Customer Reviews

World of Ptavvs

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

WORLD OF PTAAVS was Larry Niven's first novel, published in 1966, and with its 2106 setting it is one of the first stories chronologically in the Known Space canon. It is clearly a weak work, and offers only hints of the wonderful ideas that Niven was to write about only a year later.

WORLD OF PTAAVS begins two billion years before the present with the alien Kzanol, a member of the Thrintun race. This race had the ability to control others telepathically and are the Slavers mentioned in later Known Space works. After the drive on Kzanol's ship burns out, Kzanol puts himself into a stasis field and aims himself at Earth. He supposes that only 90 years will pass until he is rescued, but eons go by while he lies in stasis after impacting in Earth's ocean.

In the near-future, a scientist believes that he can break open Kzanol's stasis field and enlists the help of Larry Greenberg. A telepath, Greenberg's job is to read the alien's mind for several seconds before the field is reactivated. However, Kzanol's telepathic abilities overwhelm Greenberg, and Greenberg comes to believes he is Kzanol. The two Kzanol's set out to Neptune, racing against each other to claim the telepathic amplifier that Kzanol sent there, with which one could enslave all of Earth. Lucas Garner, an agent with the UN, gives chase.

WORLD OF PTAAVS was clearly written in the mid-60's. There is only one female character, and she is a stereotypical June Cleaver housewife. Niven was unable to foreesee the advent of powerful personal computing, and the computers of the novel output their information on paper strips like stocktickers. One amusing part of the novel for modern audiences is a reference to "West Berlin." Even the science of the story is outdated, one part refers to landing on Neptune, but Neptune is a gas giant without a solid surface.

It is difficult to recommend WORLD OF PTAAVS, it is a very weak novel with wooden characters and clumsy writing. However, the novel is an integral part of Niven's Known Space universe, and much of the elements of this novel went on to play a part in other Known Space works. If you've never read anything by Larry Niven, though, get his collection NEUTRON STAR (out of print, several stories are in the collection CRASHLANDER), or his award-winning novel RINGWORLD. Check out WORLD OF PTAAVS only if you want light shed on certain elements of the Known Space series.

In this book, Larry Greenberg, earthly telepath, arranges to touch the mind of the Sea Statue - the enigmatic sculpture found at the bottom of a marine trench years before only recently identified as an alien being in temporal stasis. Greenberg contrives to break the stasis field long enough to read the being's mind - only to discover that the creature is a Thrint, a being who enslaves other beings through its overwhelming psionic power.

Greenberg becomes convinced he _is_ the thrint, and begins a trek across space to find his other equipment left behind billions of years ago but still pristine and new in stasis, equipment that will help him enslave the entire human race. This soon becomes a race, when the stasis field of the Sea Statue, destabilized by Greenberg's meddling, releases the Thrint itself, with precisely the same ideas.

With this story, Niven lays the foundation for his Known Space novels, introducing the idea of the stasis box, the Slavers, their favorite slaves the Tnuctipun, and the great war they waged that wiped out every intelligent being in the galaxy a billion years ago.

Not a bad read, but not a great one either, it fits well with the rest of the Known Space stories and as a member in good standing of that arc, well worth reading, and far superior to Niven's later efforts.

By far my favorite Larry Niven book of all time, this book explains HOW WE GOT HERE!!! Larry Greenberg, a telepath, touches minds with an alien frozen for billions of years! However, an "incident" occurs, and Larry thinks he is Kzanol (weird name for an alien, huh?). the book is about how he and the real alien race to find an object that can allow you to control the entire population of Earth! I won't say more than that, so you'll have to read it yourself (I really encourage you to!).

Larry Niven really had a great universe with his "Known Space" series. It was just plain fun and imagnative. Larry has returned back to the Ring World and known space. But Ringworld's Children has pretty much ended the series and there isn't much more that can be done unless somebody decides to be a writer if Larry franchises it.

That being said, I really liked World of Ptavvs. Larry's universe if fun and fairly PG rated, no really offensive stuff here. Indeed, this story goes well with the later Ringworld, Neutron Star stories, and the rest of Know Space.

Basically, in this book the universe is old and there have been several wars of expermination between various species. About a few billion years past the Trints are mind-controlling overlords of the universe. They are double crossed and decided to exterminate life in the universe. Basically, the only thing left alive in the universe is food scum and we all evolved from that.

