NOTES
If you’d like to read more about science from the science fiction point of view, here are some good choices: of particular note are Borderlands of Science by Charles Sheffield, which explores the edges of our current scientific knowledge, with a view towards illustrating the many areas of science in which there are open questions just waiting for new scientists to answer (and waiting for new science fiction writers to exploit for story ideas), Turning Points, which includes Poul Anderson’s classic “How to Build a Planet” article and larryniven.org, the semi-official Larry Niven website (at which this talk will likely be archived). The Niven collections also include Niven’s non-fiction pieces about teleportation and megastructures.
I’d like to thank all the members of the Niven discussion list for their many comments on earlier versions of this talk and the incessant discussion of all things Niven which led me to do many of these calculations.