just by reporting on the event. It’s what today we would call a flash mob. Red Tide does what Larry often does well, that of taking a what if? idea, that of instantaneous travel, and applying it to a plot to show the effects socially, economically and even environmentally. This can be both an advantage and a disadvantage here. It is clear that Flash Crowd has survived a makeover with its modern comments of e-readers, cell phones, blogs, the Internet and the Boeing 777 aeroplane, although there are parts that show its age.

I actually liked the fact that it was rather old fashioned but still contemporary-relevant, giving it an up-to-date feel yet simultaneously grounded on classic SF values. On the downside, some of the older references have been kept and I think that they don’t always work. There’s a reference to the Common Market (ie: EU these days) and on a personal note I’m not sure the term ‘newstapers’ works these days. Though obviously a variation on ‘newspapers’, I’m sure there’s a better name out there. But on the whole I enjoyed it, even if it was a little creaky in places.

The second story is another by Niven, Dial at Random, written after re-writing Red Tide, which clearly inspired him. It is short, but still great fun, and actually reads a bit more evenly than Red Tide. It tells of the early days of teleportation when Larry Whyte, the inventor of the teleport (already met in Red Tide) is experimenting with a new random setting on the transporters. When young Hilary Firestone is accidentally added to the trial, things go a little unexpectedly…

Of ‘the new guys’, Brad is up next with a tale entitled Sparky the Dog. Like its rather humorous-sounding title, the story is rather light yet amusing, a tale of espionage, extortion and philandering spouses as told to Jansen, interviewing his old mentor Larry Whyte who is near the end of his life. Rather reminiscent of Heinlein’s Lazarus Long, actually. A shaggy dog tale, in the best possible manner, this one was the story I enjoyed most. There’s some nice little links to the earlier stories too.

The fourth tale, after an Introduction from Larry, is called Displacement Activity, by Matthew J. Harrington. This one is more of a standard science fiction story, in that it is set further ahead in the future when the displacement booth has led to interstellar travel.

The story begins with a problem to solve – the mysterious momentary appearance of an alien humanoid, who flickers in and out of the Mercury Interstellar Receiving Station. That they are an alien is unusual, but even more so is the fact that they are clearly not having to use a displacement booth and have a self-transmitting device not tuned in to any particular receiver, for this is not something the company JumpShift have themselves developed yet. The consequences of this involve alien contact and time travel, of a sorts.

Displacement Activity fizzes with practical ideas and solutions about the difficulties of instantaneous travel. This one was for me a more typically Analog tale, with an engineer hero, which means that whilst there are events in the future, aliens and time travel across multiple streams, there is also lots of science talk and repartee from scientists solving problems*. It starts well, but by the end becomes little more than an escalator ride filled with strange people and aliens, almost as if it is an edited part of a longer story.

It has lots of that technical banter so beloved in SF history (see also EE Doc Smith’s space opera and George O Smith’s Equilateraltales of the 1930’s and 40’s) but in the end left me a little cold, although I suspect scientists may really like it. One slight warning for younger readers: it is also the only story in the collection to include sex, although it is not X-rated stuff.

In summary, fans of Larry’s work will not be disappointed with Red Tide. There’s a lot packed into two hundred pages and a nice variety amongst the tales, which give us a multifaceted view of a world where an old idea of Larry’s is brought up to the 21st century. Strong on the ‘what-if?’, and stridently old fashioned, this is SF that takes an idea and runs with it in various forms that makes the reader think about what the consequences of such an idea, if it came to being, would be. Good fun.


*One example, picked at random, to illustrate what I mean: ‘ “It’s the Bacardi reaction. Got to be. Protons and lithium.” This was named for the original Cockcroft-Walton experiment, which produced 151 times as much energy as it took to accomplish.’ (page 178.)



At this point I guess I’m supposed to say, “Ah. That experiment.

[Allen McDonnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun read

Though the collection starts out with a short story I have in at least two other collections I feel this was fully justified as it serves as the foundation of the remainder of the book. In this tome we get several all new stories set in the Flash Crowd Universe as I think of it. Instant travel in booths much like the ubiquitous telephone booths that were common through the english speaking world until cell phones erupted on the scene in the 1990's allow users to dial a destination and be teleported instantly to the destination. This has massive cultural and technological impacts and creates a fascinating universe of stories to explore that setting. Highly recommended!

