Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 01

“The Warriors” wasn't just the first tale of the kzinti. It was the first story I ever offered for sale. I was daydreaming in math class, as usual, and I realized that I'd shaped a complete story. So I wrote it down, and bought some magazines to get the editorial addresses, and started it circulating.

It was years before anyone bought it. By then I'd rewritten it countless times, trying out what I was learning from my correspondence writing course. Fred Pohl (editor of Galaxy and Worlds of If in those days) saw it often enough that he eventually wrote, “I think this can be improved… but maybe you're tired of reworking it, so I'll buy it as is.” It was probably his title, too.

The kzinti look a little blurred here, don't they? I mean, if you've known them elsewhere. Subsequently they changed in several ways.

I learned to answer John W. Campbell's challenge: “Show me something that thinks as well as a man, or better, but not like a man.” The kzinti took on more detail, gained greater consistency and lost some of their resemblance to humanity. They were born as one of a thousand catlike aliens in science fiction. As I learned how to make an alien from basic principles, body and mind and soul, the kzinti became more themselves.

At the same time they were changing in another way, evolving over several centuries. The Man-Kzin Wars changed them far more than they changed mankind, because the wars killed off the least intelligent and most aggressive.

This book was conceived in a casual encounter.

Marilyn and I were driving to a Nebula Awards banquet with Jim Baen in the back seat. She drove, we talked…

I knew about franchise universes. Jim and I had edited The Magic May Return and More Magic, tales set in the Magic Goes Away universe but written by friends whom we had invited in. I had played in neighbors' playgrounds, too. “A Snowflake Falls” used Saberhagen's “Berserkers,” by invitation. I'd written a tale set at Lord Dunsany's “edge of the world,” and a report on the year the Necronomicon hit the college campuses in paperback, and a study of Superman's fertility problems.

I've never been in a war, nor in any of the armed forces. Wars have happened and may happen again in most of my series universes, including known space, but you'll never see them. I lack the experience. Here are a couple of centuries of known space that are dark to me.

By the time we parked, Jim and I had agreed to open up the Man-Kzin Wars period of known space.

Any writer good enough to be invited to play in my universe will have demonstrated that he can make his own. Would anyone accept my offer? I worried also that intruders might mess up the playground, by violating my background assumptions.

But I did want to read more tales of Known Space… and I hadn't written any in years.

For the Warlock's era I had written a “bible,” a set of assumptions, list of available characters, backgrounds, a few story ideas. For the Man-Kzin Wars the “bible” was already written, by John Hewitt for the Chaosium role-playing game, “Ringworld.” I photocopied the appropriate pages, with his permission and Chaosium's.

I did not anticipate what happened.

I had to turn down one story outline and one completed story. It didn't matter. Poul and Dean both turned in 40,000-word novellas! And now they're talking about sequels.

It's as if you can't say anything short in the Known Space universe I guess I'm flattered. And I surely got my wish. These stories read like good Poul Anderson, and good Dean Ing, and good Niven; and Niven couldn't have written them.

Larry Niven

“I'm sure they saw us coming,” the Alien Technologies Officer persisted. “Do you see that ring, sir?”

The silvery image of the enemy ship almost filled the viewer. It showed as a broad, wide ring encircling a cylindrical axis, like a mechanical pencil floating inside a platinum bracelet. A finned craft projected from the pointed end of the axial section. Angular letters ran down the axis, totally unlike the dots-and-commas of Kzinti script.

“Of course I see it,” said the Captain.

“It was rotating when we first picked them up. It stopped when we got within two hundred thousand miles, and it hasn't moved since.”

The Captain flicked his tail back and forth, gently, thoughtfully, like a pink lash. “You worry me,” he commented. “If they know we're here, why haven't they tried to get away? Are they so sure they can beat us?” He whirled to face the A-T Officer. “Should we be running?”

“No, sir! I don't know why they're still here, but they can't have anything to be confident about. That's one of the most primitive spacecraft I've ever seen.” He moved his claw about on the screen, pointing as he talked.

“The outer shell is an iron alloy. The rotating ring is a method of imitating gravity by using centripetal force. So they don't have the gravity planer. In fact they're probably using a reaction drive.”

The Captain's catlike ears went up. “But we're lightyears from the nearest star!”

“They must have a better reaction drive than we ever developed. We had the gravity planer before we needed one that good.”

There was a buzzing sound from the big control board. “Enter,” said the Captain.

The Weapons Officer fell up through the entrance hatch and came to attention, “Sir, we have all weapons trained on the enemy.”

“Good.” The Captain swung around. “A-T, how sure are you that they aren't a threat to us?”

The A-T Officer bared sharply pointed teeth. “I don't see how they could be, sir.”

“Good. Weapons, keep all your guns ready to fire, but don't use them unless I give the order. I'll have the ears of the man who destroys that ship without orders. I want to take it intact.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where's the Telepath?”

“He's on his way, sir. He was asleep.”

“He's always asleep. Tell him to get his tail up here.”

The Weapons Officer saluted, turned, and dropped through the exit hole.

“Captain?”

The A-T Officer was standing by the viewer, which now showed the ringed end of the alien ship. He pointed to the mirror-bright end of the axial cylinder. “It looks like that end was designed to project light. That would make it a photon drive, sir.”

The Captain considered. “Could it be a signal device?”

“Urrrrr… Yes, Sir.”

“Then don't jump to conclusions.”

Like a piece of toast, the Telepath popped up through the entrance hatch. He came to exaggerated attention. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“You omitted to buzz for entrance.”

“Sorry, sir.” The lighted viewscreen caught the Telepath's eye and he padded over for a better look, forgetting that he was at attention. The A-T Officer winced, wishing he were somewhere else.

The Telepath's eyes were violet around the edges. His pink tail hung limp. As usual, he looked as if he were dying for lack of sleep. His fur was flattened along the side he slept on; he hadn't even bothered to brush it. The effect was far from the ideal of a Conquest Warrior as one can get and still be a member of the Kzinti species. The wonder was that the Captain had not yet murdered him.

He never would, of course. Telepaths were too rare, too valuable, and — understandably — too emotionally unstable. The Captain always kept his temper with the Telepath. At times like this it was the innocent bystander who stood to lose his rank or his ears at the clank of a falling molecule.

“That's an enemy ship we've tracked down,” the Captain was saying. “We'd like to get some information from them. Would you read their minds for us?”