 Cover of first edition (paperback). | |
| Author | Larry Niven |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Norman Adams [1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Known Space Universe |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Published | 1966 (Ballantine Books) |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 188 pp |
World of Ptavvs is a science fiction novel by American writer Larry Niven, first published in 1966 and set in his Known Space universe. It was Niven's first published novel and is based on a 1965 magazine story of the same name.
A reflective statue is found at the bottom of one of Earth's oceans, having lain there for 1.5 billion years. Since humans have recently developed a time-slowing field and found that one such field cannot function within another, it is suspected that the "Sea Statue" is actually a space traveler within one of these time fields. Larry Greenberg, a telepath, agrees to participate in an experiment: a time-slowing field is generated around both Greenberg and the statue, shutting off the stasis field and revealing Kzanol. Kzanol is a living Thrint, a member of a not particularly bright telepathic race that once ruled the galaxy through their enslavement of more intelligent species with their Power (mind control).
Eons ago, Kzanol's spaceship had suffered a catastrophic failure; its reactive drive system failed and the navigation computer automatically jettisoned it. Faced with insufficient power to use hyperspace, Kzanol aimed his ship at the nearest uninhabited Thrint planet used to grow yeast for food (Earth), and turned his spacesuit's emergency stasis field on to survive the long journey and impact. He also arranged for his ship to change course for the system's eighth planet (Neptune) after he was in stasis, with his amplifier helmet and other valuables stashed inside his spare suit (in order to hide these valuables from any rescuers).
Although he assumed that the resident Thrint overseer would be able to rescue him after seeing the plume of gas created by his impact, his timing could not have been worse; while he was in stasis, the races enslaved by the Thrint revolted. Facing extinction, the Thrint decided to take their enemies with them by constructing a telepathic amplifier powerful enough to command all sentient species in the galaxy to commit suicide along with the Thrint themselves, with only the artificially created Bandersnatchi, having been secretly designed by their creators, the Tnuctipun, to be resistant to the Power surviving this mass-extinction event. After hundreds of millions of years, the yeast food mutated and evolved into complex life on Earth and eventually into humans.
The telepathic encounter with the Thrint leaves the confused Greenberg with two sets of memories, his own and Kzanol's. He instinctively assumes he was Kzanol, the much more powerful telepath. Both Greenberg and the real Kzanol steal spaceships and race to reclaim the thought-amplifying machine on Neptune, which is powerful enough to enable a single Thrint to control every thinking being in the Solar System. The chase leads to Pluto, which had been a moon of Neptune before it was knocked into its own orbit by the impact of Kzanol's ship. Eventually, Greenberg's personality reasserts itself and, armed with the knowledge of how to resist the Power (from Kzanol's own memories), Greenberg traps Kzanol again in a stasis field.
A major element of the story is the tension between Earth and the "Belters", which threatens to burst into a highly destructive war over control of the telepathic amplifier. The mutually accepted compromise is to drop the spacesuit containing the dangerous device, still in a stasis field, onto Jupiter, where no one can recover it.
Algis Budrys described World of Ptavvs as "snappy, ingenious, and upbeat", praising Niven for "treat[ing] telepathy as the phenomenon it should logically be". [2] Alan Brink noted that "Niven has made a very effective use of a teaser. A person who had not read the book has no way of knowing who or what 'Ptavvs' are; then you read it and find that we are ourselves Ptavvs and that Earth is the World of Ptavvs—as seen through alien eyes. The success of this book testifies to the effectiveness of Niven's curiosity-arousing device". [3] (A Ptavv is a Thrint who lacks telepathic powers. Thrintun considered it a matter of great shame to have a Ptavv in their family and usually tattooed them pink to sell them as slaves.)
Charles Stross was inspired by the Thrintun/Tnuctipun relationship from World of Ptavvs when developing the relationship between the githyanki and illithids for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons . He also believed the illithids to have been originally inspired by the Thrintun. [4]
According to Niven's recollection, Alexei Panshin wrote a "savage" review of Ptavvs for a fanzine and later cited it as a textbook example of how not to write a novel. [5] Panshin, however, denied that he cited Ptavvs outside of the initial review. [6]
With regard to the book's ending, Silvia Parks-Brown noted: "Human nature and the way states and their military arms think and act are not said by Niven to have significantly changed in the time separating us from the Known Space series. That being so, it can be assumed with a high probability that in the decades after the ending of "Ptavvs", Earth and the Belt would be watching each other for any sign of the other developing the ability to enter the atmosphere of a gas giant, locate and recover objects from there, i.e. gain possession of the ditched Amplifier. Any sign that the other might have gained such a capacity would lead to tensions, threats of war or an actual "preemptive" war. Also, once having become aware that a Telepathic Amplifier is possible, both sides would start secret projects aimed at developing it for themselves—this arms race, too, carrying the risk of an all-out war". [7]
Larry Greenberg volunteers to emigrate with his wife to Jinx to help the colonists communicate with the Bandersnatchi. Knowing the Tnuctipun writing system, he is able to read a message a Bandersnatchi writes, thus demonstrating that they are sapient.
The Thrintun are also mentioned in the Known Space story "The Handicapped".
Later on in the "Known Space" novel "Protector", Protagonist Elroy Truesdale observes The Sea Statue whilst visiting the "Smithsonian Institution". "It looked the product of some advanced civilization...and it was; it was a pressure suit with emergency stasis field facilities, and the thing inside was very dangerous. Once it had gotten loose." - "Protector" by Larry Niven, 1973
The theme of a human telepath "absorbing" the mind of an alien and thereby gaining various abilities and pieces of information was also at the center of Clifford Simak's Time Is the Simplest Thing .
