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Man-Kzin Wars #7
Man-Kzin Wars 7
The man-killing cats from Kzin are back in short novels by Gregory Benford, Mark O. Martin, Hal Colebatch & Paul Chafe. The Kzin Third Fleet has decided a change of strategy is in order after two unpleasant defeats at the hands of the humans (or "monkeys") from Earth. Only luck or the Outsiders can save us now. . . .
A DARKER GEOMETRY
Bruno was the most stable linker that Col. Buford Early's "wild talents" project could find, but linkers always went catatonic after a certain amount of time connected to high level computers. Bruno knew intellectually that he had to minimize cumulative link time; he had to stay sane for as long as possible. But with the link, he was so much more than human. He could see the All. And, more than that, he could extract every last bit of effectiveness from the ship he was piloting, and so - maybe, just maybe - save himself and his lady love, who is also his Captain, from that most terrible of fates: capture by Kzin.
In this volume of the Man-Kzin Wars:
The Colonel's Tiger by Hal Colebatch
A Darker Geometry by Mark O. Martin & Gregory Benford
Prisoner of War by Paul Chafe
Cover illustration: Stephen Hickman
A DARKER GEOMETRY
Bruno was the most stable linker that Col. Buford Early's "wild talents" project could find, but linkers always went catatonic after a certain amount of time connected to high level computers. Bruno knew intellectually that he had to minimize cumulative link time; he had to stay sane for as long as possible. But with the link, he was so much more than human. He could see the All. And, more than that, he could extract every last bit of effectiveness from the ship he was piloting, and so - maybe, just maybe - save himself and his lady love, who is also his Captain, from that most terrible of fates: capture by Kzin.
In this volume of the Man-Kzin Wars:
The Colonel's Tiger by Hal Colebatch
A Darker Geometry by Mark O. Martin & Gregory Benford
Prisoner of War by Paul Chafe
Cover illustration: Stephen Hickman
345 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1995
3 people are currently reading
478 people want to read
About the author
Larry Niven
687 books3,311 followersLaurence 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 16, 2016
Seventh in the “Man-Kzin Wars” series springing from the “Ringworld” series (read those first, I keep saying). This one has three stories, with the usual blessing of Mr. Niven.
The first, “The Colonel’s Tiger,” by Hal Colebatch, Australian writer and poet and regular contributor to this series, is initially set in India, 1878, when the pelt of what turns out to be a Kzin is discovered; for me it indicated that contact between Kzinti and humans happened a lot earlier than I had anticipated. There are also references to it in the “contemporary” scenarios.
The second, a novella, “A Darker Geometry,” by Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford, has a complex plot with the (well, initially, anyhow) main characters being Bruno Takamaga, a sort of Terminal Man/Cyborg who is part mainframe computer, part just ordinary Joe; and Carol, the captain of the ship “Sun-Tu,” and also Bruno’s lover. They’re on their way to Wunderland with a secret cargo of substances from the Tree of Life which – oops, not gonna give that away. At any rate, they run into a number of Kzinti warships, the main one being captained by Rrowl-Captain. They are eager to battle the humans, called “Monkeys” by the Kzin. But this battle is interfered with by another ship with a couple of Pierson’s Puppeteers at the helm. The Puppeteers are sort of the henchmen of the Outsiders, what my old philosophy teacher John Donne, S.J., used to refer to as consisting mostly of “pure being” or “Matter Incognito.” They are sentient and are from “the other side of the space-time divide,” and see their mission as the gathering of observational data and intervening amongst the various races in the universe, to sort of “even the playing field” if they see one or another race as having too much of an advantage. In this context, then, we are presented with the back-story of how humans received the hyperdrive capacity. Along the way we see an instance of human and Kzin joining forces to battle a destructive sub-species of the Outsiders, and we also have occasional glimpses into the communications among the Outsiders themselves, interesting but hard to get through. I realize that none of this will make any sense whatsoever if you aren’t already familiar with the Ringworld novels or the previous Man-Kzin Wars stories, but I’d put this one at the top of the list as far as integrating many of the previous story threads and characters.
