Talk:Known Space

message: Does anyone have a link to these debates? I had thought, from World of Ptavvs, that the tnuctipun had turned on their slavers, and until a second ago had thought they had died with them, though on second thought the attack was supposed to be fast enough to be decisive.
:The Tnuctipun *did* die out at the end of the Tnuctipun-Slaver War. The idea for "Down in Flames" was to completely trash the entire Known Space series.  It's doubtful that Niven ever had any real intention of writing the story, and at any rate, he has stipulated Ringworld makes many of the assumptions of DiF obsolete.  Bottom line-- DiF is just an outline for a "what if" story-- not a story Niven actually wrote.  Or, if you prefer: DiF is an elaborate joke, having no bearing on the canon (fictional reality) of Known Space.--Lensman003 10:32, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "... and what happened to the Tnuctipun." 

message: The bandersnatch link under Races points to the Lewis Carroll description.  While this is probably where the name came from, it really should not point directly to that, since the other races point to their own descriptions.  Just a thought.  PerlKnitter 16:18, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bandersnatch link 

message: I'm not at all happy about the description of the ARM as policing population control by hunting "women who refuse birth control". In at least one point in the canon Louis Wu remarks (to Teela?) about both men and women getting their  birth control shots deactivated, and the point re-surfaces in later Ringworld novels too. Obviously there's an evidential issue there for the ARM as much as there always has been about paternity ("being a mother is a matter of fact, but being a father has always been a statement of opinion"). At other points in the Canon ("Long ARM"?), the jaundiced description of an impending mother-hunt suggests that the coppers (I mean ARM) would like to catch the errant sperm donors too.
:They're called "Mother hunts" because men can't get pregnant.  Political Correctness has no influence over how biology works.  The ARMs' desire to avoid mother hunts has everything to do with not liking the idea of executing a woman just for wanting a baby, and nothing to do with wanting to give fathers "equal time". The purpose of Earth's Fertility Laws are to ensure Zero Population Growth, not to punish desperate mothers. It's a proven historical fact that killing off potential fathers has little effect on the number of pregnancies in a culture (look it up if you don't believe me). Killing off illegal fathers would have little effect on the number of illegal pregnancies. --Lensman003 (talk) 18:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The description of Earth was out-dated.  By the time of Louis Wu, the organ-banks and the draconian legal system that made all crimes capital crimes had been discarded.  This came about as a direct result of the human-turned-protector Jack Brennan manipulating human society in such as way as to promote alternative medical practices in order to extend life (including the development of boosterspice and making cloned organs cheaper), as well as the development of the science of psychistry itself.  Appropriate changes have thus been made. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.84.19.246 (talk) 12:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You slightly overstated the case.  Organ banks are still being used for capital punishment in the Beowulf Shaeffer era, altho apparently only for especially heinous crimes.  In "Flatlander", Bey says "Using the fusion drive in Earth's atmosphere would have gotten us into the organ banks, in pieces." (Neutron Star p. 144) --Lensman003 (talk) 18:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Why not use Niven's own term from the ARM stories, "mother hunts"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 06:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ARM / Birth control and technology laws 

message: I was a huge fan of Niven for all the years of my youth (70s-80s). I've been making some minor changes to this article for some time now. For example, I'm trying to make the tenses consistent. Any feedback is appreciated. Markm62 07:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you!  On Wikipedia, "grammar police" are a blessing! --Lensman003 (talk) 18:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor Changes 

message: Shouldn't at least some of these planets get their own pages? And I think ARM certainly should. Kuralyov 05:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So [Be bold] and {fixit}. Abb3w 05:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Planet pages

message: The upcoming novel Fleet of Worlds is in the Niven table. However, it's not yet out yet, and is set to be co-authored with Edward M. Lerner. Should such works have a separate table? And, should such a table be commented out until the first such fully coauthored Known Space story appear? Inquiring minds want a beer.... Abb3w 05:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fleet of Worlds

