The ULTIMATE Alien

[El_Elvis_Rojo]

Quick question: are the Kzin, Tnuctip, and pretty much all the other aliens discussed recently in Niven’s books all from the Ringworld, or are they from other books of his?

[Master_Wang-Ka]

They’re pretty much from the Known Space series, all of which are loosely strung together. This is largely made up of short stories, as well as some of his novels. Probably the best sourcebook to read up on ALL of it, at once, would be the old out-of-print Ringworld role-playing game, from Chaosium.

Failing that, look for his incredibly thick story collections, N-Space, and Playgrounds Of The Mind, which covers a lot of the basics discussed here.

[Chronos]

They’re pretty much from the Known Space series, all of which are loosely strung together.

Except for the grendels. They’re from a completely separate book, The Legacy of Heorot, which has a much more plausible basis than Known Space (i.e., all of the science in Heorot is already known, and the technology is a reasonable extrapolation of known technology).

[Badtz_Maru]

*Originally posted by Vlad Dracul *
**For a while, Niven considered writing a story that would link the Kzin to the tnuctip, but decided not to. The anecdote about this decision is in his collection “N-Space”.

Basically, he says Norman Spinrad got him thinking about writing a story that would destroy the whole “Known Space” chronology and background, then move on and write about other things. Niven decided not to, and went on to write “Ringworld” instead.

Some of the ideas he mentioned for the story that never was:

  Kzin are modified tnuctip who were settled on the Kzin planet as part of a long-range tnuctip plot.

  The Thrint never existed.   Kzanol was gene-engineered, given fake memories, and dropped on Earth as part of the plot.

  Beowulf Schaffer never went to the Core (he was tricked), and there is no Core explosion.   Part of the tnuctip plot.

  Apparently, the heart of the plot was to get half the sentient species in the galaxy moving outward in slow-hyperdrive ships, where the tnuctip could pretty much pick them off at will.

 There's more to it, but that's what I remember off the top of my head. **

“Down in Flames” - a basic plot outline was in N-Space or Playgrounds of the Mind, can’t remember much else. It was basically a story that would contradict everything from all the previous Known Space stories.

And what I said about the Thrint mental amplifier killing all multicellular life in the galaxy is correct. Bandersnatch are not multicellular.