“Prisoner of War” is a short story by Paul Chafe, Canadian author who has, I found out, also written the only full-length novel in the “Man-Kzin Wars” series, “Destiny’s Forge.” In this tale, a Kzin, Fleet Commander, is the only Kzin survivor of a battle with humans. His interrogator is Christopher Long, mostly because he’s the only one on board the human ship who is fluent in the Hero’s Tongue, a sort of high Kzinti dialect. This is merely the setup, for this story has more of a philosophical bent, as we go inside the mind/values/motivations of the Kzinti. Without giving too much away, it is agreed by both parties that the Kzin manner of battle is aggressive attack without backup strategies, almost guaranteeing losses every time. Long finds out that this orientation to warfare reflects an underlying conquering and subjugating motivation. In contrast, the Kzin informs Long that the Kzinti see human warfare as oriented towards extinction of enemies and points out many such events in human history. The conclusions of both human and Kzin participants in the interrogation are intriguing but you’ll have to read ‘em for yourself. Also, the ultimate conclusions regarding how human and Kzin can co-exist are somewhat of a surprise and made me wonder how the future books in this series could come about. Well, I saw this as an extremely well-written story, which helps the reader understand the Kzin mind a lot more.
The first, “The Colonel’s Tiger,” by Hal Colebatch, Australian writer and poet and regular contributor to this series, is initially set in India, 1878, when the pelt of what turns out to be a Kzin is discovered; for me it indicated that contact between Kzinti and humans happened a lot earlier than I had anticipated. There are also references to it in the “contemporary” scenarios.
The second, a novella, “A Darker Geometry,” by Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford, has a complex plot with the (well, initially, anyhow) main characters being Bruno Takamaga, a sort of Terminal Man/Cyborg who is part mainframe computer, part just ordinary Joe; and Carol, the captain of the ship “Sun-Tu,” and also Bruno’s lover. They’re on their way to Wunderland with a secret cargo of substances from the Tree of Life which – oops, not gonna give that away. At any rate, they run into a number of Kzinti warships, the main one being captained by Rrowl-Captain. They are eager to battle the humans, called “Monkeys” by the Kzin. But this battle is interfered with by another ship with a couple of Pierson’s Puppeteers at the helm. The Puppeteers are sort of the henchmen of the Outsiders, what my old philosophy teacher John Donne, S.J., used to refer to as consisting mostly of “pure being” or “Matter Incognito.” They are sentient and are from “the other side of the space-time divide,” and see their mission as the gathering of observational data and intervening amongst the various races in the universe, to sort of “even the playing field” if they see one or another race as having too much of an advantage. In this context, then, we are presented with the back-story of how humans received the hyperdrive capacity. Along the way we see an instance of human and Kzin joining forces to battle a destructive sub-species of the Outsiders, and we also have occasional glimpses into the communications among the Outsiders themselves, interesting but hard to get through. I realize that none of this will make any sense whatsoever if you aren’t already familiar with the Ringworld novels or the previous Man-Kzin Wars stories, but I’d put this one at the top of the list as far as integrating many of the previous story threads and characters.
“Prisoner of War” is a short story by Paul Chafe, Canadian author who has, I found out, also written the only full-length novel in the “Man-Kzin Wars” series, “Destiny’s Forge.” In this tale, a Kzin, Fleet Commander, is the only Kzin survivor of a battle with humans. His interrogator is Christopher Long, mostly because he’s the only one on board the human ship who is fluent in the Hero’s Tongue, a sort of high Kzinti dialect. This is merely the setup, for this story has more of a philosophical bent, as we go inside the mind/values/motivations of the Kzinti. Without giving too much away, it is agreed by both parties that the Kzin manner of battle is aggressive attack without backup strategies, almost guaranteeing losses every time. Long finds out that this orientation to warfare reflects an underlying conquering and subjugating motivation. In contrast, the Kzin informs Long that the Kzinti see human warfare as oriented towards extinction of enemies and points out many such events in human history. The conclusions of both human and Kzin participants in the interrogation are intriguing but you’ll have to read ‘em for yourself. Also, the ultimate conclusions regarding how human and Kzin can co-exist are somewhat of a surprise and made me wonder how the future books in this series could come about. Well, I saw this as an extremely well-written story, which helps the reader understand the Kzin mind a lot more.
March 5, 2017
Three stories of the Man-Kzin wars help to fill in the blanks of the past and predict the future. In The Colonel's Tiger, we learn of the details of the ARMs control over the evils of man's depredations and war-mongering, and how that control almost made humans too 'pacifist' to defend themselves. A Darker Geometry reveals the story of the Outsiders decision point to give humanity the Hyperdrive... but not right now. It also adds a 'how it all began' chapter to the history of Niven's Known Space. Finally, Prisoner of War gives us a good old space battle, followed by Kzin-view of humanity's nature and a prediction of what will happen if mankind doesn't stop resting on its laurels of victory. I have read all the books in this series up to 11 but somehow missed this one. They are all good. This one is Really Good. I can't quite give it a 4th star, but it's very close. All in all I call this one a Really Good Read.
