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From: Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Highlights and Lowlights - February 2025
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2025 20:10:05 -0500
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On 3/4/25 5:07 PM, William Hyde wrote:
> Tony Nance wrote:
>> Highlights and Lowlights - February 2025
>>
<< snip >>
>>
>> ( ++ 1/2 - ) Flatlander - Niven (1995 collection of all 5 Gil the ARM 
>> stories)
>> The 5th Gil the ARM story (The Woman in Del Rey Crater) was written 
>> for this collection. Gil is a detective working for ARM (the elite UN 
>> police force). He was born on Earth, spent years in the Belt, and the 
>> last two stories have him on the Moon. The range of quality goes from 
>> the excellent Patchwork Girl down to I-didn't-read-it The Defenseless 
>> Dead. I only read a few pages of because it was clear that this was 
>> 1000000% about organlegging, which I find too dumb an idea to ignore 
>> when it’s the primary story driver.[1]
>>
<< snip >>
>>
>> Tony
>> [1] In the Afterword, Niven makes it clear that he (at that time, at 
>> least) truly thinks organlegging is inevitable, as are the social & 
>> legal changes he brings along with it. Meh.
> 
> I believe that it was in this afterword in Dangerous Visions that Niven 
> gave us his justification for thinking that organ transplant would in 
> the long term win out over artificial organs, and this consisted of "its 
> a simpler set of techniques".
> 
> Which seemed to me like a good justification for organ transplantation 
> winning out over the short, not the long, run.  

Agreed.

> And in "A gift from 
> Earth" he seemed to agree, showing us the first skin replacement, which 
> grows naturally, without need of an operation.  Presumably more will 
> follow in this future.
> 
> William Hyde
> 

I've completely lost the thread on the internal chronology of the Known 
Space stories, but I believe you are correct from the few things I remember.

Tony