Known Space

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Known Space is the fictional setting of several science fiction novels and short stories written by author Larry Niven. It has been also in part been used as a shared universe in the Man-Kzin Wars spin-off anthologies sub-series.

It is the name given by humans to an area of the galaxy near the Earth which is explored and settled several centuries in the future and is peopled by alien races such as Pierson's Puppeteers, Kzinti, and the many races of the Ringworld. Late in the series, this area is an irregularly shaped "bubble" about 60 light-years across. The stories span approximately one thousand years of future history, from the first human explorations of the Solar System to the colonization of dozens of nearby systems (and with some references to the far distant past).

The stories which now comprise the "known space" series were originally conceived as separate series, the "Belter" stories, featuring solar-system colonization and slower-than-light travel with fusion-powered Bussard ramjet ships, and the Neutron-Star/Ringworld series of stories, set much further into the future, which feature Faster-than-light ships using "hyperdrive". The two timelines were implicitly joined by Niven in the story "A Relic of the Empire," in which the background elements of the Slaver civilization (introduced in World of Ptavvs, from the Belter series) was used as a plot element of a story in the faster-than-light setting. Roughly 300 years separates the timeline of the last stories of the early setting (which are set roughly between 2000 and 2350), from the earliest stories in the later Neutron-Star/Ringworld setting (which are set in 2651 ("Neutron Star") and later). In the late 1980s, Niven opened up this gap in the known space timeline as a shared universe, and the stories of the Man-Kzin Wars volumes fill in that history, smoothly joining the two settings.

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

[edit] Overview

[edit] Species

In the process of exploring space, humankind encounters several intelligent alien species, including the following:

• Kzinti: a large and belligerent species of cat-like aliens with whom humans fight several brutal interstellar wars. Kzinti tactics are somewhat cat-like in nature, 'Scream and leap' being the primary mode of attack. Niven himself wrote little about the Man-Kzin wars, although many of his stories refer to them having taken place in the past. The Man-Kzin Wars short-story collections were primarily written by other authors. The Kzinti "crossed-over" in to the Star Trek universe in the animated episode "The Slaver Weapon", which was written by Larry Niven and is adapted from Niven's own short story "The Soft Weapon."
• Pierson's Puppeteers: a technologically advanced race of three-legged, twin-necked herbivores descended from herd animals, and noted for their so-called cowardice. Their commercial empire directly and indirectly controls events throughout Known Space and beyond, and Puppeteer plots are behind many of the larger events in Known Space.
• Outsiders: fragile, low-temperature (they are substantially composed of liquid helium) aliens that cruise through deep space. The Outsiders trade information, and are responsible for introducing FTL travel to humans. They have a mysterious connection with the starseeds, a gigantic space-going animal which travels to and from the galactic core.
• Pak: interstellar ancestors of humanity whose life-cycle mimics the stages of human aging. A Pak who reaches the age of 30 to 40 may become a 'Protector' of his descendants. Pak Protectors reportedly constructed the Ringworld.