message: In the only Man-Kzin Wars story written by Niven, "The Warriors", the 'Angel's Pencil' disables the first sublight Kzinti warship encountered by humans. From that ship, humans supposedly learn about gravity control and in a surprisingly short time make extensive use of it.
What's never been addressed in any Known Space story is that humans already had a working example of a gravity control device! Pshtth-pok the Pak Protector dropped his on Mars long before (in the timeline, not in the order of Niven's writing) the events in "The Warriors". The ARM would definately have recovered, studied it and suppressed the knowledge of the technology.
:This is briefly addressed in the "Interlude" section of Protector.  Phssthpok's ship was left on Mars, with the gravity polarizer still turned on-- they were afraid to turn it off-- and a base was built around it to study it in situ.  As specified later in that section of the book: "The gravity polarizer seemed beyond human understanding."  According to a much more recent story, "Madness Has Its Place", humans in Sol System first developed a working gravity generator after the Angel's Pencil beamed pictures and analysis of the Kzinti warship destroyed in "The Warriors". At least that's the official story.  Nasty suspicious fans (like me) may suspect the ARM allowed experiments on Phssthpok's ship to continue until a prototype gravity generator was developed, then shut down the research.  That would explain why humans were able to develop a prototype so quickly from (apparently) nothing more than photos and measurements.--Lensman003 10:56, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Gravity control

message: The following sentence:
"Ringworld...was built by the Pak, who later abandoned it."
isn't the final solution from the stories, although Niven makes a mystery of their absence through several books.  It was revealed in RINGWORLD THRONE that after the first generation, a Protector dictator monopolized the "tree-of-life" supply so that no rival Protectors would arise to challenge him.  Subsequent dictators used the same strategy.  The fact that the Ringworld seems abandonned during the plot of the books is because it has been "ruled" for centuries by an incompetent Protector.
:This is an overstatement. Niven very deliberately leaves just what killed off most of the protectors on the Ringworld an open question.  We know that the Repair Center under the Map of Mars had its own tree-of-life (TOL) garden, and that TOL (necessary for protectors to survive) had died off elsewhere on the Ringworld.  Altho, oddly, according to Ringworld's Children, Proserpina's TOL garden survived, altho it did not have the TOL virus which triggers the change from breeder to protector.
:Also, the protectors died off about half a million years ago, and Bram (the "incompetent" protector ruling the Ringworld) only came to power about 1200 A.D. See my "Timeline for the Ringworld" <http://www.freewebs.com/knownspace/continuity.htm#Ringtime>
:Proserpina relates a tale of the Pak expedition which built the Ringworld. But this is related as a story told by the character, not as fact, so readers are free to believe or disbelieve it. However, it matches the backstory of who built the Ringworld which Niven has been telling privately for quite a number of years.  And no, unfortunately I can't document that, it's something read long ago in a post to the LarryNiven-l discussion list.  But Niven does make it clear that his intention was that the Pak built the Ringworld; this is stated in "Afterthoughts" in Tales of Known Space.--Lensman003 (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fate of the Ringworld Paks 

message: I came up with these details of a couple of KS planets from Protector :
(The characteristics of Home are detailed in Protector(novel) as "Epsilon Indi 2 (2nd of 5 planets in the system including + 200 randomly distributed and charted asteroids ; gravity 1.08 ; diameter 8,800 miles 14,000km ;  rotation 23h10m ; year 181 days ; atmosphere 23% Oxygen, 76% Nitrogen and 1% non-toxic trace gases; sea level pressure 11psi ; 1 moon, diameter 1200 miles, gravity 0.2 surface composition roughly lunar ; discovery reported 2094 via ram-robot exploration probe ; settlement 2189 by a combination of slow boats and ram robots" ; Home's system has a gas giant "Godzilla", as Ep.Indi.5, apparently very pretty ; )
(Wunderland : Gravity 61% of Earth ; colonized are 3million sq.mi ; largest town Munchen ; dense and thoroughly-exploited asteroid belt, the "Serpent Swarm" (also from Protector )
A Karley 04:04, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Planets listings 

message: The above article is very short, and may be AfD'd in the near future if left by it self. I propose it be merged into this article? SGGH speak! 19:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Meh. Nothing in that article that couldn't be explained in a four word parenthetical comment after the word singleship appears in another article, and it's not like anyone is going to be searching for "singleship" except by following a link where the word appears in another article if they don't understand it. But if you really want to save it, I think it would make more sense to merge it with the belter article than here. 75.21.84.69 11:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

text: *Boldly merged as a no-brainer. Added to #Technology section under subsection ===Terms===, with conversion of Singleship (Niven) to redirect and tagging by . Left the spaceship cat in the redirect, and added hidden  to new 'Terms section to warn off would be movers and or renamers. // FrankB 17:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  On merging [[Singleship (Niven)]] 

