#known space

[doolallymagpie]

Section 31, traveling back in time to try to find a useful "eternal enemy" for the Federation, engineered the Kzinretti into nonsentience specifically to make the Kzinti more abhorrent to most Federation member species

Naturally, this attempt at creating a species they could always provoke into attacking the Federation if people started to question the need for Section 31 eventually went very, very wrong for them

[paulgadzikowski]

[Image description: Preview panel for the comic strip at the link below. The Doctor, ears incarnation, of Doctor Who and Louis Wu of Known Space stand talking. The Doctor is saying, “Don't you know of any third millennium vampire stories?” Unfortunately there are not image descriptions at the main Hero Of Three Faces site. End description.] 

The Hero of Three Faces is fanfiction crossovers, but it’s comic strips with stick figures, but they’re triangles. Preview panel only. Click here for full cartoon. Or see the on-site navigation tutorial. Or see this blog’s FAQ, or my archive tumblog’s FAQ. Cartoons may contain unmarked spoilers. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 10:00 (Central US time) daily are the previous day’s new update and the posts are pinned to the top of this blog. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 22:00 daily are from the archive and the posts are pinned only during annual summer hiatus of new updates.

Thanks for reading.

[stra-tek]

Kzinti and Star Trek

You don't see many Kzinti in Star Trek, and there's a very good reason for that: They're not actually Star Trek aliens, but a borrow from Larry Niven's Known Space series of books. And so Paramount don't actually own them. "The Slaver Weapon" episode of The Animated Series is an adaptation of Larry's "The Soft Weapon"

TAS' "Slaver Weapon" brought lots of Known Space lore into Trek. 4 Man-Kzin Wars were fought prior to the invention of faster-than-light travel, which really doesn't work in Trek where First Contact established, well, first contact and it was between humans and Vulcans after the first warp flight.

We also saw a Slaver, which have a rich backstory in Known Space where they're known as the Thrint and once ruled over the galaxy with their telepathy.

Some of Niven's backstory fits into Trek but other parts don't.

The Man-Kzin Wars don't. That being said, there have been attempts to bring Kzin back into Trek and several references to them. The Next Gen novel "The Captain's Honor" features the M'dok in the B-plot, a feline species who fought 2 wars with humanity one before the founding of the Federation and one after... sound vaguely familiar? They were originally the Kzin, and had name and details changed to avoid potential legal issues.

The Kzin exist in the Star Fleet Battles tabletop gaming universe (which is like a Trek splinter universe, licensed from TOS, TAS and the Star Fleet Technical Manual but nothing else), but they lack the distinctive bat ears.

Starfleet Command, the videogame adaptation of Star Fleet Battles swaps the Kzinti for the Mirak, again to avoid copyright issues.

But then came Star Trek Picard, where in season one Riker talks about an issue with the Kzinti (apparently permission was sought from Larry Niven and given for the mention) and then Lower Decks gave us Taylor, who is clearly Kzinti but likely will just never have anyone say it out loud just to be on the safe side

Oh, and the 1980 Star Trek Maps were cheeky and called them the K'zinti and hoped the apostrophe would make everything okay.

There have been attempts to bring the Kzinti back to Trek, like a planned Enterprise season 5 episode called "Kilkenny Cats" which was almost resurrected as a New Voyages fan film project. Here's the poster, where they'd replaced the Kzinti with the Kytharri (another Kzin-expy from the DS9 "Prophecy and Change" anthology

The "Kilkenny Cats" story read somewhat like a retread of DS9's "Armageddon Game". There were also attempts to get an animated Star Trek movie made called Lions of the Night, involving Sulu and the Enterprise-B dealing with a Kzinti invasion.

Oh oh, and read Ringworld. It's fantastic. And makes one wonder what the Kzin world is like in the Trek world... because they're unable to stop themselves launching violent wars on neighbours which they have no hope of winning, their world is essentially occupied by humans and that's very un-Trek (which of course makes it 10x more fascinating) indeed. How would Starfleet and the Federation deal with such a threat?

[pluralzalpha]

Galactic Gazetteer: We Made It

Franchise: Larry Niven's Known Space

Type: terrestrial planet

Terrain: ocean to desert

Primary: Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris A)

Distance from Earth: 11.5 ly

Moons: one, Desert Isle

Inhabitants: Crashlanders (humans)

Capital: Crashlanding City

Fun fact: the planet and capital are named for the first colony ship, which crashed on the planet witth the crew barely surviving the trip.