• Kdatlyno: a slave species of the Kzinti until humans free them. Kdatlyno "see" by way of sonar and create sculptures intended to be "seen" by Kdatlyno, but which can be felt by other species such as humans and puppeteers.
• Pierin: A slave species of the Kzinti. At the time of their conquest, they occupied several planets near p Eridani. No description is given, but the Ringworld RPG suggests they resemble horned birds and that their homeworld has low gravity. Presumably freed by humans, but this is not attested.
• Chunquen: A slave species of the Kzinti, remarkable to their captors for the sentience of both sexes. ("They fought constantly.") Their homeworld is watery; they resisted the Kzinti invasion with missiles fired from submarine ships. Apparently exterminated before the Kzinti first encountered humans.
• Thrintun: an ancient species which ruled the galaxy through telepathic mind control about 1.5 billion years in the past. One of their technologies is the stasis field, which makes its contents impervious to harm and provides indefinite suspended animation, which has figured in several Niven stories. Thrintun are small (approximately 1.25 meters tall), reptilian, with green scaly skin, pointed teeth, and a single eye.
• Grogs: sessile sentient creatures, shaped like furry cones. They are eyeless, earless, and have a prehensile tongue. They can also control animals telepathically. The Grogs are thought by some to be the descendants of the Thrintun species, after 1.5 billion years of atrophy.
• Tnuctipun: an apparently extinct ancient race of carnivores contemporaneous with and enslaved by the Thrintun. They were known for their technological prowess, especially in genetic engineering. They secretly plotted to overthrow their Thrintun masters using many of their creations. When it appeared that they would succeed, the Thrintun used a psychic amplifier that forced every creature in the galaxy capable of obeying orders to commit suicide.
• Bandersnatchi: colossal slug-like creatures, originally created by the Tnuctipun to be grown as a food source by the Thrintun. Believed to have only animal intelligence by the Thrintun, the Tnuctipun actually engineered them as highly evolved both mentally and physically, as spies for their war on the Thrintun. At one time found throughout the Thrintun empire, the only known survivors in the Known Space era are on the planet Jinx, though they are later found on the Ringworld and a forested planet called Beanstalk.
• Trinocs: named for their three eyes; they also have three fingers, and a triangular mouth. Methane breathers and culturally paranoid, at least by human standards. First encountered by Louis Wu in the short story "There is a Tide".
• Martians: primitive humanoids who lived beneath the sands. Martians burst into flames when brought in contact with water. In the novel Protector, the Martians were wiped out when Jack Brennan caused an ice asteroid to crash into the surface of Mars. Some Martians still exist on the "Map of Mars" on the Ringworld.
• Jotoki: sentient octopus-shaped beings formed by the joining of the lobes of five non-sentient eel-like life forms into a single brain. Former rulers of an interstellar empire, they used Kzinti as bodyguards, but the Kzinti took over the Jotoki empire and used it as the basis for their own.
• Morlocks: semi-sentient humanoid cave dwellers on Wunderland. They, like humans, descended from a failed attempt by Pak Protectors to colonize Sol and nearby star systems. Named by humans for the creatures in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine.
• Whrloo: Meter tall insectoids with long eyestalks, their homeworld has low gravity with a thick, high density atmosphere. They never saw the stars until they were enslaved by the Kzinti.

