Arm (novella)
Encyclopedia
ARM is a science fiction novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 by American author Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...

. Set in the Known Space
Known Space
Known Space is the fictional setting of some dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories written by author Larry Niven. It has also in part been used as a shared universe in the Man-Kzin Wars spin-off anthologies sub-series....

cycle, it is the third of five Gil Hamilton
Gil Hamilton
Gilbert Gilgamesh Hamilton is a fictional character in the Known Space universe created by Larry Niven. He is one of the few science fiction detectives to appear in the genre...

detective stories.

Hamilton is called to the scene of a murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

. The victim is Dr. Raymond Sinclair, a brilliant scientist who has invented a mysterious device that creates a bubble of accelerated time. The murder scene is a locked apartment
Locked room mystery
The locked room mystery is a sub-genre of detective fiction in which a crime—almost always murder—is committed under apparently impossible circumstances. The crime in question typically involves a crime scene that no intruder could have entered or left, e.g., a locked room...

 at the top of a high-rise, where the prime suspect is a beautiful young woman whom Gil refuses to believe is the killer.

One of the themes running throughout the story, and in fact a vital element in the solution of the mystery, is the loss of an arm. Gil himself lost an arm and had a new one grafted on, using parts from an organ bank which is supplied by the bodies of criminals and "corpsicles", people who underwent cryogenic suspension. At the scene of the crime, a beautiful young woman is discovered unconscious in an "autodoc" (a device for fixing minor injuries or preserving life until help arrives) recovering from the loss of one of her arms. Another character in the story also lost an arm previously, but regards grafts as immoral and wears an advanced prosthetic arm instead. The "accelerated time bubble" has the effect of amputating the arm of anyone who reaches into it, since the arm's metabolism speeds up to the point where the rest of the body cannot supply it with blood.
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