February 7, 2022
Major spoilers related to "A Darker Geometry" below because it's the basis for my entire complaint about this book.
I get it. People play in your sandbox, they're going to come up with ideas you didn't. That's part of the point of sandbox writing. A Darker Geometry went way beyond expanding the current knowledge base of Known Space. In my opinion, unnecessarily far. Now, I'm assuming that Niven had some level of approval rights (perhaps even veto power) over all the Man-Kzin Wars stories, so it's certainly valid to say "if Niven approved it, who are you to disagree?" Well, I'm a reader and a fan for 40+ years, and we all have opinions. :)
In order for authors Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford to pull off their vision for this story, they had to make the following inventions:
* The existence of beings who are outside of our universe entirely, who can peer into it only through a manipulation of cosmic strings, and who are unable to actually enter the universe themselves.
* The ability of these extra-universe beings to manipulate our reality through the cosmic strings, which they do by way of creating plasma-based beings who can do their observing for them.
* The ability of the plasma beings to also create entirely new types of beings, which they do to create the Outsiders. These are the same helium-based beings that we know and love from their appearances in my parts of Niven's stories (usually giving a lift somewhere or selling information), but not those exact creatures because...
* The base Outsider race is all religious zealots who viciously guard areas of space that they consider holy, to the point of desiring to destroy all "warmlife" (e.g., humans, kzinti, puppeteers) who dare to dirty up interstellar space with their plasma trails and such.
* The Outsiders that we've encountered elsewhere are actually DISSIDENTS - i.e., a minority - who are peaceful in nature and love to buy and sell information, but also actively at war with the zealots group.
* The Outsiders not only are capable of traveling FTL, but they actually DO so (and via some super-hyperspace, not the same one that other races use), even though it was also established that that while they'll sell the knowledge of how to travel FTL, they never do so themselves.
* There is a previously-unknown caste of FEMALE puppeteers that are over 2 meters tall, quite intelligent, aggressive, and who serve as Guardians/Warriors. (Even though it's been well-established through Niven's books that female puppeteers are completely non-sentient "property" used parasitically for reproduction by the "male" puppeteers.)
* And finally, that the Outsiders and Puppeteers directly colluded to help the humans learn FTL instead of the also well-established plot point that the Puppeteers caused a star seed to veer toward We Made It in order to lure the Outsiders to that colony. (Why Outsiders follow star seeds has never been revealed - and isn't even vaguely referenced in here.)
Any one of those 8 facts would be a stunning reveal (and somewhat upsetting) in Known Space. Requiring all 8 of them to pull off your story just screams inability to play properly in a sandbox. (It also is fair to point out that Niven's Puppeteer series - Juggler of Worlds and so on - that came out 13+ years after this book completely ignore all of these reveals.)
And that's a sad point. The story is actually not badly written - I like Gregory Benford's other works, and this story read well and had me engaged with the three main characters. But the continual rewrites of the realities of Niven's universe kept pulling me way out of the story.
I get it. People play in your sandbox, they're going to come up with ideas you didn't. That's part of the point of sandbox writing. A Darker Geometry went way beyond expanding the current knowledge base of Known Space. In my opinion, unnecessarily far. Now, I'm assuming that Niven had some level of approval rights (perhaps even veto power) over all the Man-Kzin Wars stories, so it's certainly valid to say "if Niven approved it, who are you to disagree?" Well, I'm a reader and a fan for 40+ years, and we all have opinions. :)
In order for authors Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford to pull off their vision for this story, they had to make the following inventions:
* The existence of beings who are outside of our universe entirely, who can peer into it only through a manipulation of cosmic strings, and who are unable to actually enter the universe themselves.
* The ability of these extra-universe beings to manipulate our reality through the cosmic strings, which they do by way of creating plasma-based beings who can do their observing for them.
* The ability of the plasma beings to also create entirely new types of beings, which they do to create the Outsiders. These are the same helium-based beings that we know and love from their appearances in my parts of Niven's stories (usually giving a lift somewhere or selling information), but not those exact creatures because...
* The base Outsider race is all religious zealots who viciously guard areas of space that they consider holy, to the point of desiring to destroy all "warmlife" (e.g., humans, kzinti, puppeteers) who dare to dirty up interstellar space with their plasma trails and such.
* The Outsiders that we've encountered elsewhere are actually DISSIDENTS - i.e., a minority - who are peaceful in nature and love to buy and sell information, but also actively at war with the zealots group.
