#known space

[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?

[grayrazor]

A lot of bad "humans are space orcs"/"humanity fuck yeah!" web fanfiction intentionally or unintentionally imitates Niven, but the guy himself was pretty good at avoiding the worst cliches. Every "enemy" species is less inferior to humanity and more a sidegrade with different strengths and weaknesses.

Slavers and Kzin are stronger and faster than humans, but kinda stupid. Fithp are good strategists, but are unprepared for the concept of “revenge.” Moties and Pak are super smart, but can never accomplish anything as a civilization because they’re so warlike.

[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.

[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

[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]

[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.

[xecotaco]

can i mention the time Larry Niven “closed the playground” to his Known Space universe over kzinti gay fic:

“Yes, it was. The story's still on my website, too. :-) I also got a letter from one of the contributors to the MKzW series who admitted that he liked the story, thought it justified itself well from what was known about Kz*n at the time, fit into the MKzW universe, and "was pretty hot all the same," even if said contributor *was* straight.”

Elf is a badass.

(From an ancient long thread on Larry Niven’s assholery here.)

So I’m on AO3 and I see a lot of people who put “I do not own [insert fandom here]” before their story.

Like, I came on this site to read FAN fiction. This is a FAN fiction site. I’m fully aware that you don’t own the fandom or the characters. That’s why it’s called FAN FICTION.

[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.

[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.

[paulgadzikowski]

his skin is like Louis Wu's impact armor

[hollis-art]

i love tossing the muppets at various star trek crews, it's so fun

[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

[faunandfloraas]

Honestly I think a lot of people who have never made a gif for tumblr don't get that it does actually take time and effort, its not just rip it from a video and post it- you have to download the video, in my case I have a video player installed that grabs continuous caps, figure out what parts you need, you have to open those in photoshop or gimp, depending on where you got photoshop you might be paying for it every month and then on top of that is actually sizing, cropping, colouring, sharpening, adding text, etc. etc. like it is something that takes time and effort for which the only real reward is creating something that makes you happy and hopefully people reblog it with a nice or funny tag, so maybe keep that in mind the next time you think gif makers are being mean or unfair for being upset about reposts. It is its own little artform that is fairly unique to this website, and that's a big aspect of why I have always loved tumblr, if all the gifmakers stopped posting things would be a lot more boring around here.

[kandoros]

The teeth wearing out (along with various other ailments that come with aging) are because humans originally evolved on another planet with a symbiotic virus that was supposed to transform our bodies when we hit a midlife crisis.

The virus doesn't occur on Earth, and so we get losing our teeth and arthritis.