I’d like to suggest 3 post-show discussion question/topics for the Voicemail show:

1) In “Protector” they mention some kind of creature that’s trapped on Earth in a statis field. I am compelled by this idea. Do you know if this is a reference to another of Niven’s novels or short stories?

2) Has David or any of the Ninjas ever heard of a encounter between the Puppeteers and the Pak Protectors in any of Niven’s books? Speaker-to-Animals comments on the terrible power of the Puppeteers to move worlds & manipulate other races. While that’s true, I feel certain that the Pak Protectors would “clean their clocks”.

3) For discussion: What do you think about Louis Wu’s solution to escaping from the Ringworld in the crippled Lying Bastard? I have to say that I wonder if Louis managed to find some Tree-of-Life root on the Ringworld because his “solution” seems worthy of a Oak Protector. I.E. Glue/cement the end-fob of the shadow square monofilament to the wall of the flying police station building; Glue/cement Nessus fly-cycle to a closet in the same building; Use the flashlight laser to cut away the bottom half of the building (and letting it fall on whoever might be below); Fly the building back to the Lying Bastard thousands of miles away (meanwhile causing untold damage as snarls of monofilament slice through anything in their wake); Loop the shadow string wire around the virtually impenetrable General Products hull of the Lying Bastard and jam it in the hatch; Fly the police building up the slope of Fist of God (meanwhile dragging Lying Bastard & aforementioned slicey shadow-string along for bonus wreckage); Put on spacesuits; Drop the police station through the hole at the top of Fist of God mountain and into space; Use the Ringworld’s centrifugal force to fling the police station building and Lying Bastard free of the system so that they can engage the hyperdrive; and somehow get from the police station building back to the Lying Bastard without getting flung off into space.

???

(This is almost as good as his solution to the “Sunflower Problem” in one of the subsequent Ringworld novels)

I guess it’s better then uhhhhhmmm… or ahhhhh… or errrr…..

I will work at eliminating that word from my handy dandy “I’m trying to think and talk at the same time file”

Trust me it’s not as easy as one might think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space

I think it might have been more compelling if Niven had used the structure more along the lines of Azimov’s foundation series. Where the time frame jumped around by decades or even hundreds of years at a time.

And it might have been more interesting if Louis Wu had faded into the background, what would be wrong with more characters?

Anyways, definitely a read.

Like Summer, David & Brian I read the the novel first the first time years ago. This time around I listened to the Blackstone Audio unabridged versions of Ringworld and Protector. (Having gone this far I might be committed to finished the rest of the series). Maybe it was due to the vocal talents of the reader or that I’m a fan of classic big-idea hard sci-fi that got me past the dated characterization but I love these books.

I think it’s worth mentioning that beyond the world-weary viewpoint of Louis Wu (coffee spigot), that each of the characters, with the exception of 20-year-old 2-dimensional Teela Brown, agrees to the trip in part in the interest of saving their species from the oncoming radiation wave from the explosion of the galactic core. Nessus is exploring the Ringworld because it’s construction material is impervious to radiation, Louis & Speaker because they’ve been offered the experimental hyperdrive.

What are the chances that the KAMN will cover Asimov’s Foundation series?

And thanks.

- Snarf