Also figuring in some stories are dolphins and other intelligent cetaceans, and various offshoots of Homo sapiens lineage such as the hominids of the Ringworld. Most life in Known Space shared similar biochemistries, since they evolved from the Thrintun practice of seeding barren worlds with food yeast.

[edit] Locations

One aspect of the Known Space universe is that most of the early human colonies are on planets suboptimal for Homo sapiens. During the first phase of human interstellar colonization (i.e., before humanity acquired FTL), simple robotic probes were sent to nearby stars to assess their planets for habitation. The programming of these probes was flawed: they sent back a "good for colonization" message if they found a habitable point, rather than a habitable planet. Sleeper ships containing human colonists were sent to the indicated star systems. Too often, those colonists had to make the best of a bad situation.

• Earth, the human homeworld, is oppressive to an extent that would be unbelievable to most twentieth-century humans. The entire world is under the rule of the United Nations, which wields its power by means of a global police force. For centuries, due to the perfection of organ transplant technology, all state executions are done in hospitals to provide organ transplants, and to maximize their availability, nearly all crimes carried the death penalty. This period ended when Jack Brennan, who had consumed the Tree-of-Life root and become a human version of the Pak Protector, used his superior intelligence to engineer social change in medical technology and social attitudes that eventually reduced the use of organ banks to reasonable levels. Part of Brennan's manipulation was the development of a science known as 'psychistry'. Psychistry was used to 'correct' all forms of 'mental aberration'—the populace is incredibly docile. To combat overpopulation (one estimate is 18 billion people), a licence is required to procreate, only available after exhaustive testing has determined that a prospect is free of 'abnormalities'; failure to acquire one before procreating is a capital crime. This policy, in addition to the existence of the transfer booth and a one-world language and economy, has led to the populace eventually becoming fairly genetically homogeneous. To prevent the development of new WMDs, all scientific research is regulated by the government and all potentially dangerous technology is suppressed; there have been very few real breakthroughs in science since the twentieth century. A common title for people born on Earth is 'Flatlander'; they are considered naïve and a bit helpless by the rest of the galaxy, having been born and raised in the only environment in Known Space without inherent dangers.
• The Moon is a separate entity, but is under the control of the same government as Earth. It, however, has its own distinct culture. Humans native to the Moon are called "Lunies", and tend toward tall, lean body types regularly reaching eight feet in height. They are frequently referred to as looking much like Tolkien's Elves due to their physiques and alien allure.
• Mars, fourth planet in our solar system and the first planetary colony in Known Space. Native Martians were exterminated by the Brennan Monster. No one goes there, as resources are plentiful in the Belt and Jovian moons.
• The Sol Belt possesses an abundance of valuable ores, which are easily accessible due to the low to nonexistent gravity of the rocks containing them. Originally a harsh frontier under UN control, the Belt declared independence after creating Confinement Asteroid, a habitat with spin gravity that permitted safe gestation of children, and Farmer's Asteroid, the Belt's primary food source. Almost immediately a lively competition began between the fiercely independent Belters and the technology police of the UN. Several years of tension and economic conflicts followed, but soon settled into a relatively peaceful trade relationship.
• Down is the home world of the Grogs. It orbits a K-type star, significantly redder and cooler than Sol. Grogs, though friendly, are feared by humanity, due to their telepathic ability to control the minds of animals (and possibly sentient species as well). Because of this fear, humans have placed a Bussard ramjet field generator in close orbit about Down's sun to destroy the Grog population, should they take threatening action against any sentient species.
• Jinx, orbiting Sirius, is a massive moon of a gas giant, stretched by tidal forces into an egg shape, with surface gravity near the limits of human habitability. The poles lie in vacuum, the equatorial regions are Venus-like (and inhabited by the Bandersnatchi); the zones between have atmosphere breathable by humans. Jinx's poles become a major in vacuo manufacturing area.
• Wunderland is a planet circling Alpha Centauri, and was the earliest extra-solar colony in Known Space's human history. It has a surface gravity of 60% that of Earth's and is hospitable to human life. Wunderland was invaded and its population enslaved by the Kzinti during the first Man-Kzin war. It was freed near the end of the war by the human Hyperdrive Armada. The system has an asteroid belt in the shape of a crescent, which gives it its name—the Serpent Swarm. The capital asteroid, Tiamat, houses one of the largest Kzin populations in Known Space.
