Three Books of Known Space Read online

  B Y L A R R Y N I V E N

  P U B L I S H E D B Y B A L L A N T I N E B O O K S :

  The Known Space Series:

  A GIFT FROM EARTH

  THE LONG ARM OF GIL HAMILTON

  NEUTRON STAR

  PROTECTOR

  RINGWORLD

  THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS

  TALES OF KNOWN SPACE: The Universe of Larry Niven

  WORLD OF PTAVVS

  FLATLANDER

  Other Titles:

  ALL THE MYRIAD WAYS

  CONVERGENT SERIES

  CRASHLANDER

  THE FLIGHT OF THE HORSE

  A HOLE IN SPACE

  THE INTEGRAL TREES

  LIMITS

  THE SMOKE RING

  A WORLD OUT OF TIME

  With Steven Barnes:

  THE CALIFORNIA VOODOO GAME

  With David Gerrold:

  THE FLYING SORCERERS

  With Jerry Pournelle:

  FOOTFALL

  LUCIFER’S HAMMER

  Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  A Del Rey® Book Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright© 1966, 1968, 1975, 1990, 1996 by Larry Niven Copyright renewed 1994, 1996 by Larry Niven

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Niven, Larry.

  Three books of Known Space / by Larry Niven

  p. cm.

  Includes the author’s two novels, World of Ptavvs and A gift from earth, and short stories.

  ISBN 0-345-40448-3

  1. Science fiction, American. I. Title.

  PS3564.I9T48 1996

  813'.54—dc20 96-23217CIP

  Text design by Fritz Metsch

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition: November 1996

  10 9 8 7 6

  “Madness Has Its Place” was originally published in 1990 in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and in The Man-Kzin Wars IV (Baen Books) and N-Space (Tor Books). The other stories in this volume were previously published by Ballantine Books in the following collections: A Gift from Earth, Tales of Known Space, and World of Ptavvs.

  “The Color of Sunfire” was originally published in 1993 in Bridging the Galaxies by Larry Niven, published by San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions, Septembre 1993.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: My Universe and Welcome Back!

  The Coldest Place

  Becalmed In Hell

  Wait It Out

  Eye of an Octopus

  How the Heroes Die

  The Jigsaw Man

  World of Ptavvs

  At the Bottom of a Hole

  Intent to Deceive

  Cloak of Anarchy

  The Warriors

  Madness Has Its Place

  A Gift from Earth

  There Is a Tide

  Safe at Any Speed

  Afterthoughts

  Bibliography: The Worlds of Larry Niven

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Bonus short-story:

  The Color of Sunfire

  Timeline for KNOWN SPACE by Larry Niven

  DATE:

  1975

  ACCOUNT:

  The Coldest Place

  Becalmed in Hell

  Wait It Out

  Eye of an Octopus

  EVENTS:

  Beginnings of organ bank technology. Indian government officials began robbing criminals of their organs for transplants in the 1960s. This practice continues in India, South America, and China. I seem to have predicted the past.

  Cetacean civil rights. These have emerged, but I didn’t predict that snail dorters and spotted owls would be accorded the same rights.

  Some manned exploration of the solar system. Some serious delays here. The bottleneck seems to be cheap ground-to-orbit transport.

  First organ bank laws passed.

  DATE:

  2000

  ACCOUNT:

  (2040)

  How the Heroes Die

  (2099)

  The Jigsaw Man

  EVENTS:

  Colonization of the Belt.

  Third Mars expedition.

  Belt becomes independent government.

  Interstellar ramrobots launched; UN-Belt cooperation.

  Colony slowboats launched.

  DATE:

  2100

  ACCOUNT:

  (2106)

  World of Ptavvs

  At the Bottom of a Hole

  Intent to Deceive

  The Adults (Protector, 1st half)

  Death by Ecstasy

  The Defenseless Dead

  ARM

  The Patchwork Girl

  The Woman in Del Rey Crater

  Cloak of Anarchy

  (2135)

  EVENTS:

  Sea Statue unearthed and revived; first alien on Earth.

  Organ bank problem at its worst. Organlegging common. Execution for transplant makes jails obsolete. Freezer Bills passed.

  Phssthpok the Pak arrives in Sol system.

  Cetaceans in United Nations.

  Golden Age on Earth.

  Colonies expanding on Jinx, Mt. Lookitthat, We Made It, Wonderland.

  DATE:

  2300

  ACCOUNT:

  (2340)

  Vandervecken (Protector, 2nd half)

  (2360)

  The Warriors

  Madness Has Its Place

  EVENTS:

  Home colonized.

  Brennan in Sol cometary halo.

  War with Pak scout ships.

  First flyby of a “cold” neutron star, BVS-1.

  First contact with kzinti.

  First Man-Kzin War.

  Institute of Knowledge on Jinx tailors boosterspice.

  Home colony fails.

  DATE:

  2400

  ACCOUNT:

  (2410)

  A Gift from Earth

  (2425)

  The Ethics of Madness

  EVENTS:

  Revolution on Mt. Lookitthat.