* The Outsiders not only are capable of traveling FTL, but they actually DO so (and via some super-hyperspace, not the same one that other races use), even though it was also established that that while they'll sell the knowledge of how to travel FTL, they never do so themselves.
* There is a previously-unknown caste of FEMALE puppeteers that are over 2 meters tall, quite intelligent, aggressive, and who serve as Guardians/Warriors. (Even though it's been well-established through Niven's books that female puppeteers are completely non-sentient "property" used parasitically for reproduction by the "male" puppeteers.)
* And finally, that the Outsiders and Puppeteers directly colluded to help the humans learn FTL instead of the also well-established plot point that the Puppeteers caused a star seed to veer toward We Made It in order to lure the Outsiders to that colony. (Why Outsiders follow star seeds has never been revealed - and isn't even vaguely referenced in here.)
Any one of those 8 facts would be a stunning reveal (and somewhat upsetting) in Known Space. Requiring all 8 of them to pull off your story just screams inability to play properly in a sandbox. (It also is fair to point out that Niven's Puppeteer series - Juggler of Worlds and so on - that came out 13+ years after this book completely ignore all of these reveals.)
And that's a sad point. The story is actually not badly written - I like Gregory Benford's other works, and this story read well and had me engaged with the three main characters. But the continual rewrites of the realities of Niven's universe kept pulling me way out of the story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2011
A long running anthology series with stories set during the Man-Kzin Wars in Larry Niven’s Known Space universe. Niven started this thing up because while the Wars were very significant in the history of Known Space, he himself was not adept at writing about conflict. Niven has written some of the stories but most are by other authors. The writing ranges from average to excellent. Recommended if you are a fan of Known Space.
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=1026
http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=1026
August 24, 2012
Three fun novellas in the series, and they're all great fun in there own way.
The first fills in some early days on the home front when the Man-Kzin wars are just getting started, the second expands on how humans got FTL and the third is an awesome reconfirmation of what makes a Kzin a Kzin.
If you like the series, make sure you read this instalment.
The first fills in some early days on the home front when the Man-Kzin wars are just getting started, the second expands on how humans got FTL and the third is an awesome reconfirmation of what makes a Kzin a Kzin.
If you like the series, make sure you read this instalment.
September 24, 2014
Very good short SiFi stories in the shared universe of Niven's Known Space. Nice stories set in the war giving several different perspectives on the overall story. Recommended
August 24, 2011
Best in the Man-Kzin series so far. You learn about the Outsiders. Very cool.
March 31, 2017
Man-Kzin Wars VII
There are three stories in the seventh book of the Man-Kzin series. They are Hal Colebatch’s “The Colonel’s Tiger,” “A Darker Geometry,” by Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford, and Paul Chafe’s “Prisoner of War”. In addition to writing some very thoughtful, well-written Man_Kzin stories, Colebatch has also written a biography about his father, the honorable Sir Hal Colebatch. I don’t recall having read any stories by by Mark O. Martin and Gregory Benford, though Mr .Benford has won the Nebula Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. for Timescape . I don’t always go for Paul Chafe’s stories, though I quite enjoyed “Prisoner of War.”
“A Darker Geometry”
is the second story of Man-Kzin Wars VII and is set after the withdrawal from Sol space of the Third Kzin fleet and before the arrival of the Fourth. The main characters are the pilot (Bruno Takagama) and the captain (Carol Faulk) of an antimatter reaction drive warship (Sun-Tzu) bound for Wunderland with a single ship (the Doolittle) and thirty UN soldiers in cold sleep with a supply Tree-of -Life. Bruno was severely brain damaged as a child and has had a large part of his brain replaced cybernetically. This makes it easier for him to Link directly to computer systems than can most Linkers, and he is intended to Link with the computers of the single ship on arrival at Alpha Centauri, combining him and the ship into a super war drone. He was raised by the ARM with Buford Early as a father figure.
The story deals with Transcendence/dehumanization. Carol and the cold sleepers are to be transformed into Human Protectors by the Tree-of-Life. Bruno experiences a sense of apotheosis when Linked that grows each time he is connected to the sensors and computing power of their ship. Linking expands his consciousness to super human levels. Carol dreads transformation into a Protector because she sees Protectors as monsters. The Protectors are planned, by the way, to conveniently die of radiation poisoning after raising havoc with the Kzin. Leave it to the ARM. (For myself, if I were a Protector, I would give a high priority to finding a cure for the radiation sickness so I could go on Protecting.) She dreads the progressive changes in Bruno, who becomes less human and more machinelike each time he Links.
