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	Three Books of Known Space
	Release Date: 1996-09-03
	Amazon Price: $12.24 (32% off the list price of $18.00) Sales Rank: 411896
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(18 reviews)

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Review by: DavidNewYork, New York City
Rating:

So Dated I Felt Ill
Writing about the future is always a tricky prospect. It's very easy for scientific exploration and technological progress to make even the cleverest and most forward-thinking stories look woefully out-of-date just a few years after publication. But I'm not here to knock Larry Niven for that, even though this book is a collection of pretty weak material. Rather, it's the revolting social backwardess which prompted me to put this book down after reaching "How the Heroes Die." I realize that this story was first published in 1966. But I look to sci-fi for progressive thought about tech *and* culture, not garbage like this: "You know, lots of people get a little sick to their stomachs about homosexuals. I do myself, and it hurt to see it happening to Lew." Or this: "Okay. You've got two sets of circumstances under which a high rate of homosexuality occurs. In both cases you've got three conditions: a reasonable amount of leisure, no women, and a disciplinary pecking order. You need a third example." "I couldn't think of one." "The Nazi organization." I felt ill reading this. If this kind of trash bothers you, then definitely avoid this book. As I say, the stories are for the most part very lame. (An example: An transplant-hungry society puts traffic scofflaws to death so they can harvest their tasty organs. Such biting social satire.) But the embarrassing social mores - capped off by "How the Heroes Die" - make the whole thing utterly skippable.

Review by: Christopher Culver
Rating:

The dregs of Known Space
This omnibus brings together three tales set in Larry Niven's Known Space universe that had only sporadically been available since their publication in the 1960s. WORLD OF PTAAVS was Larry Niven's first novel, published in 1966, and with its 2106 setting it is one of the first stories chronologically in the Known Space canon. It is clearly a weak work, and offers only hints of the wonderful ideas that Niven was to write about later. It begins two billion years before the present with the alien Kzanol, a member of the Thrintun race, which had the ability to control others telepathically and are the Slavers mentioned in later Known Space works. After the drive on Kzanol's ship burns out, he puts himself into a stasis field and aims himself at Earth, supposing that only 90 years will pass until he is rescued. However, eons go by while he lies in stasis after falling into Earth's oceans. In the near-future, a scientist believes that he can break open Kzanol's stasis field and enlists the help of Larry Greenberg. A telepath, Greenberg's job is to read the alien's mind for several seconds before the field is reactivated. However, Kzanol's telepathic abilities overwhelm Greenberg, and Greenberg comes to believes he is Kzanol. The two Kzanol's set out to Neptune, racing against each other to claim the telepathic amplifier that Kzanol sent there, with which one could enslave all of Earth. Lucas Garner, an agent with the UN, gives chase. WORLD OF PTAAVS was clearly written in the mid-60's. There is only one female character, and she is a stereotypical June Cleaver housewife. Niven was unable to foreesee the advent of powerful personal computing, and the computers of the novel output their information on paper strips like stocktickers. One amusing part of the novel for modern audiences is a reference to "West Berlin." Even the science of the story is outdated, one part refers to landing on Neptune, but Neptune is a gas giant without a solid surface. A GIFT FROM EARTH is a tale of a rebellion on the colonized world, a Venus-like cauldron with only one habitable area, the giant mountain Mt. Lookitthat. When the slowboats sent by the UN reached it, the crew, who had worked hard for 30 years to bring the ship to Plateau, decided to set up a dictatorship over the colonists, who were frozen in statis during the journey. The Crew's power over the Colonists is their control of the Hospital and their ability to punish criminals by the death penalty and extract their organs to prolong the life of those loyal to the Crew. This story is set in the first half of Niven's Known Space universe (2000-2400), and shows the same obsession over the death penalty and organ transplantation as other works of that era, such as the Gil "the Arm" Hamilton stories collected in FLATLANDER. Change comes to Plateau in the form of a UN ramrobot carrying blueprints for improved alloplasty (using gadgets instead of organs). Such a development threatens the existence of the status quo and the Crew scrambles to deal with the situation. The Sons of Earth, a Colonist rebel group, decide to seize the moment. Their new hero is Matt Keller, an unassuming young man with a physic power of invisibility through making others not notice him. The novel is full of improbable developments, and Matt's power essentially makes him a superman, which means there's little intrigue or depth because Matt can get through anything. Again, characters seem like they came out of 1960's America, as the women are submissive and everybody has American names, plus nobody seems to use the metric system. TALES OF KNOWN SPACE was the second collection Known Space short stories. Unlike the first collection, NEUTRON STAR, it is lackluster. NEUTRON STAR collected the golden age Known Space stories of the late-60's. TALES OF KNOWN SPACE, on the other hand, was compiled after the decline in Niven's writing and collects material from both before the golden age (1964-65) and after (1972-75). Several of the stories are among the earliest in the chronology of Known Space stories, charting Man's exploration of Venus and the outer planets from 1975-1990 (Niven was a little optimistic). They suffer from poor science and bad characterization (everyone's American, there are no female characters, and no one seems to have heard of the metric system), and it's painful to think that these stories are in the same universe as NEUTRON STAR and RINGWORLD. Next are a couple of stories about Mars, and a couple with Lucas Garner, all of which are instantly forgettable. There's a look at a social experiment, the "anarchy park" in the 1972 story "Cloak of Anarchy," and also one of the worst Beowulf Shaeffer stories, the unbelievably awful "The Borderland of Sol." The short "Safe At Any Speed", set in 3100, is supposedly about how the spread of the Teela Brown luck gene will change human society; strangely the story was written before Niven even introduced the concept of genetic luck. There are a few okay stories. "The Jigsaw Man" is one of Niven's earliest stories to deal with the theme of organ transplantation and expanded use of the dealth penalty, with its protagonist condemned to death for mere traffic violations. "The Warriors" marks the first appearance of the Kzinti, who went on to become a major part of Known Space. "There is a Tide" introduces Louis Wu, who went on to become the protagonist of RINGWORLD. I'd recommend this omnibus only after someone has read the classics of the Known Space universe--NEUTRON STAR, FLATLANDER, and RINGWORLD.