message: The section on this species claimed that the Tnuctipun-Slaver War ended with the death of every creature in the galaxy "with a notochord".  Actually in Known Space it's the ramscoop field that kills anything with a notochord.  Various stories have claimed the war ended with the death of all life in the galaxy, or every *intelligent* being.  That's quite a difference!  Actually the claim all life was ended must be an overstatement; the food yeast on various planets which later developed into various Known Space species clearly didn't die out.--Lensman003 (talk) 17:34, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it's a kind of of shorthand. If you want to get real picky, bandersnatchi survived. If you rule out immunity, then there were beings in stasis who survived as well. "With a notochord" means "with a backbone and intelligence but without immunity or stasis protection" IMHO, and it comes from the author's words IIRC. --Kjoonlee 21:38, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  It was a good edit from an accuracy perspective, and it's way better stylistically too. One quick question: should Suicide Night be in the Thrint blurb instead of the Tnuctipun section?  Wellspring (talk) 03:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tnuctipun 

message: Kalaong, why did you delete reference to martial arts?  Also, what you added, while plausible, amounts to OR.  Can you source it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kjaer (talk • contribs) 18:44, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: ARM

message: Re: the "citation needed," it's mentioned near the very end of "Grendel" that, "Someone had even advised Lloobee on color."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.1.196.76 (talk) 19:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Kdatlyno

message: FYI. Ikip (talk) 23:26, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bandersnatch_(Known_Space)_(2nd_nomination)]]

message: i always thought one of niven's best ideas was the puppeteer breeding program - a license to reproduce on earth, a rare and valuable thing, could be obtained by winning a global lottery; the puppeteers thought this involved luck, and they bred lottery winners in hopes of producing a lucky person.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.220.64.105 (talk) 21:50, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: birth lottery

message: In his "Future Histories" article, published in Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, Vol. 14 #3, Fall 1979, Niven wrote:
I still get letters asking me when I'm going to write "Down in Flames," the novel that proves that everything we know about known space is an elaborate hoax.  It was an elaborate joke!  Ask Norman Spinrad, for Ghu's Sake.  He started it.
Hopefully this makes it clear that "Down in Flames" should not be considered canonical, and hopefully we can drive a stake thru the heart of the notion that the Tnuctipun are really Kzinti.  According to "The Soft Weapon", the Tnuctipun were small compact bipeds with two opposable thumbs on each hand.  Clearly the Kzinti don't fit this description.
I've edited the paragraph on "Down in Flames" in the "Playground" section to better reflect the fact that the article is not canonical.--Lensman003 (talk) 22:57, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Down in Flames" 

message: Though they share a superficially pentaradial body plan, they are not a related species (http://edward-m-lerner.blogspot.com/2010/09/of-gwoth-and-jotoki.html).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.70.58.119 (talk) 17:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gw'oth are not Jotoki 

message: The Nonesuch are mentioned in the species section, but it is also noted that they are from Convergent Series. They do not appear in any of the Known Space stories that I am aware of (and I am the author of the Encyclopedia of Known Space) - seems like it would be appropriate to delete them from the list. Doconeill (talk) 02:50, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonesuch 

message: It appears that the bulk of this article hasn't been updated in many years.  Specifically, significant bits of info in this article are modified or obsoleted by material in the Fleet of Worlds series (and probably the last couple of Ringworld books), which seems much more relevant and important than info from (the joke) Down in Flames or the arguably non-canonical Man-Kzin War stories (definitely non-canonical in at least one case).  I don't yet feel comfortable enough to make significant changes here (in part because some of the changes would be major spoilers for those later works), but if no one else steps in I eventually will, unless someone points out why such changes shouldn't be made.  108.74.28.81 (talk) 18:17, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Info updates due to Fleet series

message: It was proposed in February 2012. that the article at Jinx (Known Space) be merged into this article.  The Jinx (Known Space) article appears to have no independent notability. Its notability has been questioned since February 2012 and its relevance to the encyclopedia project as a whole has been question since April 2008 as being just an in-universe acticle without explanation of non-fictional perspective. The article focuses entirely on its fictional relevance, as opposed to its place in the real world. The article lacks the importance (and hence notability) that would be conveyed by reliable independent sources. See What Wikipedia is not.  Wikipedia guidelines favor such a merger.  In the merge the text would need to be made appropriately concise in order not to over-balance this article.  --Bejnar (talk) 18:41, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree with Merge for the reasons listed above. Klbrain (talk) 22:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger in from  article "Jinx (Known Space)" 

message: Substituted at 21:20, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

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thread_title:  External links modified