• We Made It orbiting Procyon, got its name because the first colony ship crash-landed. Gravity is about three-fifths Earth's. The planet's axis is pointed along the plane of the ecliptic (like Uranus), creating ferocious winds of as much as 1,500 mph during half of the planet's year, forcing the people to live underground. Natives are known as Crashlanders, and tend to be very tall albinos. Their capital, which was the site of their ship's crash landing, is called Crashlanding City. We Made It also has one ocean.
• Plateau in the Tau Ceti system is Venus-like, with a plateau (called Mount Lookitthat), half the size of California, rising high enough into the dense atmosphere to be habitable. Inhabitants (mountaineers) are divided into rigid hereditary castes, the crew and the colonists, depending on whether their ancestors piloted the colonizing vessel. The crew are the upper caste, and hold power through their monopoly on organ transplantation. The original colonists signed the "Covenant of Planetfall", agreeing that this outcome was just recompense for the labors of the crew during the voyage; that they signed at gunpoint as they were awakened from hibernation was kept secret from later generations. This repressive system was overthrown in A Gift From Earth, and the former inequality appears to have disappeared by the time "The Ethics of Madness" takes place.
• Home was one of Earth's most distant colonies, orbiting the star Epsilon Indi. The planet was so named by the colonists, due to its remarkable similarity to Earth. It's day was nearly 24 hours long, and its surface gravity was 1.08g. Oceans, mean global temperature, seasons, and moon were also similar. The first colonists originally wanted to call their world "Flatland" as a sort of perverse joke, but eventually decided on the name "Home" out of sentimentality. Home was decimated by war with the Pak, but re-colonized in later centuries.
• Canyon was once an uninhabitable Mars-like world known as Warhead. It was being used as a military outpost by the Kzinti, until the planet was hit by a weapon called the "Wunderland Treatymaker". The attack tore a long, narrow, kilometers-deep crater into the crust approximately the size of the Baja peninsula. The relatively dense air at the bottom of this artificial canyon created a breathable environment, complete with a sea at the bottom. The planet was then renamed for the crater, and settled by humans in a huge city running up the crater wall.
• Gummidgy is a jungle world popular with hunters. It is home to the Gummidgy Orchid-Thing, a sessile carnivore which hangs from trees and is a popular trophy for the wealthy.
• Fafnir is a former Kzin colony covered almost entirely in water. It has one continent, called Shasht. It was captured by humans during the Man-Kzin Wars.
• Margrave is a late addition to the family of Human colonies. In the Ringworld era it is still a frontier world, and is home to enormous birds the inhabitants have dubbed rocs.
• Silvereyes is, at the time of Ringworld, the furthest Human world from Earth (60 days at Quantum-I hyperdrive speeds). In Niven's obscure story "The Color of Sunfire" it has entire continents covered with Slaver sunflowers, giving it an appearance from orbit of having "silver eyes". The Man/Kzin Wars books, conversely, have it entirely covered by a world ocean, with groves of sunflowers growing up from the bottom of the ocean.
• The Fleet of Worlds is a Klemperer rosette consisting of the five planets that are home to the Puppeteers (see above), presently being moved in formation at sub-light speeds out of the galaxy to avoid destruction as the wave of radiation from an explosion of the galactic core sweeps towards the outer reaches of the galaxy.
  • Hearth, the homeworld of the Pierson's Puppeteers, it has a population of around one trillion and is covered by arcologies, most over one mile tall. It generates so much waste heat it no longer requires a star for warmth.
• Kobold was a tiny artificial world created in the outer Solar System by Jack Brennan, a human Protector, composed of a small sphere in the center ringed by a larger torus. Gravity generators facilitated movement between the two sections and were used in games and art. Brennan destroyed Kobold just prior to leaving for his war with the Pak Protectors.
• The Ringworld, an artificial world three million times larger than Earth, built in the shape of a giant ring orbiting its sun, a million miles across and with a diameter of 186 million miles. It was built by the Pak, who later abandoned it. It is inhabited by a number of different evolved hominid species, as well as Bandersnatchi, Martians and Kzinti.
• Sheathclaws, a planet colonized by humans aboard Angel's Pencil and descendants of a rogue Kzinti telepath. It orbits an as-yet-unspecified star 98 light years from Earth, and kept its existence secret for several centuries.
• Kzin, translates as Home-of-the-Kzinti or Kzinhome in the Hero's Tongue. It orbits 61 Ursa Majoris and has higher gravity than earth and more oxygen in the atmosphere. It has two moons, known as the Hunter's Moon and the Traveler's Moon.