Fast forward a billion years. Explorers on earth find a frozen statue of an alien. They use a stasis field, turn off the alien's stasis, and a threat comes to earth that could enslave the universe.

Niven write fun and fast. To pass time the mind controlling Alien pays cards and the people who are controlled figure the thing is stupid, it can't spot card patterns. The lesson is clear: people in control don't have to be smart (that was known in 1966 and is still true today).

Niven's high points in writing is in his playground of "Known Space". The novels read fast, are not boring, and are always fun.

Now, this novel was written back in 1966. So, it's a little dated. We pretty much know there are no Martians.

Still, it's fun. I rate it a 4 star.

This is Larry Niven's first novel and the first novel set in his Known Space universe. The plot revolves around the accidental revival by humans of the Thrint Kzanol from a long period of stasis. The mind-sharing between Kzanol and human telepath Larry Greenberg also plays a centrol role.

The first half of the book introduces us to Kzanol and Larry while giving us some background on humanity during Larry's time. The latter half of the novel focuses on a space race to prevent Kzanol from retrieving his telepathic amplifier helmet. This latter half is slow and laden with details that, while scientifically accurate for the time, are boring and in some ways secondary to the advancement of the plot. The characters in the book other than Larry or Kzanol are barely fleshed out and unfortunately the latter half of the book spends a lot of time away from Larry and Kzanol.

The average reader will undoubtedly find this a less compelling introduction to Niven. For introductory Niven try N-Space which gives a good overview of Niven's work or just jump in with Ringworld.

A fan of Niven's Known Space will find some gems worth their time in this novel, such as tidbits about the Thrintun and Tnuctipun, that make the read worthwhile. Overall this is a moderately good work that shows the initial promise which led to Niven's later and better work.

This novel can be found along with two other Known Space novels (A Gift from Earth and Tales of Known Space) in a collection called Three Books of Known Space.

A billion years ago the galaxy was ruled by a real brutal race of toughguys known as the Thrintun to themselves, (Slavers, to you and I), and then one had the displeasure of being encased in a bubble of non entropy for a billion years, only to be reawakened in a laboratory on some strange planet with some weird looking creature, (Larry Greenberg, to you and I), staring it in the face and invading its mind. By the way, Thrintun controlled their servants with extreme telepathy, turning their minds into slave minds, so imagine what happens next! Cool.

This is one of Larry Niven's excellent Known Space stories. The premise is pretty fascinating, and I think the Slavers are one of Niven's best-developed alien races. This engaging book makes the most of Niven's talent for interesting ideas.

The seller was very honest when it came to the condition of the book. I was not the least bit disappointed when it arrived and a few pages were stained. Item arrived within a few weeks. Would buy from this seller again.

I first read World of Ptavvs when I was about 16, and remembered nothing of it other than the title when I came across a copy last week. That surprised me a bit since I'd felt fairly strongly about most of Larry Niven's other works--loved Ringworld, hated Footfall. So I grabbed it up and since it's really just a novella, thought I'd finish it rather quickly. World of Ptavvs didn't hold my interest, though, and so I put it aside in favor of other more substantial books and took more than a week to complete it. If this were not the first of Niven's Known Space books, honestly there would be no particular reason to spend time with it. Other reviewers will cover the plot--suffice it to say that this is a real sci-fi gadget-driven-"technology and its consequences" story with cardboard characters--I couldn't even say, afterward, who I thought the main protagonist was. Characters have never been Niven's strong suit, ideas have, and in Ringworld that was no bad thing. But World of Ptavvs lacks the alien environment of Ringworld to a great extent, and so Niven's explorations are less compelling. There were moments of interest, and the idea of a superwar that destroys almost all sentient life in the universe is horrifying, but the method Niven postulates given his own premises is so obviously flawed that it took me a mere 20 seconds to think, "Wait, that doesn't make sense, couldn't they...?" One plot point, the exploration of space by dolphins (!) was completely dropped and seemed almost entirely irrelevant to the story. Completist fans of Known Space will surely want to read World of Ptavvs. Other sci-fi fans might prefer The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber, a work indebted to Niven but in some respects better written; or the Peter F. Hamilton Night's Dawn series.

Stasis end control conflict.


An alien that basically wants to do the Overmind thing ends up on Earth, but things don't go as plan, to the tune of him being frozen in stasis for rather a long time.

Lone enough to wake up and get involved with a search for his global domination gear with an Earth scientist, a specialist in interspecies communication.

Light, short and entertaining book.