Fleet of Worlds by Niven, Larry, Lerner, and Edward M.

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Fleet of Worlds
Available from Amazon
Price: $58.40
Updated on 12-28-2008.

Features

Audio CD: 8 pages

Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc.; Unabridged edition (February 1, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1433229420

ISBN-13: 978-1433229428

Product Dimensions: 15.7 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces ()

From Publishers Weekly
Niven, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, and Lerner (Probe) offer a lively prequel to Niven's 1970 classic, Ringworld. It's 2650, some 500 years after the human colony ship Long Pass was captured by Citizens, those paranoid, two-headed beings better known as Puppeteers from the Fleet of Worlds. The Citizens of the Concordance have bred and nurtured successive generations of human Colonists from the Long Pass's crew and embryo banks, while lying about their origins, telling stories about an abandoned colony ship adrift in space. When a team of Colonist explorers led by Citizen Nessus to study intelligent life on an ice-covered world also uncovers evidence that the Concordance has lied about the past, they're determined to find the truth. Meanwhile, Concordance Citizens learn that the ruling Conservative policymakers have mishandled secret contacts with Earth and endangered the Fleet. Fans of hard SF will be well rewarded. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Niven's latest foray into Known Space, his favorite imaginary universe, revisits the domain of the puppeteers, the perpetually nervous, two-headed extraterrestrials featured in his Ringworld series. In this collaboration with the author of Moonstruck (2005), Niven steps back a few centuries before Ringworld's discovery to witness the puppeteers' flight from a lethal explosion at the galactic core. To safeguard his species' fleet of migrating worlds from hostile forces, a veteran puppeteer starship pilot enlists an unlikely trio of human scientists for scouting missions ahead of the fleet's path. Raised from embryos apparently discovered on a derelict starship, the humans have known only servitude and a limited culture carefully tailored by their alien hosts. Yet a chance discovery on one of their space treks slices through a web of puppeteer lies and provokes rebellion when the humans learn their true home may be waiting for them on Earth. Lerner may be responsible for the exceptional freshness and suspense of this further chapter of Known Space lore, full of startling revelations about human and puppeteer politics. Hays, Carl --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Fleet of Worlds (Hardcover) During the 1970s Larry Niven was one of my very favorite Science Fiction authors. His "Known Space" setting was the launching pad for many excellent novels and short stories, and this established Niven as a leading author of "Hard SF." The "Known Space" universe featured a dazzling, and not implausible, future for the human race and even better, the aliens of Known Space really were alien. The Kzinti and the Puppeteers, to name two of the principal alien races, are truly imaginative. This novel is set in "Known Space" and begins at a time shortly before the human race has discovered hyperdrive, although most of the story occurs after that time. A group of humans in space is essentially kidnapped by the Puppeteers, who intend to use these humans and their descendants as a slave race, albeit a fairly well treated one. The Puppeteers will use the humans in certain labor functions, and also as interstellar scouts, since the highly risk-averse Puppeteers are not well suited for risky jobs of this type. "Known Space" junkies will recall that the Puppeteers are fleeing our Galaxy because the galactic core will eventually flood the entire Galaxy with deadly radiation. The novel essentially revolves around two themes. Firstly, the human servants are finding out that the Puppeteers have lied to them about their origins, and about humanity. Secondly, the Puppeteers are worried that other races, humanity included, will spot their migrating worlds and threaten them. This causes the Puppeteers to act preemptively and aggressively, and frankly, unwisely and implausibly. The real core of this novel is to give the reader far more insight into Puppeteer politics and society than we ever got before. Some of this is interesting, but not enough to carry the novel. Unfortunately, the novel also highlights Niven's enduring weakness at creating three-dimensional characters. Here the characters are flat and forgettable. In some of his other stories Niven sometimes gets around this by writing in the first person (i.e. the Beowulf Schaeffer stories), but not here, although I wonder if that might have worked here. Niven fails to capitalize on his former strengths as a writer (skillful use of scientific prognostications and the effect of technology on the evolution of society) because there really are not any interesting speculations about society or the future of humanity (or even the future of the Puppeteers) contained in this novel. Overall, this one was good enough to finish, but not good enough to read again, and this distinguishes it from most other "Known Space" writings, which I have read many times. It is impossible not to notice that almost everything Niven has written over the past 20 years has been in collaboration with other authors. It is almost as though he is more interested in the social network of his author friends than in writing to please the reading public. That is my perception, at least, because Niven's offerings for the past two decades have not been nearly as good as his earlier writings. Overall a disappointment, although Niven fans will probably enjoy this one.

Fleet of Worlds
List Price: $80.00
Available from Amazon
Price: $58.40
Updated on 12-28-2008.