The quasi apotheosis of the Linker Bruno is reminiscent of the pseudo apotheosis of the Holothete Joline in Poul Anderson’s The Avatar. Joelle’s brain is connected to the sensors and computers of Daniel Brodersen’s ship, and Holothesis expands her consciousness in the same way. She is, unlike Bruno, nearly completely alienated from humanity, and grows more so each time she connects to the computer. Bruno, toward the end of his last link before the Kzin cripple their ship, perceives oneness with the ship, much like that of “The Pilot” in Haldeman‘s short story who tells an interviewer, I am the ship, you actual fool.” and Neal Asher‘s replaced human captain in Prador Moon. This former captain had been hooked up to the newly recommissioning ECS battleship Occam Razor for many years. He’d gone senile with the job, and was unsuited for the coming battles with the Prador. Unused to input from his own senses, he marvels at the sky, not recognizing the stars he has sailed most of his life. Joelle is so far gone that she thinks of her fellow crew as animals. She is disgusted by human sexuality and terrified of any hint of human intimacy. Holothesis becomes a ready substitute for her lost humanity. (This stands in stark contrast to the raw sexuality, sensuality and emotionalism of the Avatar among the humans.) In Geometry, the love (sexual and otherwise) between Bruno and Carol pulls Bruno back from brink of subsumation into the machine, and he returns to the realm of humanity after their ship is crippled by the Kzin attack. (The relationship between Bruno and Carol is presented more subtlety than that between Brodersen and Caitlin in Avatar, with its rooms full of animal smells.)
His abrupt removal from cyberspace sets the stage for interdiction by a faction of the Outsiders that likes organic based life forms and has established trade relations with the Puppeteers (the Dissonants). Unwittingly, the fight between the Sun-Tzu and the Kzin has outraged a faction of Outsiders (the Zealots) that views organic life as vermin. Humanity and Kzin are now not only vermin but vermin that must be exterminated. The Kzin captain, Bruno and a Puppeteer Guardian become integral in destroying an attacking Zealot ship. Bruno is really integral to the plan because his cybernetics allow the Dissonants to use his mind to upload a virus into the Zealot ship. After the Zealot ship is destroyed the cybernetics allow the Outsiders to download a copy of Bruno’s mind and return Bruno to Carol at the end of the story.
“Prisoner of War”
Having read X and XII before I read VIII, I can say that the nameless Hero of “Prisoner of War” emulates Peace Corben-- he steals a huge portion of the UNSN’s order of battle and contingency planning and causes a sea change in Humanitiy’s policies and underlying philosophy. In this story, it’s the humans who have screamed and leapt, splashing a lightly armed Kzinti scout that was running away. The lone survivor is brought, seemingly helpless, aboard a UNSN battleship for interrogation.
After reversing their positions, the Kzin tells the UNSN interrogator the reason Humanity has won its previous wars with the Kzinti is because it has been waging Total War against scream and leap opportunists that were seeking only limited territorial or material gains and that the next war will be different. The ARM had been backed into a very tight corner before going Total War-- it was the only way they could prevent the conquest of Earth. He goes further to point out that it is humanity, not the Kzin whose habit is to wage rapacious destructive wars. He cites examples, including the Yamamoto’s strategic bombing raid, with its human suffering out of any proportion to the military gain achieved. (To throw in my own personal rant, we make much of destroying two ((2)) cities with da-Kiloton yield atomic bombs. We destroyed thousands of cities in Japan, Germany, Russia, and the rest of Europe with conventional high explosives and incendiaries. Why is the destruction of the two worse that the destruction of the thousands.) Man and Kzin have the capability to kill on a planetary scale, and the Kzin are being backed into an extremely tight corner between their social pressures and Humanity‘s policies.
“The Colonel’s Tiger”
Imagine, if you will, a lone, disgraced Kzin scout traveling far beyond Kzinti territory in quest of glory, honor, and a return to fortune. Imagine him coming to nineteenth century British India and he and a British officer then doing what they do best to each other. Then imagine his remains being stored away in a museum as a curiosity for centuries until the ARM gets a hold of them and the oral history of the British officer who killed him. Now imagine how paranoid the ARM is about, well everything, and especially how they feel about the images sent back by the Angel’s Pencil of Kzin and weapons after the events of Niven’s “The Warriors.” (The evil Belters must have faked this.) A wonderful story, though a tad over written, but is there any way for an ARM to muddle through all of this except ponderously?
Further rereading
Man Kzin Wars Timeline - The Future Worlds of Larry Niven
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