Rating: 
Summary: An assortment of excellent hard science fiction stories.
Review: Beowulf Schaeffer is the recurring pilot-hero of many of Niven's "Known Space" stories, including some of his most famous, like "Neutron Star". In this volume they are collected and put in order, with a framing sequence. An indisputable aid to understanding Niven's other "known space" works, like RINGWORLD, and immense fun in its own right. Here you first meet the Puppeteers, you first find out the galaxy is exploding, you first meet the Outsiders and other aliens. (Niven does the best aliens in the biz. A few might cattily say his aliens are better than his humans.) A fascinating future presented by one of the best sf writers still writing
Rating:
Summary: An assortment of excellent hard science fiction stories.
Review: Beowulf Schaeffer is the recurring pilot-hero of many of Niven's "Known Space" stories, including some of his most famous, like "Neutron Star". In this volume they are collected and put in order, with a framing sequence. An indisputable aid to understanding Niven's other "known space" works, like RINGWORLD, and immense fun in its own right. Here you first meet the Puppeteers, you first find out the galaxy is exploding, you first meet the Outsiders and other aliens. (Niven does the best aliens in the biz. A few might cattily say his aliens are better than his humans.) A fascinating future presented by one of the best sf writers still writing
Rating: 
Summary: Beowulf's Progress
Review: Beowulf Shaeffer started out as this cool space pilot who swoops down on a neutron star, journies to the galactic core, and visits the weirdest planet in Known Space. Later on, though, his adventures involve stopping criminal activities, as if he's become an interstellar cop. In the end, he's this amoral dude on the lam from the Earth government in the most convoluted plot this side of interpreted BASIC spaghetti code. The early classics are in other collections, and will endure. This effort, thankfully, will be forgotten. If you can figure what it was about in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: Beowulf's Progress
Review: Crashlander contains the collected stories of Beowulf Shaeffer, the man who, in Niven's Known Space, discovered the core explosion and, as it turns out, did a number of other things as well. Beowulf is an interesting character, and although not every story is great, most are very good and quite worth reading. The stories were written over a range of time, which is obvious from the internal differences - the social and moral aspects of Beowulf's world change quite a bit from first to last. And the "binder" material - the stuff Niven interpolated between the stories to bring them together, make them more cohesive - is only moderately successful. Frankly, Beowulf's past is just more interesting than his present. But the stories themselves are truly gripping, and as a short story collection, this book really works. One tiny caveat: the book as a whole implies certain things about the origins of Louis Wu (of Ringworld fame) that contradict the beginning of the Ringworld series itself. Doesn't matter, of course, unless you're a real stickler for detail. Over all, a book well worth reading for those into Niven or his Known Space.
Rating:
Summary: A strange hybrid, but the stories are great
Review: Crashlander contains the collected stories of Beowulf Shaeffer, the man who, in Niven's Known Space, discovered the core explosion and, as it turns out, did a number of other things as well. Beowulf is an interesting character, and although not every story is great, most are very good and quite worth reading. The stories were written over a range of time, which is obvious from the internal differences - the social and moral aspects of Beowulf's world change quite a bit from first to last. And the "binder" material - the stuff Niven interpolated between the stories to bring them together, make them more cohesive - is only moderately successful. Frankly, Beowulf's past is just more interesting than his present. But the stories themselves are truly gripping, and as a short story collection, this book really works. One tiny caveat: the book as a whole implies certain things about the origins of Louis Wu (of Ringworld fame) that contradict the beginning of the Ringworld series itself. Doesn't matter, of course, unless you're a real stickler for detail. Over all, a book well worth reading for those into Niven or his Known Space.
