The Thrintun Power works only on sentient beings, not on nonsentient animals. If so, why would it have evolved in the first place? On their own planet, with no other sentients around, the Thrintun would have had no practical use for their Power. The ability to telepathically control animals would have carried an obvious survival value in a state of nature; but an ability to control non-Thrintun sentients only, in an environment where no such existed, it would have conferred no advantage at all, not until the Thrintun invented interstellar travel. And, if our own experience is anything to go by, once a species evolves sentience, its social/cultural/technological evolution progresses rapidly while its biological evolution stands still by comparison. (We humans are still physically adapted to be hunter-gatherers on the plains of North Africa.) So the Power, if it existed at all, would have had to exist long before the Thrintun developed high technology. But then, why would it have existed at all?
Niven notes that all twelve of the major Thrintun religions agreed that God, the “Powergiver,” gifted the Thrintun with the Power so they could rule other races. Again, judging on human experience, one would expect major religions to long antedate the development of science and technology – which means, antedating contact with other races. So why would the Power feature in their theology at all? Until they contacted other races, the Thrintun would not even have known their power existed.
The solution my be with the tnuctipun. Slavers had them around for their technical expertise, and there is a story in the Man-Kzin war volumes about the awakening of another Slaver in stasis that implies this.
Pure speculation: The Thrints were visited on their homeworld by the tnuctipun, who were enlsaved and forced to serve the Thrints, who then conquered other sentient races.
Reality: Niven is known for gaping holes in the logic of his creations, such as the Ringworld being unstable. He had a concept and went with it, fairly well, but he didn’t think of everything.
I’ll have to look for that book. But here’s one… well, it doesn’t really qualify as a guess so much as another perspective on the question that you’re asking.
Does evolution and natural selection really have to explain EVERYTHING about living creatures?? I admit, it explains a lot. But what if the Thrintun’s brains evolved in a particular way to match the environment in which they developed, and when they first met some other speicies, their brainwaves just happened to have this other property… one which was never selected for because, as you point out, there was no other opportunity for it before – but just a freak cosmic coincidence. Admittedly, that’s not very likely, but in an infinite universe some things like that might come about.
Aren’t Thrintun telepathic among themselves ? The Power is an extension of telepathy, it’s plausible that it would just happen to work as a compulsion against other sentients.
In fact, the Mad Hermit’s speculation is correct. Niven explicitly states that the Slavers didn’t have much in the way of technology until a luckless spaceship crew landed on their planet and were immediately enslaved. The Slavers conquered the galaxy using the technology of their slaves. In World of Ptaavs, Greenberg discovers that Kzanol is pretty stupid compared to a typical human.
As for the Slaver religions, well, the Slaver empire lasted for a long long time. I would imagine that the Slaver religions were developed after the establishment of the Slaver empire, or were modified heavily during the many years of the empire.
As for where the power came from…well, that doesn’t make much sense. The only explanation is that the Thrint were telepathic among themselves. Perhaps during the early evolution of the Thrint they were able to use their telepathy against each other, any Thrint with a high ability to use the Power against other Thrint had a large reproductive advantage over those with a weak ability. Likewise any Thrint who had high mental defenses against the power also had a huge reproductive advantage over those with weak mental defenses. Classic evolutionary arms race. By the time the Thrint were contacted every Thrint had both a highly developed Power (except for Ptaavs) and was also immune to the Power. When the Thrint encountered other sentient species that hadn’t evolved defenses against their highly developed Power the Thrint easily enslaved them.
I recall a comment that using an amplifier helmet (a device for boosting the Power) against another Thrint was illegal in Kzanol’s civilization. Assuming that the law was made to correct a real problem, this suggests that the Power could work against another Thrint, but generally doesn’t because (except for Power-less Ptavvs) normal un-boosted power levels can’t get through another Thrint’s mental defenses.
I haven’t read it in awhile, but I don’t remember World of Ptavvs specifically noting that Thrints could not control non-sentient species.
In a Niven short story, Beowulf Schaeffer figures out that Grogs are the tremendously devolved descendants of Thrints, and the Grogs were using the Power to control non-sentient species. They manipulated prey animals to jump into their open mouths.
I would expect someone with the user name “teela brown” to be familiar with Larry Niven.
I have to agree with those above who speculate that the Power would be an offshoot of slaver telepathy. And considering that slavers used their mouths for both, errr, input and output, I’d be surprised if they had vocal chords, making speech as an alternative form of communication difficult.
I haven’t read any of Niven’s books in a long time, and don’t have any handy. But I thought I recalled Niven stating at one point that the Thrint had initially developed their Power to control non-sentient creatures on their homeworld, and that due to millions of years of evolutionary arms race nearly everything on their homeworld with a brain had some degree of resistance to the Power. Where is it stated that they can’t use their power to control non-sentient animals?
In World of Ptavvs, Kzanol flashes back to the viprin-race at which he won the money to fund his interstellar prospecting expedition. He remembered trying to use the Power on his viprins to make them run faster – but it’s pointless, because the power doesn’t work on nonsentients. (His win anyway.)
Weren’t the viprin bred to be virtually completely brainless for the purposes of streamlining? I guess that would preclude their being controlled telepathically.
Another vote for “who said the Power doesn’t work on non-sentients?”. Were the viprin a species native to Thrint? If so, they would be among the prey animals that had evolved resistance to the Power.
BTW: my knowledge of Niven isn’t nearly as encyclopediac as I would like, so can anyone tell me how the Tnuctipun managed not to be enslaved? I gather that they pretended to be in the service of the Thrint for a long time, laying plans and traps. But how did that come about?
They were enslaved. However, as technological geniuses, the Thrint gave their minds more freedom so they could create new gadgets for them. However, as the Tnuctipun were much smarter than the Thrint, this proved to be a mistake.
Remember that Niven has let other authors play in his universe, so inconsistancies are bound to crop up.
I believe in Hall of the Mountain King a revived tnuctipn comando remembers how a fleet of Tnucpt escaped into inter-galactic space just before their empire fell to the Thrints. That was the source of their rebellion.
I haven’t read much of the non-Niven stuff. Also, many of the Tnuctipun strikes against the Thrint at least partly came from the enslaved scientists. Examples : The sudden invention of antigrav ( screwed up the economy ), bandersnatchi, the Slaver Sunflowers turning on the estates they guarded.
There wre definitely some Tnuctipun out of control, even outside that story you mentioned. In Niven’s The Soft Weapon, one of the artifacts discovered is a cap thought to be a mind shield. Also, they had AI ( including the Weapon’s computer ), which are immune to the power.
AI ( probably; the Thrint woudn’t allow the creation of minds they can’t control, and AIs are one. I recall a story were a human ( ARM ) AI rams a ship into a revived Thrint, killing him.
