Man-Kzin Wars XIII

Man-Kzin Wars #13

by Larry Niven (Editor)

Larry Niven’s bestselling Man-Kzin series continues! The kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, had a hard time dealing with their ignominious defeat by the leaf-eating humans. Some secretly hatched schemes for a rematch, others concentrated on gathering power within the kzin hierarchy, and some shamefully cooperated with the contemptible humans, though often for hidden motives.

In war and in uneasy peace, kzin and humans continue their adventures with a  masterful addition to the Man-Kzin Wars shared universe created by Larry Niven. Stories by Jane Lindskold, Charles E. Gannon, Bud Sparhawk, and more.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Space Opera, Aliens, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Laurence van Cott Niven's best known work is Ringworld (Ringworld, #1) (1970), which received the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. The creation of thoroughly worked-out alien species, which are very different from humans both physically and mentally, is recognized as one of Niven's main strengths.

Niven also often includes elements of detective fiction and adventure stories. His fantasy includes The Magic Goes Away series, which utilizes an exhaustible resource, called Mana, to make the magic a non-renewable resource.

Niven created an alien species, the Kzin, which were featured in a series of twelve collection books, the Man-Kzin Wars. He co-authored a number of novels with Jerry Pournelle. In fact, much of his writing since the 1970s has been in collaboration, particularly with Pournelle, Steven Barnes, Brenda Cooper, or Edward M. Lerner.

He briefly attended the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics (with a minor in psychology) from Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas, in 1962. He did a year of graduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has since lived in Los Angeles suburbs, including Chatsworth and Tarzana, as a full-time writer. He married Marilyn Joyce "Fuzzy Pink" Wisowaty, herself a well-known science fiction and Regency literature fan, on September 6, 1969.

Niven won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for Neutron Star in 1967. In 1972, for Inconstant Moon, and in 1975 for The Hole Man. In 1976, he won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Borderland of Sol.

Niven has written scripts for various science fiction television shows, including the original Land of the Lost series and Star Trek: The Animated Series, for which he adapted his early Kzin story The Soft Weapon. He adapted his story Inconstant Moon for an episode of the television series The Outer Limits in 1996.

He has also written for the DC Comics character Green Lantern including in his stories hard science fiction concepts such as universal entropy and the redshift effect, which are unusual in comic books.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/larryn...

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love the way this series builds upon itself. with stories becoming more interconnected as the series progresses. Great shared world concept and some amazing stories by a nice selection of writers. Very recommended

[Trike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Man-Kzin Wars series has been my favorite escapist literature since the first one debuted 25 years ago. Some of the books in the series have been brilliant, some terrible, but overall they've been quite entertaining. This volume is decidedly on the "really good" end of the spectrum. there are some annoying things, such as the witless dolt who proofread the thing, changing the multiple instances of "hangar" into "hanger" and the flash of "lightning" to "lightening." That sort of intern-level laziness aggravates me. Overlooking those lapses, though, shows a really fine collection overall.

One of the things I've always enjoyed about Larry Niven's Known Space books is that they generally don't take themselves too seriously. There's always the wry viewpoint which underscores everything. The best of the Man-Kzin stories capture that. The most brilliant example occurs in the very first volume with Dean Ing's story "Cathouse." That really set the tone for everyone following. However, here we have the Alex Hernandez tale "At the Gates" which fits right in with that same style. It's a fine line to walk and many authors aren't as successful at it, but when they hit it, everything is golden. Known Space is a lot like Star Trek: lots of fun, but short on continuity of scientific believability.

The stories:

Misunderstanding by Hal Colebatch & Jessica Q. Fox -- Colebatch is probably the most-active veteran of the M-K Wars. His stories have been all over the place for me, and this is one of the weaker ones. It's a bit *too* silly for my tastes... well, more than a bit. It's downright goofy. I don't know Fox's work, so I have no idea how much influence she had on the story. This is the weakest tale of the bunch.

Two Types of Teeth by Jane Lindskold -- I quite liked this story, primarily because of the pay-off of the title. It's about a Kzin POW and the woman tasked with studying him. There's some stuff about Helsinki Syndrome and politics, but this is one of those tales which feels somewhat canonical. (Many of the M-K stories aren't canon, according to Niven, but he's only talked about a couple.) Even without knowing about the larger aspects of Known Space a reader can easily follow this straight-forward story.