Rating:
Summary: Known Space Knowledge
Review: For fans of Niven's other "Known Space" novels and short stories, this Beowulf Schaeffer collection is a must. It wasn't until finishing "Crashlander" that I realized just exactly who Louis Wu is. Wu (the central character of the "Ringworld" novels) doesn't appear directly in "Crashlander," but he is mentioned in a manner that makes his origins clear. Classic work from one of the masters
Rating: 
Summary: The early material is great, but Niven's latest is awful
Review: In 1966 Larry Niven created the ultimate tourist with his short story "Neutron Star." It was the tale of Beowulf Shaeffer, a laid-off pilot heavily in debt and easy to blackmail, and how the alien race the puppeteers convinced him to make a dangerous flyby of a neutron star. Throughout the late sixties followed several other Beowulf Shaeffer stories, which were previously to be found only in the out-of-print collection NEUTRON STAR. In 1994 Del Rey released CRASHLANDER, which brought back into print the Beowulf Shaeffer stories of the late 60's, together with "The Borderland of Sol" (1975), a new story "Procrustes," and interim material that Niven had just penned to bind the stories together into one novel, as it were (there's no table of contents and the title of each story isn't listed at the head of the page). CRASHLANDER has some good material, but the latest writing shows that Niven's treatment of his Known Space universe has become very poor indeed. The late-60's Beowulf Shaeffer stories were classics of science fiction, mixing hard science with colourful alien races and futuristic fashion. In "Neutron Star" the reader travels with Shaeffer as he visits what was then a revolutionary concept in astronomy. In "At the Core", the puppeteers convince Shaeffer to take an experimental hyperdrive all the way to the galactic core, where he makes a discovery that spurs the puppeteers into fleeing Known Space. "Flatlander" begins with Shaeffer as a tourist on Earth, and takes him on a journey with a millionaire to a very unusual planet. "Grendel", the last of the golden age of the Shaeffer stories, has Shaeffer foil a kidnapping on a newly-colonized world. These stories are all excellent and are recommended reading for any fan of science fiction. The last two stories, however, are incredibly disappointing, nearly enough so to taint the eariler works. "The Borderland of Sol" was written after the decline of Niven's writing in the mid-1970's. It nearly repeats the theme of "Grendel" (with Shaeffer becoming something of a detective), but with unbelievable characters, B-movie shoot-outs, and uninspired futurisms. The last story, "Procrustes" dates from the 1990's and is nearly as bad as Niven's novel from the same time THE RINGWORLD THRONE. "Procrustes" has a plot that is convoluted to say the least, and none of the characters act like they have in previous stories. Most disturbing is the Robert Heinlein-esque turn into sexuality explicit scenes that Niven made in the early 90's, as "Procrustes" begins with an orgy. The frame stories were written at the same time as "Procrustes" are are just as bad. They contradict previous Niven stories (such as mentioning the Trinocs when they won't be met for another 200 years, the Puppeteer Fleet of Worlds, etc.) and end in an inexplicable murder that is nothing but a deus-ex-machina. My recommendation: skip CRASHLANDER and find the out-of-print collection NEUTRON STAR, which brings together all the golden age Shaeffer stories as well as several other fascinating Known Space short stories.
Rating: 
Summary: A book that starts good and declines steadily.
Review: Known Space. It's cool. Beowulf Shaeffer. Cool guy. Mostly. The first few stories, especially the Nebula award winning "Neutron Star," are of extremely high quality. It's something of a shock, then, that the later stories decline so rapidly. Niven's writing style changes quite noticably in the real-life years between the stories, from a more traditional space opera to something...not. I couldn't even finish "Procrustes," it was so bizarre and un-Niven that I had trouble following it. If you are lucky enough to find the book Neutron Star, which contains the first few stories of this book (in addition to a few others), go for it. It's a better buy overall. If not (this will be most of you, unfortunately), it's up to you whether the first half of the book is worth the price of admission, since the second half arguably isn't.
Rating:
Summary: A book that starts good and declines steadily.
Review: Known Space. It's cool. Beowulf Shaeffer. Cool guy. Mostly. The first few stories, especially the Nebula award winning "Neutron Star," are of extremely high quality. It's something of a shock, then, that the later stories decline so rapidly. Niven's writing style changes quite noticably in the real-life years between the stories, from a more traditional space opera to something...not. I couldn't even finish "Procrustes," it was so bizarre and un-Niven that I had trouble following it. If you are lucky enough to find the book Neutron Star, which contains the first few stories of this book (in addition to a few others), go for it. It's a better buy overall. If not (this will be most of you, unfortunately), it's up to you whether the first half of the book is worth the price of admission, since the second half arguably isn't.
Rating:
Summary: Same old, same old
Review: Niven is an excellent writer, and if you haven't seen his previous "Known Space" collections, this will be a treat. This is a rehash of his classics, "second verse, same as the first." If you've been following him for a while, don't bother, you've read 'em...
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