  Safe ramscoop invented.

  We Made It buys hyperdrive shunt from Outsider merchants.

  End of First Man-Kzin War.

  DATE:

  2500

  ACCOUNT:

  EVENTS:

  Manned ramscoop obsolete.

  Subsequent Man-Kzin Wars.

  Contract with Pierson’s Puppeteers and other aliens, some as parts of Kzinti Empire.

  DATE:

  2600

  ACCOUNT:

  (2640)

  Neutron Star

  A Relic of Empire

  At the Core

  Flatlander

  The Handicapped

  Grendel

  The Borderland of Sol

  Procrustes

  Framing story for Crashlander

  The Soft Weapon

  EVENTS:

  Second flyby of BVS-1.

  Puppeteer development of Quantum II hyperdrive.

  Discovery of galactic core explosion.

  Puppeteer exodus and stock market crash in human space.

  Contact with Grogs.

  Louis Gridley Wu born.

  Fertility Laws amended by Birthright Lotteries.

  DATE
:

  2700

  ACCOUNT:

  EVENTS:

  Expansion, consolidation, relative peace.

  Thruster drive replaces fusion drives (but not entirely).

  DATE:

  2800

  ACCOUNT:

  (2830)

  There is a Tide

  (2850)

  Ringworld

  (2870)

  The Ringworld Engineers

  The Ringworld Throne

  EVENTS:

  Contact with Trinocs.

  Scout flight to Ringworld.

  Puppeteer exodus in progress.

  Invading fleets to Ringworld.

  DATE:

  2900

  3000

  3100

  ACCOUNT:

  Safe at Any Speed

  EVENTS:

  Expansion. Known space becomes the Thousand Worlds.

  Longevity strongly affects society.

  *Lucas Launcelot Garner born 1939.

  INTRODUCTION: MY UNIVERSE AND WELCOME BACK!

  Thirty-two years ago I started writing. Thirty-one years ago I started selling what I wrote. And thirty-one years ago I started a future history—the history of Known Space.

  Known Space now spans a thousand years of future history, with data on conditions up to a billion and a half years in the past. Most of the stories take place either in Human Space (the human-colonized worlds and the space between, a bubble sixty light-years across by Louis Wu’s time) or in Known Space (the much larger bubble of space explored by human-built ships but controlled by other species), but arms of exploration reach 200 light-years up along galactic north and 33,000 light-years to the galactic core.

  The series now includes six novels (including the brand-new The Ringworld Throne) plus the stories in Flatlander (Gil the Arm’s tales) and Crashlander (the stories of Beowulf Shaeffer) and the stories you’re holding now, plus eight volumes of stories set during the period of the Man-Kzin Wars and written by other authors. See the updated Timeline for details.

  Future histories tend to be chaotic. They grow from a common base, from individual stories with common assumptions, but each story must—to be fair to readers—stand by itself. The future history chronicled in the Known Space series is as chaotic as real history is. Even the styles vary in these stories, because my writing skills have evolved over eleven years of real time.

  But this is the book with the crib sheets. These stories, including two novels, are published in chronological order. I’ve scattered supplementary notes between them to explain what is going on between and around the individual novels and stories in a region small on the galactic scale but huge in terms of human experience.

  A few general notes are in order here:

  1. The tales of Gil the Arm are missing. Gil’s career hits its high point around A.D. 2121, between World of Ptavvs and Protector. His stories appear all together in the collection called Flatlander.

  2. I dithered over including certain stories. “The Coldest Place” was obsolete before it reached print. That story and “Eye of an Octopus” show the hand of the amateur. But these stories are part of the fabric of Known Space, so they’re here. And Mercury rotates once per solar orbit—in Known Space but not in the real universe!

  3. You may feel that Mars itself is changing as you read through the book. Right you are. “Eye of an Octopus” is set on pre-Mariner Mars. Mariner IV’s photographs of the craters on Mars sparked “How the Heroes Die.” Sometime later, an article in Analog shaped the new view of the planet in “At the Bottom of a Hole.” If the space probes keep redesigning our planets, what can we do but write new stories? Mars continues to change, and I should be keeping up. But the field is seething with recent Mars stories. If the best writers in the field insist on writing my stories for me, what can I offer but gratitude?

  4. I was sorely tempted to rewrite some of the older, clumsier stories. But how would I have known where to stop? You would then have been reading updated stories with the facts changed around. I’ve assumed that that isn’t what you’re after. I hope I’m right.

  5. The Tales of Known Space cluster around six eras. First there is the near future, the exploration of interplanetary space during the next quarter century.

  There is the era of Lucas Garner and Gil “the Arm” Hamilton: A.D. 2106-2130. Interplanetary civilization has loosened its ties with Earth, has taken on a character of its own. Other stellar systems are being explored and settled. The organ bank problem is at its sociological worst on Earth. The existence of nonhuman intelligence has become obtrusively plain; humanity must adjust.

