Larry Niven is one of the biggest names in the history of science fiction, and it was a privilege to interview him via Zoom at his home in Los Angeles recently. His 1970 novel Ringworld is the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, but he has also written a whole space-fleet-load of novels and short stories over the years, including my favourite sci-fi of all time, A World Out of Time. At 87 years of age, he is very much still writing. I spoke to him about Ringworld, his start in sci-fi, his favourite work over the years, his current projects and whether he thinks humankind will ever leave this solar system. This is an edited version of our conversation.

Larry Niven: Thank you.

LN: I read science fiction almost exclusively in my early twenties and in my teens, but I didn’t know about science fiction fandom until I had started it writing it for sale. That was a great boon to me. I finally had some contact with the people I wanted to reach.

LN: I was told about Dyson spheres [hypothetical megastructures in space] by one of the other writers. I think it was Poul Anderson. I looked at the concept, which is a neat one. [It] told us how we could see other civilisations if they were powerful enough, because a tool-using civilisation should end up using all of the power from its sun. For that, it has to block all of the sunlight. I look at the Dyson sphere, I see that unless you can generate gravity, you’ll have to depend on spin gravity. And you wind up using just the equator. With that idea in mind, I took just the equator… the poor man’s Dyson sphere!

LN: My decision to go with a large-scale structure, despite the possibility of getting laughed off the stage, was [part of] my success. Ringworld is a grand intellectual toy, as I found it, and as a lot of readers did too. You can play with it, elaborate, work out Niven’s mistakes.

LN: Absolutely true.

LN: Science fiction has pretty much won its point with all the movies and comic books and stuff. So Ringworld would be a bigger success today, but it wouldn’t grab the mathematicians as easily as it did.

LN: Look to the future. Things are changing. And also, the point science fiction seems to make is that there are minds out there that think as well as you do, but differently.

LN: I was trying to make a better book than Ringworld. Ringworld doesn’t have enough of the occupants of the structure. I wanted to elaborate on that. [The author] Robert Heinlein told me that Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers made a great novel, as if they belong together.

LN: It seemed obvious [that] if I had a story that fitted a universe I’d already started writing in, I should [set it here]. It would make a more elaborate story. And I’ve been doing that for 60 years.

LN: I’ve been telling people that I would start over with a universe in which you can’t go faster than light [and] nobody’s got psychic powers. The point is, if you build a Ringworld, it has to be because you can’t reach other stars.

LN: I started as a science aficionado, particularly astrophysics and astronomy. About age 24, I realised I was just spinning my wheels as a graduate student in math. When I ran out of options, that’s when I started writing.

LN: I have not been following the science fiction field as well as I might. I have been buying books on the internet for my Kindle at $2.99 or less. It doesn’t mean I’m getting the best of what’s coming out.

LN: First, I wrote a dystopian story in which the people who are getting frozen in order to reach the future get their wish a little bent. [They are] revived, but with no civil rights. You don’t have to consider a revived dead man as a citizen… and you don’t have to give money to him. I put it in a short story [called Rammer] and was very happy with it. And it’s the first chapter of A World Out of Time. One day, I just continued the story and reached as far into the future as I felt comfortable with, and a little further.

LN: I think [Jerry and I collaborated on] a little more than nine novels. When Jerry suggested doing a collaboration, I said, yes. I didn’t know what it would be like, but I was sure it would be fun. It was fun, but it was also a lot of work. It took longer than I expected. We belong to the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society and they watched us talk about The Mote in God’s Eye as it progressed over three years. And they gave us an award they made up: Best Unfinished Novel.

LN: I started writing short stories. I rapidly realised that if you wrote a really short story, it still had to be story-shaped rather than just a glimpse of story. Eventually, I decided I wanted to write stories that showed wisdom and also were story-shaped and localised and very short. That’s what I was after, wisdom and short, when I started the Draco’s Tavern stories. Yes, the Draco’s Tavern series became novel shaped.

LN: When people ask me my favourite book, I usually base my answer on who they are.  Lucifer’s Hammer for normal people. Footfall for military people. Ringworld for actual fans. Let’s see, Destiny’s Road, I think, again for normal people.

LN: I’m working with Steven Barnes on a novel set in the universe of Gil “the Arm” Hamilton [Niven’s fictional detective in Known Space]. A guy popped up with the idea of opening the Gil the Arm universe to other writers, and to do that as an anthology. [As part of that project] Steven and I wrote a short story called Sacred Cow with Gil as a star. And it won a best short story award from Analog Magazine. [Now] they want us to write another.

LN: Just off the top of my head, I love Nova by Samuel R. Delany.

LN: I’m afraid it has to be The Wizard of Oz.

LN: Star Trek, although I’ve lapsed.

LN: Reaching way back, it’s Destination Moon. [I like] the ambitious ones, like 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rollerball was ambitious and it did it perfectly.

LN: Shorten your name, like I did.

LN: I think I’d be ready to meet a Pierson’s puppeteer or a Motie mediator [two fictional species of alien in Niven’s novels].

EHW: And do you think that humans are eventually going to make it out of this solar system?

LN: We are making progress. We’re not making it as fast as any of us expected. We thought the moon was in easy reach. It’s in difficult reach.

EHW: Larry, thank you so much for talking to us. It’s been an absolute privilege.

LN: You’re welcome. And it’s a pleasure to be [talking to] New Scientist. Have fun reading.

Larry Niven’s Ringworld is the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up and read along with us here.