Customer Reviews

The Man Kzin Wars (Man Kzin Wars, Book 1)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have to warn readers of this novel! You will become addicted! Prepare yourself to buy all books in the Man Kzin war series!

Humankind is still in the infancy of type 2 civilization and is still lumbering around in Reaction Mass Relativistic Starships, not having discovered how to manipulate gravity yet. At least we have learned to control our own predatory inclination toward war. Or so we thought.

In the middle of nowhere, humans encounter a technological race. Assumptions about star faring civilizations nearly cost us our hides, literally. The Kzin are not only aggressive, they are carnivorous. Man learns war all over.

Larry Niven uses the concept of parallel evolution to create a world in which the Great Cats, not primates, evolve into intelligence. The Kzin bring back the ancient battle between primitive man and the saber tooth. and the excitement of the hunt.. Only this time the cat has Gravity Polarizer starships! This novel is only the beginning of the fun! read on!

Niven does not use a progressive time line in his novels. These are individual, albeit connected stories of the Man Kzin Wars. The characters might or might not know or associate with one another, and the series encompasses long periods of time.

But once you read the first book, and get hooked on the rest, You will never look at kitty the same way again!

I enjoyed reading this book, the publisher did a poor job of manufacturing the book, the cover came off and the book came apart prior to finishing the book. The content was excellent however.

This is a reissue of the first short-story incursion into this world by Larry Niven, complete with a retrospective introduction, in which Larry reflects on how much his "universe" has grown in detail and characterization since that story first saw the light of day. Still thoroughly enjoyable, with believable characters on both sides of the species divide. Coupled with the original Niven story are two more stories, contrubutions to the genre by Poul Anderson and Dean Ing, two master craftsmen of the Sci-Fi art. A thoroughly enjoyable trip to alternate reality.

Three stories in one, all on a common theme, the war or series of wars between Man and a Catlike Creature, the Kzin. How much you like each particular story will depend on how much you like that particular writer.

The first story shows great promise and potential. It is interesting for two reasons, the Kzin and the humans. In particular, we get an interesting insight into the Kzin and an equally interesting insight into humans of the future, in some ways, as alien to us as the Kzin are.

The humans, in particular, are pacifists. They wander the reaches of space unarmed and untrained in fighting or combat. They have not even fought a war in almost three hundred years. In some new area of the galaxy they find a Kzin crew, breed to fight and kill, constantly at war throughout most of their history.

Can a pacifist people, humans, fight and survive against such natural warriors, trained to perfection? It seems like an interesting question. The assumption is that the people will lose much, at first. If they can learn, however, then the Kzin will be in trouble.

The problem is, however, that while the first story shows this great potential, the next two, of three, weren't that interesting. Instead of exploring the issues developed in story 1, they talk about unconnected incident which occur after two or three great wars have occurred. All of the interesting conflicts I was hoping to see, they never materialized. Instead, they have already been resolved by time we get to the second story. Too bad.

As such, I would strongly recommend the first story. Story 2 and Story 3, they were average. I think the series shows some potential though and I will look at the other books in it. This one here, as a whole, isn't good enough to recommend. If you can read the first story on its own, however, do so. You should enjoy it.

A collection of short stories by three authors, the first by Larry Niven, creator of the series, is very short, written early in his Known Space chronicles. Although this story is not a great example, Niven has a special knack for SciFi, if you have not yet read him. In a genre of fiction over-crowed with tripe, Niven's writing has a sly wit and a subtle edge, evoking a strange but very plausible future for mankind among the stars.
The second and longest story by Poul Anderson is somewhat tedious. Poul's emphasis on putting the "Science" back in Science Fiction is impressive but a bit heavy-handed in this context. The third novelette is great fun and the best of the three. The author Dean Ing writes enough like Niven that you hardly notice the difference, but I do have a couple quibbles. One is that he sort of plagiarizes Niven's "Ringworld". I will give you a brief synopsis, trying not to be a spoiler:
Locklear, a human scientist is captured by Kzanti, the cat-like aliens who walk on two feet towering eight foot tall. He figures out a clever way to get himself dropped off on an unknown planet. It turns out to be terra-formed with patches of small scale models of actual homeworlds in Known Space, Earth and the Kzinhome among them (a rip-off of Ringworld). So Locklear becomes a Robinson Crusoe type castaway. Eventually he stumbles across a number of creatures in stasis; one who he releases, with some trepidation, being a Kzin female. To his surprise she is not a mindless breeder. She speaks an arcane dialect of Kzin and in fact she is a Kzin rebel feminist from an era 40, 000 years earlier before Kzin breed their females to be non-sentient. I quibble with the 40.000 years, because could we speak English to 40,000 year old human? Anyway, those sexist Kzin warriors are in for a big surprise! The most interesting and strangest part of the story is the sexual tension between male and female of different species.

In the future, an antidepressant-pacified and docile humanity, (sound familiar? Look around), goes into massive culture shock when the first aliens they meet don't even attempt contact, but only try to kill them from the getgo. Once again, utterly cool, and I agree with the message I think that is embedded in these stories: Don't get TOO comfortable in peacetime, and DON'T start believing that you're safe, or it'll come back around again and get you!!! WWI, the war to end all wars!!!!???? WWII anybody? It'll happen again and again, as Niven nimbly demonstrates. Plus the Kzinti themselves are vastly interesting creatures, because you have to wonder how a society based solely on violence and dominance rituals remains stable enough to conquer space, and then keep it. Read it.

There are now 11 volumes of Kzin stories; some of the stories are much better than others, but most are just good satisfying SF.

If you like Sci-Fi and you like Space, then You've GOT to read Larry Niven's Man Kzin books. He's gotten together with scientists and over 20 writers and created a so-fi world unlike any that's ever been created.

His sci-fi world will continue perpetuating itself long after he's gone because many young writers have bought into his sci-fi version of space as well as MANY older well established ones.

This is not the world's most serious or enlightening science-fiction, but it IS fun.

All three stories in this book are fun romps through the future and are well worth the time it takes to read them. All are epics of the struggle of man over nature and ferocious space-faring aliens.

Watch out monkey boys! This is the first book of a still growing series. Short stories, many of them linked by events or characters, showing the Man-Kzin Wars, how they started and who won them. A lot of the stories also deal with the Kzin alone, as many of the later stories DO show how the Kzin became a space-traveling race of warriors. Many of the shorts have been collected into full novels. Get the whole series. Some stories you can't help but read again and again, yet a few I can't re-read because I feel pity or even pain at some of the endings. Remember, the stories are about war and some of the author's hold nothing back, with very realistic plots and battle scenes.