The theme of a telepathic being able to enslave and control humans, and who comes back to malevolent active life in present-day Earth after an enormous time spent in hibernation or stasis, was used by John Brunner in The Atlantic Abomination .
Laurence van Cott Niven is an American science fiction writer. His 1970 novel Ringworld won the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. With Jerry Pournelle he wrote The Mote in God's Eye (1974) and Lucifer's Hammer (1977). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America gave him the 2015 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
Known Space is the fictional setting of about a dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories by American writer Larry Niven. It has also become a shared universe in the spin-off Man-Kzin Wars anthologies. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) catalogs all works set in the fictional universe that includes Known Space under the series name Tales of Known Space, which was the title of a 1975 collection of Niven's short stories. The first-published work in the series, which was Niven's first published piece, was "The Coldest Place", in the December 1964 issue of If magazine, edited by Frederik Pohl. This was the first-published work in the 1975 collection.
Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. Ringworld tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, a rotating wheel artificial world, an alien construct in space 186 million miles in diameter. Niven later added three sequel novels and then cowrote, with Edward M. Lerner, four prequels and a final sequel; the five latter novels constitute the Fleet of Worlds series. All the novels in the Ringworld series tie into numerous other books set in Known Space. Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970, as well as both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971.
Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome in collaboration with Jerome Bixby, John A. Sentry, William Scarff, and Paul Janvier. In 1960, he authored Rogue Moon, a novel.
Alexei Panshin was an American writer and science fiction critic. He wrote several critical works and several novels, including the 1968 Nebula Award–winning novel Rite of Passage and, with his wife Cory Panshin, the 1990 Hugo Award–winning study of science fiction The World Beyond the Hill.
The Past Through Tomorrow is a collection of science fiction stories by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1967, all part of his Future History.
City is a 1952 science fiction fix-up novel by American writer Clifford D. Simak. The original version consists of eight linked short stories, all originally published in Astounding Science Fiction under the editorship of John W. Campbell between 1944 and 1951, along with brief "notes" on each of the stories. These notes were specially written for the book, and serve as a bridging story of their own. The book was reprinted as ACE #D-283 in 1958, cover illustration by Ed Valigursky.
The Big Time is a short science fiction novel by American writer Fritz Leiber. Awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel or Novelette in 1958, The Big Time was published originally in two parts in Galaxy Magazine's March and April 1958 issues, illustrated by Virgil Finlay. It was subsequently reprinted in book form several times. The Big Time is a story involving only a few characters, but with a vast, cosmic backstory.
"Neutron Star" is an English language science fiction short story by American writer Larry Niven. It was originally published in the October 1966 issue of Worlds of If. It was later reprinted in the collection of the same name and Crashlander. The story is set in Niven's fictional Known Space universe. It is notable for including a neutron star before their existence was widely known.
Time and Stars is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Poul Anderson, published in 1964.
The Man-Kzin Wars is a both the name of series of military science fiction anthologies as well as the name of the first book in the series. The short stories detail the eponymous conflicts between mankind and the Kzinti, set in Larry Niven's Known Space universe. However, Niven himself has written only a small number of the stories; most were written by other science fiction writers, as Niven opened this part of the Known Space to collaboration in the form of a shared universe. The cover art for the books in the series is created by Stephen Hickman.
"The Slaver Weapon" is the fourteenth episode of the first season of the American animated science fiction television series Star Trek: The Animated Series. It first aired on NBC on December 15, 1973, and was written by Larry Niven. It was based on his original short story "The Soft Weapon". This episode was expanded to become the first half of a full-length novel by science-fiction author Alan Dean Foster as Star Trek Log Ten.
Norstrilia is a science fiction novel by American writer Paul Linebarger, published under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith. It is the only novel he published under this name, which he used for his science fiction works. It takes place in Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind universe, and was heavily influenced by the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. The novel is in part a sequel to Smith's 1962 short story "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", featuring some of the same characters and settings.
Past Master is a science fiction novel by American writer R. A. Lafferty, first published in 1968. The novel follows the attempt of a future Utopian society in preventing its decline, by bringing Sir Thomas More to the year 2535.
A fix-up is a novel created from several short fiction stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. The stories may be edited for consistency, and sometimes new connecting material, such as a frame story or other interstitial narration, is written for the new work. The term was coined by the science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, who published several fix-ups of his own, including The Voyage of the Space Beagle, but the practice exists outside of science fiction. The use of the term in science fiction criticism was popularised by the first (1979) edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by Peter Nicholls, which credited van Vogt with the creation of the term. The name “fix-up” comes from the changes that the author needs to make in the original texts, to make them fit together as though they were a novel. Foreshadowing of events from the later stories may be jammed into an early chapter of the fix-up, and character development may be interleaved throughout the book. Contradictions and inconsistencies between episodes are usually worked out.
The Einstein Intersection is a 1967 science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. The title is a reference to Einstein's Theory of Relativity connecting to Kurt Gödel's Constructible universe, which is an analogy to science meeting philosophy. Delany's intended title for the book was A Fabulous, Formless Darkness.
"The Handicapped" is a science fiction short story by Larry Niven, originally published in the December 1967 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction as "Handicap". Set in the Known Space universe, the story introduces the Grogs, the sessile but sentient inhabitants of the planet Down.
"The Game of Rat and Dragon" is a science fiction short story by American author Cordwainer Smith, written in 1954 and published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1955. It is set in the far future, though no date is given. It occurs in the same universe as other Cordwainer Smith novels, with a passing reference to the super-powerful regulatory 'Instrumentality'.
Neutron Star is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Larry Niven, published in April 1968. The individual stories were published in If and Galaxy Science Fiction in 1966–1967, under Frederik Pohl as editor.