  There is an intermediate era centering around A.D. 2340. In Sol system it is a period of peace and prosperity. On colony worlds such as Plateau times are turbulent. At the edge of Sol system a creature that used to be Jack Brennan fights a lone war. The era of peace begins with the subtle interventions of the Brennan-monster (see Protector); it ends in contact with the Kzinti Empire.

  The tales of the Man-Kzin Wars have been written mostly by others. It still amazes me that I could get these masters to play in my universe instead of their own. From them I’ve learned more about kzinti family life, intelligent female carnivores, esoteric cosmology, and military maneuverings than I ever guessed was there. Poul Anderson gives us ancient worlds covered in natural plastics and buckyballs (now “fullerenes”). Pournelle and Sterling did aerobraking through a sun, using a stasis field. Benford and Martin expanded the Known Space cosmology beyond this universe. Donald Kingsbury’s cowardly Kzin is beyond this universe. Donald Kingsbury’s cowardly Kzin is scary as hell. A kzinti scout died in India in Kipling’s time, a notch short of bringing the Patriarchy to Earth.

  The fourth period, following the Man-Kzin Wars, covers part of the twenty-sixth century A.D. It is a time of easy tourism and interspecies trade in which the human species neither rules nor is ruled. New planets have been settled, some of which were wrested from the Kzinti Empire during the wars.

  The fifth period resembles the fourth. Little has changed in two hundred years, at least on the surface. The thruster drive has replaced the less efficient fusion drives, and a new species has joined the community of worlds. But there is one fundamental change: the Teela Brown gene—the “ultimate psychic power”—spreading through humanity. The teelas have been bred for luck.

  It always seems that I have more to say about Known Space.

  Teela Brown was bred for luck. Or else she’s a fluke of statistics, no more remarkable than any lottery winner. How can you tell? Teela’s luck has some amazing implications, and it took me twenty-five years to find them.

  Characters more intelligent than the author are the greatest challenge an author can face, and the Ringworld is crawling with them. They’re called “protectors.” Strangers around the globe keep telling me things I didn’t know about the Ringworld’s structure, and I’ve found a few of my own. I’ve been playing games of anthropology across habitable land three million times the surface area of the Earth.

  But a fundamental change in human nature—and the teelas are that—makes life difficult for a writer. The period following Ringworld might be pleasant to live in, but it is short of interesting disasters. Only one story survives from this period—“Safe at Any Speed”—a kind of advertisement. There will be no others.

  There is something about future histories, and Known Space in particular, that gets to people. They start worrying about the facts, the mathematics, the chronology. They work out elaborate charts or program their computers for close-approach orbits around point masses. They send me maps of Human, kzinti, and Kdatlyno space; dynamic analyses of the Ringworld; ten-thousand-word plot outlines for the novel that will wrap it all into a bundle; and treatises on the Grog problem. To all of you who have thus entertained me and stroked my ego, thanks.

  The chronology in this book is the work of decades on the part of a whole army of people.

  Tim Kyger, Spike MacPhee, and Jerry Boyajian got involved in the 1970s. I’v
e updated it.

  John Hewitt did the research that shaped Chaosium’s tabletop Ringworld game. He did that by bracing me at conventions and demanding that I make decisions: conflicting dates, shapes for tools and weapons, explanations and descriptions. His work “hardened” Known Space. He later helped me find the pages I needed to form a bible for the Man-Kzin Wars authors, and Jim Baen and I have been using it ever since.

  The Guide to Larry Niven’s Ringworld, by Kevin Stein, is a guide to all of Known Space. I’ve found it more accurate than my fallible memory.

  —Larry Niven

  Tarzana, California

  September 1995

  THE COLDEST PLACE

  In the coldest place in the solar system, I hesitated outside the ship for a moment. It was too dark out there. I fought an urge to stay close by the ship, by the comfortable ungainly bulk of warm metal which held the warm bright Earth inside it.

  “See anything?” asked Eric.

  “No, of course not. It’s too hot here anyway, what with heat radiation from the ship. You remember the way they scattered away from the probe.”

  “Yeah. Look, you want me to hold your hand or something? Go.”

  I sighed and started off, with the heavy collector bouncing gently on my shoulder. I bounced too. The spikes on my boots kept me from sliding.

  I walked up the side of the wide, shallow crater the ship had created by vaporizing the layered air all the way down to the water ice level. Crags rose about me, masses of frozen gas with smooth, rounded edges. They gleamed soft white where the light from my headlamp touched them. Elsewhere all was as black as eternity. Brilliant stars shone above the soft crags; but the light made no impression on the black land. The ship got smaller and darker and disappeared.

  There was supposed to be life here. Nobody had even tried to guess what it might be like. Two years ago the Messenger VI probe had moved into close orbit about the planet and then landed about here, partly to find out if the cap of frozen gasses might be inflammable. In the field of view of the camera during the landing, things like shadows had wriggled across the snow and out of the light thrown by the probe. The films had shown it beautifully. Naturally some wise ones had suggested that they were only shadows.