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four different authors contributed to this book with each author’s chapter a continuation of the previous. It was interesting in the beginning, a story by Larry Niven. By chapter 3, I was getting bored. The story just wasn’t advancing enough to keep me interested. This is where I gave up on this book.

[Cynik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Deals with a future where teleportation has been achieved. Effects on crime, smuggling, commutes, etc. The last story was not written by Niven and deals with the far future thousands of years later.

[Paxton Holley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Never read Niven before and this book took place in a future where instantaneous teleportation existed. Consists of 4 short novellas. Main story is good. Other stories are only....eh.

[Goodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exploring a world where teleportation destroyed transport but the internet didn't destroy journalism is a bit weird but still a great story.

[jazz weisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had mixed feelings overall about this short story collection. A fun return to some old Niven ideas, but didn't really bring enough new to feel like it made sense to be published recently.

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one better than Man-Kzin, though I still don't understand why Niven has to get other authors to write his books.

[Wampuscat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Red Tide is an anthology with a novella (Red Tide - 94 pages) & a short story (Dial At Random - 21 pages) by Niven, a short story by Brad Torgersen (Sparky the Dog - 21 pages), and a novella (Displacement Activity - 47 pages) by Matthew J. Harrington. All revolve around the concept of teleportation as originally laid out in Niven's short story 'Flash Crowd (1973)'. There are several other stories by Niven on this topic, the most memorable to me being 'The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club' which can be found in 'A Hole In Space' - one of Niven's collected works books - along with several others. In fact it has the same character, Barry Jerome Jansen, appears in many of them.

Red Tide - the novella - was a bit wonky to start. There seemed to be some anachronistic bits in there... some mentions of old tech and then new. The backstory of Jansen's rise to becoming a 'newstaper' seemed strange to me. Its like a newshound concept of a roving reporter who wanders around trying to find happening news stories. That concept is somewhat dated in general, but it was 'updated' in this story to tie it in with previous ones. It worked 'ok', so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and moved on, but there is a 'wonkyness' to it that still feels odd. That aside, the story is well written, with Niven's usual pin-point character development. The story itself is woven around the technology of the teleporter; its origin, its good and bad repercussions, and an ongoing issue that Jerryberry is caught up in. All in all, it was a great sci-fi piece to read.

Dial At Random was a story written to showcase the wonders of the rapid mobility that teleportation provides, while also revealing details about the development of the long-distance version of the teleportation booths, and its use for space travel. It's a decent story, quick and exciting, but nothing spectacular.

Sparky The Dog is an interlude story involved the same main characters from Red Tide, but this time it's the inventor of teleportation on his death-bed revealing an untold secret from the beginning of the program. It's an interesting story, but again nothing spectacular.

Displacement Activity is well named. It accurately describes what happened to my brain when reading this novella. It takes you from the start of the expanded space program to a far future. It jumps... sometimes randomly... all over the place. And yet, it was still a very good story. The reason is that all the scenes it jumped to were very interesting... only you didn't get to stay in any one long enough to fully grasp its import before you are whisked away to another - also interesting - place or event. Due to this, the characters were very thin as well. There was a lot of humor in the tale, which I very much appreciated. This is one I would like to see expanded upon someday. If you jumped in and just picked this up without having read the others, it would fall flat and probably be hard to understand. It is not a stand-alone story.

So, for me this book was a win. I give it 3 stars and call it an engaging read. You should check it out, and also find and read the other stories Niven wrote in this 'flash crowd universe'.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of four teleportation stories in Phoenix Pick's Stellar Guild series edited by Mike Resnick; two are by Larry Niven, and the other two by new authors. My favorite was Sparky the Dog by Brad R. Torgersen, which was a very good story. The other one was not very good, written by Matthew J. Harrington. It was a kind of confused and pedantic tour-of-the-future lecture that read like an outline for a poor Mack Reynolds story from the end of his career. Dial at Random was a new story by Niven, and was a fun follow-up to the title story, Red Tide. Red Tide was a revision of Flash Crowd, a novella from 1973, which was the springboard for this volume. After I read it I dug out my copy of Niven's collection The Flight of the Horse in which the original version is included so I could compare the two. I preferred the original; some of the changes and updates seemed unnecessary and served only to slow the pace of the original. Anyway, it's a nice volume for Niven fans, a little short on character but big on ideas.