[edit] Technology

The series feature a number of "superscience" inventions which figure as plot devices. Stories earlier in the timeline feature technology such as Bussard ramjets, and explore how organ transplantation technology enables the new crime of organlegging, while later stories feature hyperdrive, invulnerable starship hulls, stasis fields, molecular monofilaments, transfer booths (teleporters used only on planetary surfaces), the lifespan-extending drug boosterspice, and the tasp which is capable of stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain from a distance.

The impact of inventions and technology on society is a recurring theme in Niven's work. For example, addiction to electric brain stimulation resulting in wireheads, or the effects of the invention of teleportation.

The milieu can be viewed as representing the last gasp of Campbell-era science fiction, as the iconoclastic, counterculture influences of "new wave" science fiction of the sixties play no part in most of the stories. However, there are notable exceptions in the "Gil the ARM" stories; and "Jigsaw Man" first appeared in Harlan Ellison's landmark "new wave" anthology, Dangerous Visions.

[edit] Organ Transplantation

On Earth in the mid 21st century it became possible to transplant any organ from any person to another, with the exception of Brain and central nervous system tissue. Individuals were categorized according to their so-called "rejection spectrum" which allowed doctors to counter any immune system responses to the new organs, allowing transplants to "take" for life. It also enabled the crime of "organlegging" which lasted well into the 24th century.

[edit] Hyperdrive

Faster Than Light (FTL) propulsion, or hyperdrive, was obtained from the Outsiders at the end of the first Man-Kzin wars. In addition to winning the war for humanity, it allowed the re-integration of all the human colonies, which were previously separated by distance. Standard hyperdrive covers a distance of one light year every three days (121.75 x c). A more advanced Quantum II Hyperdrive introduced later is able to cover the same distance in one and a quarter minutes (420,768 x c).

[edit] Stasis Fields

A Stasis Field creates a bubble of space/time that runs separate from the rest of the universe. Time effectively stops for an object in stasis. An object in stasis is invulnerable to anything occurring outside the field, as well as being preserved indefinitely. A stasis field may be recognized by its perfectly reflecting surface, so perfect in fact that it reflects 100% of all radiation and particles, including neutrinos.

[edit] Invulnerable Hulls

The Puppeteer firm, General Products, produces an invulnerable starship hull, known simply as a General Products Hull. The hulls are impervious to any type of matter or energy, with the exception of antimatter, gravitation and visible light. While invulnerable themselves, this is no guarantee that the contents are likewise protected. For example, a high speed impact with the surface of a planet or star may cause no harm to the hull, the occupants however will be crushed if they are not protected by additional measures, such as a stasis field, or a gravity compensating field.

In Fleet of Worlds, the characters tour a General_Products factory and receive clues that allow them to destroy a General Products hull from the inside using only a Ramjet.

[edit] Boosterspice

Boosterspice is a compound that increases the longevity and reverses aging of human beings. With the use of boosterspice, humans can easily live into hundreds of years and, theoretically, it can extend life indefinitely.

Humans have been led to believe it is made from genetically engineered ragweed (although early stories have it ingested in the form of edible seeds) but, in Ringworld's Children, it is suggested boosterspice may actually be adapted from Tree-of-Life, without the symbiotic virus that enabled hominids to metamorphose from Pak Breeder stage to Pak Protector stage (mutated Pak breeders were the ancestors of both homo sapiens and the hominids of the Ringworld in the Known Space universe).

On the Ringworld, there is an analogous (and apparently more potent) compound, but they are mutually incompatible; in The Ringworld Engineers, Louis Wu learns that the character Halrloprillalar died when in ARM custody after leaving the Ringworld, as a result of having taken boosterspice and previously having used the Ringworld equivalent.

[edit] Transfer Booths

Transfer Booths are an inexpensive form of teleportation. They are similar in appearance to an old style telephone booth: one enters, dials one's desired destination, and is immediately deposited in a corresponding booth at the destination. They are inexpensive: a trip anywhere on Earth costs only a "tenth-star" (presumably equivalent to a dime).

[edit] Terms

• Droud — a device for direct electrical stimulation of the brain's pleasure center, plugged directly into a socket that is surgically attached to the skull. The user of a droud, known as a wirehead, suffers from current addiction. The operation to attach the droud's socket is performed by a specialized surgeon known as an ecstasy peddler.
• Singleship — a small spacecraft occupied and flown by only one person. It is a term short for single occupant spaceship. The singleships are commonly used by Belters for mining and transportation. During the Man-Kzin Wars they were also used as warships, since the fusion jet (so the colloquial name a Torchship) which propels the vessel could be used like a miles-long flamethrower.

