Ten years ago I joined a mailing list devoted to the works of Larry Niven. I’d loved Niven’s works for years but never had anyone to share that love with, and one of the great things about the Internet in those wild and wooly days of the mid- and late-90s was discovering their were other people out there who loved the sames things I did, people I could talk to about my manic fandoms. I subscribed, began reading posts…<\/p>\n
And then I felt completely out of my depth.<\/p>\n
I thought I knew Niven’s works. I thought I was a pretty bright guy. That was a reality-check moment. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
One of the first conversations I got involved in was one about who our favorite Niven characters were. Bey Schaeffer (from Neutron Star<\/i>) and Louis Wu (from the Ringworld<\/i> novels) were frequently brought up. Kevin Renner from the Mote<\/i> novels got a mention, as I recall.<\/p>\n
I piped up. My favorite Niven character? Harry “Redd” Reddington, from Footfall<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Footfall<\/i> is Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s novel about an alien invasion of the Earth. (At the time it was written it was meant to be near-future; now it works better as an alternate history of the late Reagan era.) Baby elephants from Alpha Centauri come to Earth, drop asteroids on the planet, and humanity fights back. The novel has literally a hundred characters going and doing–from the halls of the White House, to a Kansas farmhouse, to survivalist groups, to the alien fithp<\/i> themselves.<\/p>\n
One of the characters is Harry Redd. It’s been a while since I read the book, so if I’m misremembering details I apologize. Harry was out of work, down on his luck, and the fithp<\/i> came. The fithp<\/i> destroyed a lot of the transportation infrastructure, but Harry goes on a road trip to rescue the wife of a friend. Later he ends up working an an engineer on the Michael<\/i><\/a>–the Orion-powered warship the United States built to kick the living snot of the fithp<\/i>. And the last time we see Harry he’s in space, the fithp<\/i> have just ripped a hole in the side of the Michael<\/i>, and Harry’s sent to do what he can, knowing full well it’s a death sentence with all the radiation bombs flying.<\/p>\n (As an aside, I absolutely love<\/i> it when the Michael<\/i> lifts off and goes after the fithp<\/i> starship. It’s the stand-up-and-cheer moment of the book, it’s utterly pulse-pounding and rivetting, and I just love it.)<\/p>\n I wish I could remember exactly what I said about Harry Reddington in that post to the Larry Niven mailing list. It was probably something along the lines of, “Harry Redd was just a normal guy in extraordinary times. He cared about people. He was smart, and he put himself out on the line. He didn’t need to be hero, but he became a hero. That’s why I like Harry Redd so much–he was just a normal guy made good.”<\/p>\n A few hours later I received an e-mail from a member of the list. His name was Frank Gasperik, and his message was basically this: “Thank you for saying that about Harry Redd. I don’t know if you know this, but Harry Redd was based on me. I’m touched that you liked the character that much.”<\/p>\n Frank passed away on Thursday.<\/p>\n He had had a heart attack about a month ago–bypass surgery and intensive care. His wife passed away in the fall. Life hadn’t been kind to Frank the past few years, unfortunately.<\/p>\n I never really knew Frank Gasperik, beyond a few e-mail exchanges and the occasional Niven-related chat. We’d talked Ring Around the Sky<\/i> in a chatroom around the time I’d sold the proposal–I remember that he had some interesting ideas about space elevators in the Star Trek<\/i> universe, but nearly five years on I couldn’t tell you what they were.<\/p>\n He was a fan of science-fiction. He was a genuinely nice guy. Smart, but not showy about it. A font of ideas. Someone you could have gone and had a beer with. That was the feel I always got from reading Frank’s posts.<\/p>\n Maybe I’ll dig out my copy of Footfall<\/i> and read the last hundred and fifty pages…<\/p>\n The world’s a quieter place today. Peace, Frank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ten years ago I joined a mailing list devoted to the works of Larry Niven. I’d loved Niven’s works for years but never had anyone to share that love with, and one of the great things about the Internet in those wild and wooly days of the mid- and late-90s was discovering their were otherContinue reading “On Frank Gasperik”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[193],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-obituary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}