World of Ptavvs, Larry Niven, 188pp, 1966

If you are a scifi reader but don’t know Larry Niven then you aren’t reading this blog because you don’t exist. However, in the off chance that you slipped in from an alternate dimension where Larry Niven never took up writing, then allow me to explain.  Larry Niven is known for hard-SF writing, mainly in the 70s and 80s, though he is still writing today. Unlike contemporary SF that moved on to cyberpunk, steampunk, and singularity visions, Niven still writes about humans exploring the cosmos.  He is also quite a stickler for scientific accuracy, to the extent he has created an entire universe called “Known Space” with a history extending from the early 21st century to the 32nd.

Larry Niven is probably best known for the Ring World series, about adventures on a giant ring the diameter of earth’s orbit circling an alien star.  The book I just finished, World of Ptavvs, is set in the same universe but much earlier. It also happens to be his first full novel, expanded from several short stories.  Given that he was still early in his craft, I was impressed that it was so interesting. Clearly he got better, but even this early work is quite entertaining.

World of Ptavvs is a short novel (almost novella) about humanity’s first-ish contact with an alien species, under the most strange and amusing circumstances.  Kaznol, a greedy alien with power of mind control, is accidentally stuck in a stasis field which freezes him in time. Two billion years ago he crashes on an empty planet that eventually becomes the earth of today. In the mid 21st century humans find the frozen alien at the bottom of the ocean and attempt mental contact using a man with slight telepathic abilities (he practices on dolphins who are by this time known to be intelligent).  Due to lack of planning on humanity’s part, they accidentally free the alien and in the process the alien imprints his memories on the telepath.  So now we have *two* rampaging aliens from billions of years ago bent on conquering the earth.

I know, it’s sounds super cheesy but it’s actually a very entertaining story with some cool twists. Throw in a team from the ARM (CIA of the future), some angry asteroid miners, and a few stolen spaceships and you get a rockin’ adventure. Best of all it’s *short*. Less than 200 pages.  In an age when many authors feel the need to produce thousand page tomes it’s nice to read a book that is no longer than it needs to be.

I’m home all by myself this weekend (the missus took the baby to CA to visit family for a few days) so I am at long last catching up on some reading.  Today’s book is Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham.  It is a selection of Paul Graham’s essays collected into a single volume, most notably Hackers & Painters.

Paul Graham is the co-founder of Viaweb, an early software as a service provider that was later sold to Yahoo in 1998.  He then co-founded the Y-combinator startup incubator. He blogs and speaks regularly on topics of startups, hacking, and creative collaboration.

Though the book was first published in 2004 it has aged pretty well because Paul mostly focuses on timeless topics:  Why are hackers the way they are?. Startups are a great way to create wealth. Musings on programming languages.  His chapter on web based software: The Other Road Ahead is not only still relevant, but more relevant than ever before.  Software as a Service is now the order of the day.  While he missed the concept of shipping software as a packaged mobile app instead of just websites, he got the core concepts of always available, always updated software right on.

Over all I like the book. The musings about what makes a good programming language towards the end are especially good, though you may come to the conclusion that all languages eventually grow to become inferior dialects of Lisp.  My biggest beef isn’t so much with the book but with Paul Graham’s tone.  Sometimes he steps beyond merely authoritative to become overbearing and down right arrogant.  Especially in the name sake chapter on Hackers and Painters one gets the impression that Paul can be quite a know-it-all dick when he wants to be. He puts his kind of person, the hacker, on a pedestal: equating the best hackers with the great painters of the Renaissance. Uber-men who are experts in many fields and outperform the work of 30 mediocre employees. This attitude of superiority pervades the book and can become a turn off for the reader.

But the thing is: throughout the book he’s completely right. In virtually every essay he digs into the topic and divines the underlying truth, even when we might not which to acknowledge it.  He even has a chapter on that topic: What You Can’t Say. I suspect his peculiar narrative tone simply reflects how Paul is in real life. I have to respect people who write how they speak. I always strive for honesty in my writing as well.  Would I ever want to work with Mr Graham in his startup incubator? I don’t know. I haven’t met him. He may be a right jolly fellow in person. In any case,  I enjoyed reading the book and will read his further essays on his blog, just always knowing to adjust the tone to my personal liking.

I have only two real complaints with Hackers & Painters. First, the chapter on catching spam seems very out of place with the rest of the book. Not that I didn’t like it, just it was more technical rather than discussing more universal topics. Second, he has several chapters which discuss the programming language of the future, or one that might last 100 years. He dives into the problems that must be solved but never proposes any real solutions. I’m not asking for a full BNF but a few examples of what such a dynamic concise super-language would look like might be handy.  But then. I suspect it would just be full of parenthesis.

One final item: read the notes section at the end. More than just the footnotes for the book, the provide more entertaining tidbits to ponder and entice further trips to Wikipedia.