Protector

Larry Niven proves a point here. Most other authors would be tempted to tell a story of this magnitude in a trilogy consisting of thousands of pages. Niven does it in a little over 200 pages. Granted, he keeps the featuring cast down to only a few individuals. But still… The saga of Brennan the Belte......more

Downloaded from my library & published by BlackStone Audio. It is one of his Known Universe books, there are some touch stones to others, but this stands alone perfectly well & is early in the cycle. It's old school, hard SF that I haven't read in far too long but was one of many that stretched my m......more

Protector is essentially two separate, related novellas, published together. Niven introduces some fascinating concepts, at the core of which is an intriguing alien species, originating in the galactic core, with ancient ties to humanity making first contact after millions of years. But, as with mos......more

"Protector" has one of the best ideas I have seen in any SF novel, and I'm astonished to find that not one of my friends has it on their shelf. Here's an intro (all revealed very early on, so it hardly counts as a spoiler). It turns out that human beings aren't actually from Earth after all; we are......more

Further proof, if it were needed, that Niven is the king of creating interesting, believable, yet totally alien aliens. Take all the features of human senescence: wrinkled, leathery skin, teeth and hair falling out, heart failure, joints swollen from over-use. Now imagine that all of these features a......more