Customer Reviews

Three Books of Known Space

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

People interested in Larry Niven should not be reading his newer work, it is in early novels and stories like the ones portrayed here that they should start, for this is classic Niven. The writing and ideas that made Known Space so popular is easily seen here in a fine mix of novels and stories.

Some quick notes about the novels included herein:
World of Ptavvs is a great first novel and clearly shows off Niven's Known Space while providing a story that is part science-fiction, part suspense thriller. The alien is truly frightening, and the twist of having him in different bodies was great. Niven was off to a good start

A Gift From Earth was much better than World of Ptavvs for a number of different reasons. One, you sympathized with the main characters more, the plot was bursting with more ideas than the previous novel, and everything just seems to be better, which is how it should have been. The one great thing about reading this collection is seeing how his writing got better and better. And, oh yes, his next novel was a piece you might have heard of. Anyone remember Ringwold?

Tales of Known Space rounds out the collection, and Niven had a good idea in shuffling them in with the novels to keep everything chronological. Most of the stories are classic science-fiction and those that aren't are still pretty decent. This collection also adds notes by Niven and a chart along with a bibliography of everything he had written up to The Ringworld Throne, so new fans can easily figure out which books to get and where they fit in.

So, while these novels are not exactly out of print (I know A Gift From Earth and Tales From Known Space are still available), this is still the Niven fan's best bet, whether he be new or old, to get some great science-fiction tales. Highly recommended

I'm sure I'm not alone in "cutting my teeth" on Niven's work by reading Ringworld, and then discovering that it actually assumed prior knowledge of the Kzinti, indestructible General Products hulls, stasis fields, and other weird stuff. Three Books of Known Space fills in some of the gaps in that knowledge.

This volume is an omnibus collection of three previous books, World of Ptavvs, A Gift from Earth, and the short story collection Tales of Known Space. Niven has rearranged all the stories in chronological order according to his future history.

World of Ptavvs is a decent novel - Niven's first - about an alien Slaver who attempts to escape from Earth after being trapped there for 2 billion years in a stasis field. Human experiments with stasis technology allow him to escape - but not only in his own body. When telepath Larry Greenberg attempts to communicate with whatever is in the stasis field, he comes away with a copy of the Slaver's consciousness in his own brain. A chase across the solar system ensues as the authorities attempt to capture the Slaver and the schizophrenic Greenberg.

Niven's sophomore novel, A Gift From Earth, is slightly better. The planet We Made It has a single habitable feature: a plateau at the top of 40-mile-high Mount Lookitthat. The colony there is governed by a hereditary aristocracy, the descendants of the crew that piloted the two colony ships. The colonists, who arrived on We Made It in hibernation, are their serfs. "Justice" is swift and draconian, and colonists on the wrong side of the law wind up as spare parts in the crew's organ bank. Naturally, there is resentment, and A Gift From Earth recounts a rebellion by a faction of colonists after a robot spaceship arrives from Earth with a technological gift that could strengthen the crew's hold on power. The rebellion is led, reluctantly, by Matt Keller, who has begun to manifest some sort of psychic ability. The story is decent hard science, but would actually be improved if Niven hadn't resorted to giving the protagonist mysterious powers, which always strike me as a bit of a cheat.

But the real treasure of this volume are the short stories. Niven's future timeline begins with the early colonization of space; the first stories are about the exploration of the extremities of the solar system. (The first story, "The Coldest Place," relies on an [admitted] major scientific gaffe by Niven: at the time he thought one side of Mercury always faced the sun, though it was already known this was not the case.) The three best stories are "Eye of an Octopus," "How the Heroes Die," and "At the Bottom of a Hole," about the colonization of Mars and the discovery of the Martians. On the other hand, "The Warriors," about first contact with the Kzinti, lacks plot and seems pointless. "There is a Tide" will be a pleasant surprise for Ringworld fans: it's an earlier story starring Louis Wu as a treasure hunter who gambles with an alien Trinoc for possession of a Slaver stasis field and its contents.

Three Books of Known Space also includes a Known Space timeline, a helpful complete Niven bibliography, and numerous annotations. A lot of the stories are starting to show its age, but nonetheless this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to appreciate Larry Niven's fictional universe.