See also: Torchship

• Tasp — a device for direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure center, like a droud, but which operates at a distance. To use a tasp on someone, e.g., in a public park, is known colloquially as 'to make someone's day'. As the kzin Speaker-to-Animals notes in Ringworld, only a sophisticate fears a tasp.
• Organlegger — a dealer in black market organ transplants (portmanteau of "organ" and "bootlegger").
• Free Park — a park where there are no rules, save that no one may harm another. The sole rule is enforced by floating monitor/stunners known as copseyes. (also called an Anarchy Park)
• Mercy bullets — a form of non lethal ammunition. Thin slivers of anesthetic material are fired from a specialized gun or rifle. They are designed to easily pierce the skin and dissolve quickly in the bloodstream, causing immediate unconsciousness. Used by ARM agents and organleggers alike.
• Fusion tube — A cylindrical shield designed to confine a plasma undergoing thermonuclear fusion. It prevents the plasma heat from damaging the external components of the reactor (and also prevents the cold components from contacting the plasma, which would cause it to fail). The shield can be modulated to allow desired radiation (such as visible light) to pass through it. This is useful for when the fusion reactor is used as both a power source and a light source, such as in Confinement and Farmer's Asteroids.
• Bubble world — An artificial world created by melting a large iron-rich asteroid and "inflating" it with water placed in a central borehole. The asteroid is melted form the outside in, and the water flashes into steam as the rock melts around it. The world is spun for gravity and the inner surface is terraformed. Normally found in asteroid belt colonies, where they provide farmland and gravity for women to safely carry their unborn children to term.

Please help improve this section by expanding it with: Needs other tech, such as puppeteer hulls, etc.. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

[edit] ARM

The ARM are the police force of the United Nations. ARM originated as an acronym for Amalgamation of Regional Militia, though this is not a term in current usage by the time of the Known Space novels. An agent of the ARM, Gil Hamilton, is the protagonist of Niven's sci-fi detective stories, a series-within-a-series gathered in the collection Flatlander (Confusingly, "Flatlander" is also the name of an unrelated Known Space story.)

Their basic function is to enforce mandatory birth control on overcrowded Earth, and restrict research which might lead to dangerous weapons. In short, the ARM hunts down women who have illegal pregnancies and suppresses all new technologies. They also hunt organleggers, especially in the era of the "organ bank problem." Among the many technologies they control and outlaw are all trained forms of armed and unarmed combat. Agents of the ARM are often known as Schizes, due to the artificially induced state of paranoid schizophrenia they are kept in to enhance their usefulness as law enforcement officials in a society that keeps most of its populace docile and naive through the aforementioned science of psychistry (see "Madness Has Its Place").

Their jurisdiction is limited to the Earth-Moon system; other human colonies have their own militia. Nevertheless, in many Known Space stories, ARM agents operate or exert influence in other human star systems through the "Bureau of Alien Affairs" (see "In the Hall of the Mountain King", "Procrustes", "The Borderland of Sol", and "Neutron Star"). These interventions begin following the Man-Kzin Wars and the introduction of hyperdrive, presumably as part of a general re-integration of human societies.

[edit] Stories in Known Space

Unlike many fictional universes, the component tales of Known Space were largely released as short stories or serials in various science fiction anthology magazines. These stories were generally subsequently released in one or more collection volumes. To add some further confusion, some of the shorter novels published in magazines were later expanded to, or incorporated in, book-length novels. Due to the large number of stories, it is particularly difficult for a completionist fan to read every story in the series. There are also two or three short stories which share common themes and some background elements with Known Space stories, but which are not considered a part of the Known Space Universe: "Bordered in Black" and "One Face" (see the collection "Convergent Series"), and perhaps "The Color of Sunfire."

In the Known Space stories Niven had created a number of technological devices (GP hull, stasis field, Ringworld material) which, combined with the 'Teela Brown gene', made it very difficult to construct engaging stories beyond a certain date—the combination of factors made it tricky to produce any kind of creditable threat/problem without complex contrivances. Niven demonstrated this, to his own satisfaction, with "Safe at Any Speed". After 1975, he began to write significantly fewer Known Space stories. However, Niven later invited other authors to participate in a series of shared-universe novels, with the Man-Kzin Wars as their setting.

