Laurence Van Cott Niven (Larry Niven) was born in Los Angeles on April 30, 1938, to a lawyer, Waldemar Van Cott Niven and Lucy Estelle (nee Doheny) Niven. He was educated near Beverly Hills and went to California Institute of Technology, from 1956 to 1958. He says that after he discovered a bookstore full of used science fiction magazines, he flunked out of college. He later finished his degree in mathematics at Washburn University in Topeka in 1962.

After attending graduate school from 1962 to 1963 at UCLA, he lived off of a trust fund set up by his great-grandfather while he worked at becoming a professional writer, selling his first story "The Coldest Place" to Worlds of If, then one of the leading science fiction magazines. He later redid a science fiction story into his first novel, World of Ptavvs, published in 1966.

Niven married Marilyn Joyce Wisowaty on September 6, 1969. By...