Larry Niven's Known Space universe is probably one of the most developed in all of science fiction. It mixes hard science fiction with space opera so seamlessly that it's easy to just slip in a wave reality bye-bye.

This book represents the largest concentration of known space stories anywhere, with many of the ones included now impossible to find elsewhere. The novels are both excellent stuff, but the short stories are where the book really shines. They cover over a thousand years of future history (and even a little of the past), and their topics are just as varied. You can expect to read about your favorite characters, plus a few new ones. The timeline is also indispensible to know how the stories relate to each other.

All in all, you should own this book if you consider yourself a science fiction fan. It's that good.

Collected here are three novels previously published. Tales of Known Space(itself a collection of short stories), World of Ptavvs, and A Gift from Earth.

If you are just getting into Larry Niven's Known Space series, then this would be a fantastic place to start. It contains some very short stories, some medium sized stories and two novels along with a Known Space timeline. This timeline is not completely up to date. A search on the web should turn out some more recent ones.

All-in-all this is hard science fiction at its best. Larry weaves a fabric whose strands from the very beginning are encountered far into his alternate future. This gives the reader that feeling of breadth that only comes from years-long sagas.

The only ding I would give this work is the novel "A Gift From Earth". Honestly, I disliked this book. It just seemed to unrealistic to me. It deals with a world in rebellion and the whole situation and subsequent developments just seemed a bit on the improbable side of things. Because of this, I would have given it 4 1/2 instead of 5

Despite that, the rest of the book makes it worth the buy. Highly recommended.

This book really deserves 4 stars, but I accidentally rated it five and can't change it. This book is a compilation of three other books, one of which is a collection of short stories itself. If you've read other Niven books such as "Ringworld", you'll feel at home in Known Space, though this takes place long before that one.

"World of Ptavvs" is an excellent book, one of the best SCI-FI books I've read. A telepathic alien that can make humans do his bidding is found after being trapped in statis on earth for billions of years. If he can find his equipment which is also in stasis, humanity may be doomed to be a slave race.

"A Gift From Earth" is a good book as well, but it didn't keep my attention like Ptavvs. The colony world described is interesting and there are some nifty surprises thrown in though.

The other stories, which are interspersed with the two full-length books and told in chronological order, are a mixed blessing. Many are quite good, others are just so-so. I wonder why Niven was so fascinated with the "Organ Banks". That is a fine theme for a story or two, but they seem to be the base for much of his writing, including "A Gift From Earth".

This collection is some of his best works. The World of the Ptavvs was Niven's first novel, and I think one of his best. His short stories in Tales of Known Space are also excellent. Niven at his best is an imaginative science fiction writer with good character development and a gift for storytelling. He creates new worlds and populates them with sometimes interesting, sometimes annoying characters. This book is an excellent introduction to his writings and his style, and a huge bargain as well. I guarantee that if you read this book, you will want to go on to read his other works.

This is a three part or three novel book that is very interesting to get more background and fill in information on the Larry Niven universe. The three stories are The World of Patvvs, The gift from Earth and Tales of known Space. All of these alone are excellent stories, being able to read each of them one after the other was just a good clean fun read. The good part is that they all tie together logically and cleanly so that the reader has good conclusions to go into the next story with.

The story starts off with a Slaver in stasis on the plane earth where humans are trying to work out how to manage that contact. The alien in this is very interesting as the human and the alien get mixed, and keep on getting mixed until you don't know who is who until the end of the story. That is what makes this book such a kicker of start for the book. The Gift from Earth is a darker grimmer book, where humans are essentially organ donors for a richer class of humans. The book covers the adventures that the main character has when they are trying to escape the process. The whole adventure also involves Psionic powers that allow people to do things that help the revolution along. The final book, Tales of known space is a good conclusion to the darker second book.

This is a great collection to have and one that will not leave you disappointed, well rounded out, five of five stars for the sheer fun of reading them.

"Three Books of Known Space" contains several stories from Larry Niven's "Known Space" series. I enjoyed all of these stories.