Pick of the Litter by Charles E. Gannon -- This novella is the longest of the bunch and the heart of the book. A special taskforce captures a bunch of Kzin kits who are then raised in captivity during the early years of the Wars so humans can study them. they 9and we) learn a lot about Kzin biology and psychology, as well as the recent history of Earth and the internal conflicts caused by shifting from a neutered Golden Age of peace to a war footing against a ferocious enemy. It's interesting in and of itself, but I also like how it fills in gaps in the M-K backstory about how humans learned to exploit Kzin emotional tendencies and physiological responses.

Tomcat Tactics by Charles E. Gannon -- This is pretty much a sequel to the previous story. Much of it is the pay-off to the various bits of knowledge gleaned over the 25 year span in "Pick of the Litter." It's also a cracking-good war story. These two stories really feel like Gannon has done his homework from previous volumes and has slotted his tales expertly into them, obliquely referencing things which happened in other volumes concerning the planet Wunderland. Plus all of his dates feel right. If they ever update the Wunderland War volume, these need to go with it.

At the Gates by Alex Hernandez -- As I mentioned, this is the stand-out tale of the bunch. It truly captures the flavor of the classic tales of Known Space as written by Niven: it's a cool adventure with daring, smart protagonists who have a sort of amused viewpoint of the world. The only thing I didn't care for was that the main Kzin character, Healer-of-Hunters, refers to having eaten a pet Pug as a young kit. That was just unnecessary. Pugs are such pleasant, happy-to-meet-you dogs. Now, Chihuahuas on the other hand... (And I mean "the other hand" literally: looking at my left hand as I type this, I can see the deep gouges left from my Chihuahua as he mauled me while I attempted to remove a tick. My Pugs wouldn't have done that.)

Anyway, we finally get to find out what happened to Angel's Pencil, the human spaceship which first encountered the Kzin way back in 1966. (1966 our time, not Known Space time. That's how old this universe is that Niven has created.)

Zeno's Roulette by David Bartell -- I'm not sure what to make of this story. It's really good and feels quite a bit like the previous one, but it really amps up the stakes by evoking many of the heavy hitters in the Known Space universe: the Puppeteers, the Slavers and the stasis boxes. In mercenary Flex Bothme (a pseudonym) Bartell has created a character the equal to the likes of Louis Wu, the hero of the Ringworld books, but there's something sinister about him and not quite complete. It's a good story, but again it went to a dark place more than once. I'm not against that but... maybe it was just jarring after the Hernandez story.

Bound for Paradise by Alex Hernandez -- This ties in with "At the Gates", pointing to bigger things to come with the descendants of Angel's Pencil and a new direction for the Known Space universe. Providing Niven lets it stand as canon, of course. This is brief and direct, almost a coda for everything that's gone before.

One of the things I've always liked about Niven's universe is the names of his spaceships. Instead of boring names like "Intrepid" and "Endeavour," he's always given them fanciful names: Angel's Pencil and Hot Needle of Inquiry. We've got some good ones in this volume, too.

Human ships:
Catscratch Fever
Euclid's Lasso
I Love Lucy
Pick of the Litter Alaric
Sun Wukong

Kzin ships:
Defiant Snarl
Devourer of Monkeys
Far-ranging Prowler
Guardant Ancestor
Incisor-Red
Incisor-Yellow
Righteous Manslaughter
Shadow's Chariot
Sizthz Chitz

[Pat Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I have done my math approximately correctly, it's been about 30 years since the publication of the very first Kzin story, “The Warriors.” And it has been five years since the most recent volume of “The Man-Kzin War” was published. This 13th volume came out six years ago. The occasion for my review is that I recently discovered that after this INTERMINABLE wait, we are going to get volume 15 sometime in February! Scream and leap, kzin fans, scream and leap! Because Brad Torgersen his own self has one coming up in Volume XV!!!

Some familiar names in this volume, and some new. The challenge is always to find something new to contribute to a body of work this comprehensive, WITHOUT utterly breaking faith with established story-lines.

