It’s the birthday of hard science fiction author Larry Niven (b. 1938), known for his big buttery handfuls of fascinating ideas and especially for his novel Ringworld (1970), now considered a classic of the genre.

(NB: Hard science fiction refers to science fiction that explores actual scientific ideas with accuracy and logic. As the physicist I ran across during my morning ablutions explained, some science fiction may simply assert that people can teleport from one side of the world to the other and ask the reader to take it on faith. But hard science fiction explains how the teleporters handle the huge difference in momentum found from one teleporter to the other.)

Laurence van Cott Niven was born in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in Beverly Hills except for two years spent in Washington, D.C. Niven started studying at Cal Tech, got distracted by “a bookstore jammed with used science-fiction magazines,” and flunked out. (Reading is terrible for your education. Do not let your kids read.) So Niven went to Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, and graduated with a degree in mathematics (and a minor in psych) in 1962. He did one year of grad school at UCLA, also in math, but quit to write. Niven sold his first story, “The Coldest Place,” to Worlds of If in 1964 for twenty-five dollars. The story was about the dark side of Mercury, then thought to be tidally locked with the Sun; the fact that Mercury does rotate was discovered just as the story was published, so, crappy timing.

But Niven has proven to be an unstoppable idea machine and went on to win five Hugo awards, writing about neutron stars, black holes, the redshift effect, Saturn’s rings, dark matter… name a sexy idea in physics and Niven has probably written about it. Many of his stories and novels occur in his Known World universe, including Ringworld, which received Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Ditmar awards. A few more titles from Niven’s massive body of work are Protector (1973), The Mote in God’s Eye (1974, with Jerry Pournelle), and Lucifer’s Hammer (1977, also with Pournelle). That body of work: massive. So very massive. Niven continues to write and collaborate even today, with new works coming out in 2020 (Burning Mountain, The Moon Bowl, both working titles).

Niven has been married to Marilyn Joyce “Fuzzy Pink” Wisowaty since 1969, so nicknamed because she loves fuzzy pink sweaters. Fuzzy Pink also loves science fiction. So that worked out.

Have whatever kind of Tuesday you most desperately want to have and stay scrupulously honest to the data.