Another fun fact: We Made It is similar to Earth in size, composition and rotational day, but is tilted along the plane of the ecliptic, like Uranus. This causes destructively powerful winds to buffet the planet for half the year.

Fun fact 3: due to the low gravity, Crashlanders are taller and thinner than Earth humans, and for some reason, almost half of them are albino.

[sprunkrat]

[stainlesssteellocust]

We need to get all the supernaturally lucky characters in a room together and have them gamble

Mat Cauthon

Ran Mouri

Bilbo

Erast Fandorin

Rincewind

Sakura Tsubasareservoirchronicle (did just C have it? I forgor)

Jerry from Seinfeld

Buggy the Clown

that chick from Known Space

Then stick a few swindlers in there too just to make things interesting

[holopleather420]

Does Larry Niven's Known Space books (Ringworld Series, Fleet of Worlds Series, Tales of Known Space, etc) have any sort of active fandom or is it dead? The last post on r/LarryNiven was 10 months ago.

[blag-fidray]

Pierson's Puppeteers

[vintagegeekculture]

[paulsspaceshippictures]

Another overelaborate fan theory:

Cyclopean (in the sense of "one-eyed" rather than "giant"), tentacle-mouthed, and sleeping under the sea - Kzanol the Thrint from Larry Niven's novel "Worĺd of Ptavvs" is Cthulhu.

The zero-g posture he's frozen in when he activates his suit's emergency stasis field is the squatting posture of the Cthulhu statue in HP Lovecraft's drawing.

And that makes the protean, genetically-engineered Bandersnatchi, who revolted against their Thrint masters millions of years ago, shoggoths.

(The Thrint exist in the Star Trek universe via the animated series episode "The Slaver Weapon" so maybe Kazanol/Cthulhu does too, which ties into The Old Ones being mentioned in a couple of TOS episodes.)

[obserbolisk]

*opens book*

*sees this on the first page*

“Something bad happened here”

[paulgadzikowski]

[Image description: Preview panel for the comic strip at the link below. Mr. Spock of Star Trek and the Doctor, dandy incarnation, of Doctor Who stand talking at Spock's science station on the Enterprise bridge. Spock is saying, "… The self-destruction of the ancient advanced tech device destroyed the Kzinti which allowed Lt. Uhura, Lt. Sulu, and myself to escape." The Doctor is saying, "You realize, of course, that you were living through the events of Niven's The Soft Weapon, as adapted to your fiction plane." Unfortunately there are not image descriptions at the main Hero Of Three Faces site. End description.] 

The Hero of Three Faces is fanfiction crossovers, but it’s comic strips with stick figures, but they’re triangles. Preview panel only. Click here for full cartoon. Or see the on-site navigation tutorial. Or see this blog’s FAQ, or my archive tumblog’s FAQ. Cartoons may contain unmarked spoilers. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 10:00 (Central US time) daily are the previous day’s new update and the posts are pinned to the top of this blog. Cartoons linked from Tumblr 22:00 daily are from the archive and the posts are pinned only during annual summer hiatus of new updates.

Thanks for reading.

[axelmedellin]

Daily drawing 2 jan 2022

A kzin, from Larry Niven’s Known Space Stories.

I remember these stories fondly. Specially the ones related to Louis Wu and Ringworld. I discovered them during my high school years, and became quite the science fiction fan. I believe they prevented me from losing my marbles more than once.

[stra-tek]

Lower Decks just did an episode with a Ringworld and they put their Kzinti crewmemer on the away team.

If you haven't read Larry Niven's Ringworld, please do. It's fantastic.

[pluralzalpha]

Galactic Gazetteer: Gummidgy

Franchise: Known Space

Type: terrestrial/jungle planet

Primary: CY Aquarii

Moons: one

Native life: abundant

Inhabitants: humans

Colonised: 2644

Appearance: "Grendel" by Larry Niven (1968)

Fun fact: CY Aquarii emits intense UV radiation, not only requiring special protection for colonists but also driving rapid evolution on the planet.

Another fun fact: Gummidgy's jungles teem with predatory animal, plant and fungal life, including the orchid-thing, which may be both animal and plant.

Fun fact 3: radios don't work on Gummidgy

[mikailborg]

I'll give "Star Trek: Lower Decks" this: they brought the Kzinti officially back into canon from their contentious appearance in The Animated Series.