MISUNDERSTANDING, by Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox. This story is a HOOT! It takes a line from Niven's original story, and expands on it. It's about those bizarre aliens who thought they could travel in time! Don't be ridiculous; NO ONE can travel in time!

TWO TYPES OF TEETH, by Jane Lindskold. Carnivore teeth tear and cut; herbivore teeth clip and grind. But humans have two kinds of teeth. What does it mean, to have a sentient species not limited to just one thing? A Kzin prisoner of war must grapple with that difficult concept.

PICK OF THE LITTER , by Charles E. Gannon. A very lengthy selection, this could easily have been three separate stories. (But you get them all, for one low price!) At the beginning of the wars, you had the administrators of the Golden Age on Earth, who wished to exclude violence from human existence. You also had the ARM, who were a bit more cynical, but also far more ruthless. Then, you had the humans at Alpha Centauri, who were too involved in making a place to live to be tied up in ethical conundrums. Everybody has an agenda, and the one place those coincide is that there is a need to capture a viable Kzinti kit. After THAT point, however, the interests diverge wildly. Gannon looks closely at the effect this will have on the infant Kzin, growing to adulthood.

TOMCAT TACTICS , also by Charles E. Gannon. Long-term thinking, paranoia, and a few other human factors result in some very long-term plans being made. But that takes time that the humans don't have, when the cats invade Wunderland. Prep NOW; plan ….later? Is that even possible?

AT THE GATES , by Alex Hernandez. I believe this is THE deepest-digging story of the collection, in that references go back to the Angel's Pencil, yet the action is from much later in the Wars. A community of Kzin and Humans live in hiding near Kzin-controlled space. They believe they are safe, until their warning systems tell them of a Kzin warship entering their system.

ZENO’S ROULETTE, David Bartell. Yes, it's a Kzin story, but it's also a math story. And maybe not every game has a winner, although there must always be a loser when the stakes are this high.

BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND, Alex Hernandez. A Kzin Telepath, worn out from years of service, discovers multiple atrocities being perpetrated by humans on Kzin. And the ONLY place he can go for help? It's the humans, naturally.

[Jimyanni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but below average compared to the previous entries in the series. A couple of the stories were excellent, but more were a bit blah.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book differed from the rest of the series a bit. They made an attempt to link the stories together, although the Catscratch Fever didn't make much sense as the same ship in two widely separated stories.

But this volume contained the first story in this series which I actively disliked. Jane Lindskold's Jenni Anixter is the protagonist of "Two Types of Teeth", where she befriends and frees a kzin. So far, so good. But she decides in her first interview that "Otto Bismarck" is trouble. Then she decides he's actively dangerous and evil, so she helps the kzin kidnap him. In addition to enslavement and torture of a fellow human being, this hands over a valuable prisoner and intelligence source to the enemy during a war for survival. WTF was Lindskold thinking?

On the other hand, "Pick of the Litter" by Charles E. Gannon was excellent, with a much different take on captivity and interspecies relations.

[Sal Coraccio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything to love about this series; one of the long-time friends that hits me in the feels when they come to visit.

I was surprised to learn that Niven wrote the first Man-Kzin stories in 1966, and it later grew into the Known Space series which encompasses most of his other books (and the books of several collaborators).

I was first exposed to the series in 1988, when the first spin-off arrived, and consumed each one ever since.

You'll read it regardless of what I say, but I say "read it". If you don't, it's only because you have read the other twelve books - and you should. Now.

[Scottie Kosiewicz jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it was a great book but I had a hard time keeping up with all the different names every time it was a new chapter. But other than that I think it was a great book. I also think that it was a good way for me to get ready for middle school. It had a lot of words that were a bit hard at first but I soon figured them out and understood it perfectly. I like the series it is a great series that is "suppose" to be for young adults

[Karen A. Wyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed most of the stories in this collection, and skimmed through a few. My favorite would be the story-or-maybe-it's-a-novella "Pick of the Litter," notable for its sympathetic as well as its realistically irritating characters.

[Leigh Kimmel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting additions to the Known Space universe, but no huge revelations that overturn what we've known about Niven's universe until now.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another installment in the series. Not half bad, a few solid stories.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

A typical instance of this most exception of two series that manages to be Energizer Bunny of good science fiction in the contemporary environment.