[Eero · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book consists of four interconnected stories, an updated and renamed version of Niven's "Flash Crowd" from the nineteen seventies, a new Niven story in the same teleport booth universe, and further two by newer authors.

I was not too fond of the updates. I would have been happy to think of the teleportation stories occurring in a parallel universe, but Niven updated his old story with mentions of blogs and viral videos and such, which did not seem to sit comfortably with the overall feel of the world. Yet the universe seems to be a parallel one, at least in the last story, which mentions teleport technology having been used during the Cold War. The whole thing seems a bit of a mess.

What works, as it already did work in the original material, is the examination of the physics and the social implications of teleportation.

The last story, "Displacement Activity", was rather confusing, in that by the end I was unsure of what exactly had happened. The dialogue reminded me of late-period Heinlein, with the fetishistic focus on sex, cats, and a sort of right wing ideological bent. Except that even late-period Heinlein is better. Maybe it was meant as satire?

This is not a bad book, but I'd recommend reading Niven's original teleportation stories instead, although they are scattered across a number of collections.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy reading science fiction books, but the ones I especially like are those that look ahead and consider a change that affects the way things are done today. This book does just that, where teleportation (displacement booths and "flicking") become as common as telephone booths in the "old days" and also displace cars, airplanes, telephone calls. Because people can then transport themselves instantly to any place, those locations that were beautiful in their solitude become overrun, and riots can quickly become unmanageable.

I've read many of Larry Niven's novels and really enjoy his writing style. This book, however, is a little different because he writes the first two chapters of four and has two other authors write the remaining ones. Chapter 3 was a good and natural transition from the first two, but Chapter 4 was hard for me to get into and ended like this book was the first of several to come. This is why I gave the novel a four-star review rather than five.

[Terri Weitze · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should clarify - I really, really liked the first parts of this book which were written by Larry Niven. The last part, written by somebody else, I really didn't like - it is so dense with tech-speak that I couldn't follow it, nor was I engaged enough to try to concentrate more to try to get what was going on. Such a shame, but it does show you why Mr. Niven is considered a great writer of science fiction. His style stands out in stark comparison to the last part. Mr. Niven's parts are wonderful, and such each section can be stand alone (although there is a common thread, pulling it all together); and I suggest you just read the Niven sections and skip the rest.

[Leif Hietala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Familiar ground

One of Niven's Laws - there are lots, look them up - is that anything worth selling is worth selling over and over. We've seen a lot of the material in Red Tide before.
That's not a bad thing. One great thing about Niven and his personal universe is that you can explore and build on established givens. The concept of stepping booths isn't unique to Niven but I think he, more than a lot of other writers, goes further into exploring some of their ramifications. On that basis alone I gave this book a shot, and I'm glad I did.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been too long since I read a hard science fiction book, but Larry Niven always pulls me back. As usual he lost me in the math quickly, but with his incredible characters, that doesn't matter. In this novel, based on the novella Flash Crowd, Niven continues with his fascination of instantaneous teleportation. This novel is an engineer's delight and if you don't mind not understanding the science, come on and give it a try!

[Adam Meek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This update of the 1973 Niven story "Flash Crowd" fully explores the implications of teleportation on society, both positive and negative. Sad Puppy Brad Torgersen and Matthew J. Harrington also contribute stories.

[Gail Abbott ea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical Niven

Good read, with some old familiar characters and technological ideas. A little uneven, since it was written by different people but as an anthology it hung together well. I recommend it to any fan of Larry Niven's work.

[Spencer Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

As usual Niven delivers a truly fascinating story. Torgersen and Harrington are definitely on my radar now. On to the next