''Death by Ecstasy'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

by American writer

Larry Niven Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are ''Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, ''The Mote in God's Eye'' ...

, set in the ''

Known Space Known Space is the fictional setting of about a dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories written by Larry Niven. It has also become a shared universe in the spin-off ''Man-Kzin Wars'' anthologies. The Internet Spec ...

'' universe. It is the first of five

Gil Hamilton This is a list of fictional characters featured in the ''Known Space'' novels by Larry Niven. Individual characters Sigmund Ausfaller Sigmund Ausfaller, a native of Earth, is a member of the Amalgamated Regional Militia ("ARM"), working in the B ...

detective stories, and provides most of the

backstory A backstory, background story, back-story, or background is a set of events invented for a plot, presented as preceding and leading up to that plot. It is a literary device of a narrative history all chronologically earlier than the narrative of p ...

for the character. It first appeared in the January 1969 edition of ''

Galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

'' under the title ''The Organleggers''.www.isfdb.org
Retrieved 2019-05-26.

Plot summary

A belter, Owen Jennison, is found dead on Earth in a locked Los Angeles apartment. His death is an apparent

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...

. Hamilton, a friend and former crewmate of Jennison, is called to the scene to investigate. He finds Owen with a droud (a wirehead's transformer) plugged into the back of his head. The latter apparently starved himself to death while continuously stimulating the

pleasure center The reward system (the mesocorticolimbic circuit) is a group of neural structures responsible for incentive salience (i.e., "wanting"; desire or craving for a reward and motivation), associative learning (primarily positive reinforcement and class ...

of his own brain. Hamilton, refusing to believe that his friend would commit suicide or turn wirehead, suspects foul play.

Editions

* * Spangler, Bill; Tidwell, Terry; Stiles, Steve (1991). ''Death by Ecstasy: Illustrated Adaptation of the Larry Niven Novella''. Malibu Graphics.

References

1968 short stories Short stories by Larry Niven Known Space stories Locked-room mysteries Fiction about main-belt asteroids {{1960s-sf-story-stub