Talk:Pierson's Puppeteers

message: "Conjecture: The Puppeteers are known liars and stingy with the truth. Niven already wrote about "pocket" black holes in at least two stories, one in an early-works collection, and again in a Beowulf Shaeffer novelette included in Crashlander. Pocket holes controlled with Stasis Fields would be enough."
Isn't this original research? NHammen 02:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conjecture 

message: Puppeteers tend to choose centaur names? That would seem to be a pretty limited choice. See the centaur page.
:How about "names from classical Greek mythology?" Schoop (talk) 15:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: read Juggler of Worlds- Niven & Lerner speculate that Puppeteers are egotists and choose Greek myth names to elevate themselves above humans. The naming convention is inconsistent... In reality, the authors have to name them something so dont read too much into it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

text: They often use different names from Greek mythology, but not always and not just centaurs. Nike (named after a goddess), for example, is the name taken by the Hindmost, Achilles is the name taken by another Scout, and Baedeker is presumably named after a travel guide publisher. Merennulli (talk) 01:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Puppeteer names 

message: "They use the "mouths" to manipulate objects, as a humanoid uses arms and hands. Respiration and ingestion are performed with an orifice on the front of the torso."
Where is this stated?
I don't have the books available at hand, but don't Puppeteers eat and breath through the mouths also?
VikÞor    Talk 03:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: yes  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

text: Correct. In Betrayer of Worlds, they specifically mention Nessus having difficulty breathing with his heads tucked too-tightly under his belly in defensive posture. Achilles in the same book also is able to breath when his ship is opened to vacuum as soon as he puts one of his heads into a suit. Nessus also ate with one mouth while speaking in a restricted manner with the other in Destroyer of Worlds. In no depiction I've seen of puppeteers, and in nothing I've read has there been any indication of an "in" orifice on the torso anywhere. Merennulli (talk) 23:50, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  ingestion 

message: The Puppeteers have millenia of experience a interstellar travellers, and have been moving their own planets around for centuries, yet they don't know what tidal forces are? I smell a red herring (or just one ignorant GP Regional President)
Noclevername 01:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The collection is Crashlander, and the details are discussed in Neutron Star (short story)# Notes. 58.147.52.66 (talk) 08:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tides 

message: We need a picture of a puppeteer.
There is one now, but it seems to have been made in the spore creature creator. Would that be considered vandalism or fan-fiction or something like that?
I think it's fine, just add it correctly.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.182.51.67 (talk) 02:49, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture 

message: I removed this from the page since it was more discussion than enlightening:
It should also be noted that the Klemperer rosette is a very unlikely formation for a paranoid species to choose as its own custom solar system, as this simulation (bottom of page) shows. (note, this simulation appears to suffer from major floating point innacuracies leading to instability. A more reliable source for the validity of a Klemperer rosette should be cited.) 
Cromis 03:14, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  claim about instability of klempere rosette 

message: Hi, has anyone read the Fleet of Worlds novel? Judging from some of its content, some (maybe a lot) of this article would need to be changed. --Kjoonlee 20:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's going a bit far. Yes, they lie, but they aren't evil either. In fact, the novels you mention, as well as the Destroyer of Worlds novel that follows, go into great detail about the moral dilemmas from their perspective. In each instance, the character Sigmund is shown making observations based on his own paranoia to show the reader more clearly how the Puppeteer reasoning leads to such seemingly horrible actions as those that lead to the human slaves on Nature Preserve 4. And the lying isn't a new revelation, just the details of it.  Even in the Ringworld novels it was indicated that they were considered dishonest, manipulating human evolution to produce people like Luis Wu and Teela Brown. The only positive thing they were known for in terms of honesty was a very generous payout in the event one of their hulls failed. Merennulli (talk) 01:43, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential changes 

message: Re: "(one would think that Louis Wu would have noticed this when flying there on the Long Shot in Ringworld)" in Homeworld — The Fleet of Worlds
I think the parenthetical remark here is speculative, but I think there's supporting evidence in Ringworld. Particularly:
"By now you know," said Chiron, "that we have been moving north along the galactic axis for the past two hundred and four of your Earth years. In kzin years --"
"But, Louis thought, it was about two hundred light years away. And it was along the galactic axis. Perhaps the puppeteers had chosen to move out of the galaxy along the shortest direction, then travel above the plane of the galaxy to reach the Lesser Cloud. Thus they would avoid interstellar debris: suns, dust clouds, hydrogen concentrations ..."
Which implies that the Puppeteer homeworld movement wouldn't preclude a final destination at the core or rim, since so far it's only moved "upwards" or "north" out of the galactic plane. Should this be thrown in as corroborating evidence?
Strangename (talk) 07:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Homeworld Movement 

message: Is it appropriate to have a completely fanmade image like this?128.211.160.72 (talk) 04:19, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image 

message: Removed statement about General Products and Gregory Pelton. It was a mistake, based on a joke in one of the books. If there were ever an article on Gregory Pelton (unlikely), that would be the place for it.
MikeR613 (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gregory Pelton 

message: "In Ringworld, Nessus, a Puppeteer, explains how his race's cowardice is partly a result of a science experiment (the details of which are not given) that proves the Puppeteers have nothing equivalent to an immortal soul, and therefore death is, for their species, eternal oblivion."  While this paragraph is correct from a strict reading of the text, I think it overlooks a whole pile of nuance and gives some false impressions.  There's no indication throughout the Known Space stories that ANY species has souls.  I always took this as Nessus being simultaneously diplomatic and condescending.  By specifying only Puppeteers, he diplomatically avoids trampling over any of the other species religious beliefs, and implies their "insane" courage makes a kind of sense.  On the other hand, Puppeteers clearly have a very high opinion of their own specific brand of rationality, with the implication that Nessus really thinks the other two species are simply too irrational to have fully grasped their own mortality.  It comes across as a "lie to children" more than anything, but without any actual lying.  LordQwert (talk) 20:32, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Puppeteer Souls