Flatlander: The Collected Tales of Gil the Arm Hamilton

FLATLANDER is a collection of five stories featuring Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, a top operative of the 22nd century UN police force. The stories are set in Larry Niven's "Known Space" environment and find human society extending from Earth to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt. Overpopulation and organ transplantation gone wild have resulted in a major black market for human organs, organ banks, and the death penalty for even minor legal offences. Demand is so great that innocent victims can simply disappear off the streets, kidnapped and dismembered just to keep the illegal "organleggers" in business. Hamilton gets involved in five separate murder cases, resulting in the five stories presented in the book. As Niven points out in a rather engaging "Afterward", writing scifi mysteries is a demanding task. The author must satisfy the requiremants of two different genres and maintain internal consistancy. Niven does a nice job of accomplishing the task here. Technology and environment come together in stories involving well-conceived mysteries that, as with any good mystery, give the reader enough facts to solve the case before the author presents the solution. Are these the best mysteries I've ever read? No. Are they the best scifi stories I've read? No, again, but they're as good a combination of the two as I've come across. The first three stories in FLATLANDER were written during Niven's vintage years (i.e. the late '60s/early '70s when he wrote things like RINGWORLD and was a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author), and it shows. The latter two were written much later. I enjoyed them, too, but they are neither as tight or as well-conceived as the first three. Also, technological advances have rendered the ideas about organ transplanting presented here obsolete. Overall, however, this is classic Niven stuff and will provide scifi fans, in particular, with some entertaining reading. I found them to be great fun.

SF/Mystery is one of the hardest subgenres to write convincingly - as Niven points out in his introduction to this book, SF/Mystery, to work, must follow the rules of both genres, which makes for quite the writing challenge. But in Flatlander, the collected stories about Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, Niven does a masterful job of meshing science, technology, and mystery.These stories were written over quite a range of time, and that's obvious, in both the social and moral overtones and the writing itself. However, the quality is fairly consistent, and it ranks up there with the very best Niven work. Most important, the puzzle aspect - the mystery component - is very well done, in every case; the mysteries are fair (the reader could solve them with the information given) and good (the reader has to work fairly hard to solve them before the main character does). It's a pity there aren't more Gil Hamilton stories; I'd love to see another book of these. Whether you're a fan of mystery, or SF, and especially if you're a fan of both, you'll love Flatlander.

The short stories collected in this book represent Larry Niven's brief experiment to fuse science fiction with the format of a mystery/police procedural. The last two stories are pretty dull, because they deal with trivial issues. But the earlier stories are MUST READ works which seriously examine medical ethics which we will one day have to face. These stories depict a future in which the state of medicine is so advanced that human life can be indefinitely prolonged by organ transplants. This has led to the adoption of harsh criminal codes, whereby the smallest infraction can cost a person their lives. The value of fresh organs has also led to illegal 'organleggers' who murder people for their organs. This is a world that Niven has written entire books about, but it is no better realized than in these stories, which are truly chilling in their implications. You can't help but realize that we will have to face the moral dilemmas proposed in these stories one day. Will we pass the draconian laws imagined in these stories?

I really didn't have any clue that this book even existed until I went to find The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, and discovered that not only did Flatlander have all the stories in the former book, but it had some new ones, too. So I bought Flatlander without hesitation and read it. And loved it. Actually, the only thing I found wrong with the book was the cover, which shows Gil missing his arm. In fact, not only is his imaginary arm his left arm, but he got his arm replaced before he joined the ARMs. Call me a completist, but I think Niven should have picked up on that and had them change it. But, the story. They are all mysteries, which is quite a departure for Niven, who normally deals with spaceships and stars and in that vein. Here, he shows his flexibility by combining the grand scope of his future history, with the personal side, showing Gil solve murders of friends, deal with touchy moral issues (should the frozen dead be assumed dead so they can go to the organ banks?), and through all of it having confidance in what he is doing, but not arrogance. We need more Gil the Arm stories. Actually, it would be fun to see if Gil and Beowulf Shaeffer could meet (I'm not sure if they existed at the same time chronologically, but Niven could make it happen). Either way, we need more. How about it, Mr. Niven?

If you love puzzle stories (I'm still not sure whether I do or not) then Niven's Gil Hamilton stories are a must. Each story about "Gil the Arm" (his nickname is a two-level pun based on his profession and an odd psychic ability) involves a crime where a unique technological development is integral to solving "whodunit". Niven carefully leaves enough clues for you to figure "who" and "how", if you're paying attention. He notes in the forward just why there aren't more stories like this -- they're NOT easy to write. But all the Hamilton stories are VERY easy to read -- enjoy