Review by: Norman Strojny, western desert of Utah
Rating:

Very good stories from "known Space"
"Three Books of Known Space" contains several stories from Larry Niven's "Known Space" series. I enjoyed all of these stories. "A Gift from Earth" is the best story here and I recommend it highly. Buy the book. It is full of good reading.

Review by: Monkey, Seattle
Rating:

Three awesome tales about Known Space
This is a three part or three novel book that is very interesting to get more background and fill in information on the Larry Niven universe. The three stories are The World of Patvvs, The gift from Earth and Tales of known Space. All of these alone are excellent stories, being able to read each of them one after the other was just a good clean fun read. The good part is that they all tie together logically and cleanly so that the reader has good conclusions to go into the next story with. The story starts off with a Slaver in stasis on the plane earth where humans are trying to work out how to manage that contact. The alien in this is very interesting as the human and the alien get mixed, and keep on getting mixed until you don't know who is who until the end of the story. That is what makes this book such a kicker of start for the book. The Gift from Earth is a darker grimmer book, where humans are essentially organ donors for a richer class of humans. The book covers the adventures that the main character has when they are trying to escape the process. The whole adventure also involves Psionic powers that allow people to do things that help the revolution along. The final book, Tales of known space is a good conclusion to the darker second book. This is a great collection to have and one that will not leave you disappointed, well rounded out, five of five stars for the sheer fun of reading them.

Review by: beammeup, Cedar Park, TX USA
Rating:

Wonderful Known Space Collection
Arranged chronologically are plenty of Niven's Known Space stories, spanning from the late 20th to the late 31st early 32nd. Not all of Known Space is contained in this collection, only _World of Ptavvs_, _A Gift From Earth_, and _Tales of Known Space_. Let's start with _World of Ptavvs_. I gave this one five stars. Which is strange because I can't stand stories that have psychic powers as an integral theme or have unexplained humanoid aliens. For some reason I was enthralled by it, anxious to know what would happen. Even despite how dated some parts were they didn't subtract from the overall story. Basically what happens is an ancient statue dredged up off the coast of Brazil is actually an alien from two billion years ago. When the alien is revived a telepath intended to communicate with the alien (who's name is Kzanol) absorbs Kzanol's memories and believes that /he/ is really Kzanol. What follows is a mad scramble by the telepath, UN police, and later the real Kzanol and Belter ships, to find or destroy a psychic amplifier helmet that Kzanol left on one of Neptune's moons. _A Gift From Earth_ Four Stars Set on a colony world similar to Venus orbiting Tau Ceti. The colony is called Plateau and located on Mount Lookitthat, the only habitable section on the entire planet. The story starts off with a ramrobot (think space probe that carries products between stars at near light speed) approaching and then landing on Mt. Lookitthat bearing mysterious technologies from Earth. Then we have Matthew Keller, a humble colonist (the second-class social caste on Plateau) who is unknowingly and unwillingly drawn into a revolutionary movement against the crew (Plateau's aristocrats) calling itself the Sons of Earth. In a police raid all of the Sons are captured and only Matt escapes and attempts to rescue them from the organ bank Hospital and Jesus Pietro Castro, Head of Implementation. Through the story Matt discovers his strange psychic power (blech!) and the ramrobot's technology that threatens to overthrow the established order on Plateau. Finally _Tales of Known Space_: Three Stars A wonderful way to finish off this fine collection, it begins with _The Coldest Place_, a story that became obsolete before it was published, and ending with the ?comical? story of a man and his car that are swallowed by a giant bird and stuck there for six months in _Safe at Any Speed_. Unfortunately the Puppeteers do not appear at all and the Kzinti make only one appearance in _The Warriors_.