In Fiction
In the Larry Niven book Ringworld, Nereid is described as having been leased by the outsiders "half a millenium ago". The protagonist, Louis Wu, speculates that the outsiders evolved on a gas giant moon similar to Nereid. In Niven's short story, "Flatlander" from the book Neutron Star, Beowulf Schaeffer accompanies an earth person nicknamed Elephant, the flatlander of the title, to buy information from the outsiders. Elephant asks for the location of the most interesting unknown planet in the 60 or so light year sphere of local space. He wants to go on an adventure and become famous. The story shows a glimpse of a fascinating powerful alien race and culture.
Read more about this topic: Nereid (moon)
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)
“We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)