"A Gift from Earth" is the best story here and I recommend it highly.

Buy the book. It is full of good reading.

Arranged chronologically are plenty of Niven's Known Space stories, spanning from the late 20th to the late 31st early 32nd. Not all of Known Space is contained in this collection, only _World of Ptavvs_, _A Gift From Earth_, and _Tales of Known Space_.

Let's start with _World of Ptavvs_.
I gave this one five stars. Which is strange because I can't stand stories that have psychic powers as an integral theme or have unexplained humanoid aliens. For some reason I was enthralled by it, anxious to know what would happen. Even despite how dated some parts were they didn't subtract from the overall story.
Basically what happens is an ancient statue dredged up off the coast of Brazil is actually an alien from two billion years ago. When the alien is revived a telepath intended to communicate with the alien (who's name is Kzanol) absorbs Kzanol's memories and believes that /he/ is really Kzanol. What follows is a mad scramble by the telepath, UN police, and later the real Kzanol and Belter ships, to find or destroy a psychic amplifier helmet that Kzanol left on one of Neptune's moons.

_A Gift From Earth_ Four Stars
Set on a colony world similar to Venus orbiting Tau Ceti. The colony is called Plateau and located on Mount Lookitthat, the only habitable section on the entire planet. The story starts off with a ramrobot (think space probe that carries products between stars at near light speed) approaching and then landing on Mt. Lookitthat bearing mysterious technologies from Earth. Then we have Matthew Keller, a humble colonist (the second-class social caste on Plateau) who is unknowingly and unwillingly drawn into a revolutionary movement against the crew (Plateau's aristocrats) calling itself the Sons of Earth. In a police raid all of the Sons are captured and only Matt escapes and attempts to rescue them from the organ bank Hospital and Jesus Pietro Castro, Head of Implementation. Through the story Matt discovers his strange psychic power (blech!) and the ramrobot's technology that threatens to overthrow the established order on Plateau.

Finally _Tales of Known Space_: Three Stars
A wonderful way to finish off this fine collection, it begins with _The Coldest Place_, a story that became obsolete before it was published, and ending with the ?comical? story of a man and his car that are swallowed by a giant bird and stuck there for six months in _Safe at Any Speed_. Unfortunately the Puppeteers do not appear at all and the Kzinti make only one appearance in _The Warriors_.

This collection is everything a Sci-Fi fan could ask for. Two great books (the third is a collection of short stories), lots of commentary from the author, a timeline to help you place events, and even a full author bibliography in case you want to do further reading. This collection sets the bar for all other collections- it's hard to imagine anything that could make this any better except for a minor update. The bibliography and commentary is only up-to-date as of 1995/6, and Niven has released a few more works in the Known Space line since then. The fact that the printing is a touch old is probably the biggest negative I can find here, and it's a tiny flaw at that.

Everything is set up such that the short stories from "Tales of Known Space" are split up between the novels, such that each tale and the two books are read in the order they happened in Niven's Known Space universe. Coincidentally, most of the stories were written in that same order, so the first stories you read are the first that the author wrote. In fact, the collection opens with "The Coldest Place", Niven's first published story. The first book, "World of Ptavvs", is his first book. You get to experience Niven's growth as an author at the same time as you experience the growth of Known Space.

Content-wise, everything is spectacular. All of the included works are well worth reading, and run the gamut from high-technology future cop chases to stories to space battles to stories of normal people just trying to make it on Niven's crazy worlds. "A Gift From Earth" probably stands out as the best of the bunch- it's the longest work, and certainly the most complex. It's full of wonderfully deep characters, high technology, and even some good commentary on how technology and politics go hand-in-hand.

This collection is excellent Sci-Fi reading on its own, and most of it isn't nearly as "hard" as other works like Ringworld, so more casual readers will fit in nicely. If you're new to the Known Space universe, the "Tales of Known Space" provide a very gentle and thought-provoking introduction as the pages move along. If you're a veteran of Known Space, you owe it to yourself to pick up on this rich tome of details and timelines and backstory that provide massive insight into the rest of Niven's works. Unless you have some severe aversion to Sci-Fi, there's no real reason not to pick this one up now.