I desperately want Niven to have been taking the piss here. For this to have been some kind of bitchy meta-commentary on something, taken out of context
It's just possible that it was a joke in poor taste -- there's a plotline in one of his Known Space books that *does* involve killing people in order to harvest their organs (in that case, it was the government widely broadening the application of the death penalty and essentially using criminals as a continuous supply of organ donors) so he might have been referencing his own books.
Jerry Pournelle gets points from me for at least kind of calling him on it, though. Though thinking back on it, I'm not sure what I would make of his Janissaries series if I were reading it now.
That said, the fact that Stephen Barnes has worked with Niven only increases my desire to read his stuff (my local Barnes & Nobles hates me and doesn't have any copies of his alternate history series where Africa ends up conquering Europe instead of the other 'way round. I may have to resort to Amazon). Beowulf Shaeffer was one of my fictional heroes back in tenth grade.
If anyone has any instances to cite of Anne being a horrible person, I don't right now want to know
There was one instance of controvercy that I know of, but it was a decade or more ago and wasn't race-related (or the kind of deliberately nasty and bullying behavior some professional authors have engaged in this Spring). Still, I wouldn't go typing her name into google or asking around, because it does come up in fannish conversations occasionally, the way the "Marion Zimmer Bradley got sued by a fan over fanfic" story does.
Pern was a massive part of my childhood, too. I totally wanted to be Lessa when I was eight (I used to wish desperately for long, black hair and grey eyes). The fact that the blue & green riders' relationships never stuck me as unusual or especially worthy of comment even at age nine was probably A Sign that slash was in my future.
no subject
It's just possible that it was a joke in poor taste -- there's a plotline in one of his Known Space books that *does* involve killing people in order to harvest their organs (in that case, it was the government widely broadening the application of the death penalty and essentially using criminals as a continuous supply of organ donors) so he might have been referencing his own books.
Jerry Pournelle gets points from me for at least kind of calling him on it, though. Though thinking back on it, I'm not sure what I would make of his Janissaries series if I were reading it now.
That said, the fact that Stephen Barnes has worked with Niven only increases my desire to read his stuff (my local Barnes & Nobles hates me and doesn't have any copies of his alternate history series where Africa ends up conquering Europe instead of the other 'way round. I may have to resort to Amazon). Beowulf Shaeffer was one of my fictional heroes back in tenth grade.
If anyone has any instances to cite of Anne being a horrible person, I don't right now want to know
There was one instance of controvercy that I know of, but it was a decade or more ago and wasn't race-related (or the kind of deliberately nasty and bullying behavior some professional authors have engaged in this Spring). Still, I wouldn't go typing her name into google or asking around, because it does come up in fannish conversations occasionally, the way the "Marion Zimmer Bradley got sued by a fan over fanfic" story does.
Pern was a massive part of my childhood, too. I totally wanted to be Lessa when I was eight (I used to wish desperately for long, black hair and grey eyes). The fact that the blue & green riders' relationships never stuck me as unusual or especially worthy of comment even at age nine was probably A Sign that slash was in my future.