[edit] Stories by Niven himself

Title	Published	First appearance	Collection
"The Coldest Place"	1964	Worlds of If	Tales of Known Space
"The World of Ptavvs"[1]	1965	Worlds of Tomorrow	—
"Becalmed in Hell"	1965	The Magazine of Fantasy      and Science Fiction	Tales of Known Space
"Eye of an Octopus"	1966	Galaxy Magazine	Tales of Known Space
"The Warriors"	1966	Worlds of If	Tales of Known Space
"Neutron Star"	1966	Worlds of If	Neutron Star
"How the Heroes Die"	1966	Galaxy Magazine	Tales of Known Space
"At the Core"	1966	Worlds of If	Neutron Star
"A Relic of the Empire"	1966	Worlds of If	Neutron Star
"At the Bottom of a Hole"	1966	Galaxy Magazine	Tales of Known Space
"The Soft Weapon"	1967	Worlds of If	Neutron Star
"Flatlander"	1967	Worlds of If	Neutron Star
"The Ethics of Madness"	1967	Worlds of If	Neutron Star
"Safe at any Speed"	1967	The Magazine of Fantasy      and Science Fiction	Tales of Known Space
"The Adults"[2]	1967	Galaxy Magazine	—
"The Handicapped"	1967	Galaxy Magazine	Neutron Star
"The Jigsaw Man"	1967	Dangerous Visions	Tales of Known Space
"Slowboat Cargo"[3]	1968	Worlds of If	—
"The Deceivers"[4]	1968	Galaxy Magazine	Tales of Known Space
"Grendel"	1968	(collection only)	Neutron Star
"There is a Tide"	1968	Galaxy Magazine	Tales of Known Space
World of Ptavvs	1968	(novel)	—
A Gift From Earth	1968	(novel)	—
"Wait It Out"	1968	Futures Unbounded	Tales of Known Space
"The Organleggers"[5]	1968	Galaxy Magazine	The Shape of Space
Ringworld	1970	(novel)	—
"Cloak of Anarchy"	1972	Analog Science Fiction	Tales of Known Space
Protector	1973	(novel)	—
The Defenseless Dead	1973	(collection only)	The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton
"The Borderland of Sol"	1974	Analog Science Fiction	Tales of Known Space
"ARM"	1975	Epic	The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton
The Ringworld Engineers	1980	(novel)	—
The Patchwork Girl	1980	(novel)	also Flatlander
"Madness Has Its Place"	1990	(collection only)	Man-Kzin Wars III
"Procrustes"	1994	(collection only)	Crashlander
"Ghost"	1994	(framing story, collection only)	Crashlander
"The Woman in Del Rey Crater"	1995	(collection only)	Flatlander
The Ringworld Throne	1996	(novel)	—
"Choosing Names"	1998	(collection only)	Man-Kzin Wars VIII
"Fly-By-Night"	2002	(collection only)	Man-Kzin Wars IX
Ringworld's Children	2004	(novel)	—
"The Hunting Park"	2005	(collection only)	Man-Kzin Wars XI
Fleet of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)	2007	(novel)	—
Juggler of Worlds (co-authored with Edward M. Lerner)	2008? (scheduled)	(novel)	—

(Note that most stories appeared in more than one collection, though only one each is listed here.)

[edit] Man-Kzin Wars

Main article: Man-Kzin Wars

[edit] Playground

Niven has described his fiction as "playground equipment", encouraging fans to speculate and extrapolate on the events described. Debates have been made, for example, on who built the Ringworld (Pak Protectors and the Outsiders being the traditional favorites, but see Ringworld's Children for a possibly definitive answer), and what happened to the Tnuctipun. However, Niven also states that this is not an invitation to violate his copyrights, so fans should try to avoid publishing works that are too obviously based in the Known Space universe without Niven's given permission.

Niven was also reported to have said that "Known Space should be seen as a possible future history told by people that may or may not have all their facts right."

An outline for a "final" Known Space story titled "Down in Flames" has been published, which includes a controversial revelation about the Tnuctipun. However, Niven has stated the story suggested by the outline was made obsolete by the publication of Ringworld. "Down in Flames" was a result of a conversation between Norman Spinrad and Niven in 1968, but at the time of its first publication in 1977 some of the concepts were invalidated by Niven's writings between '68 and '77. (A further edited version of the outline was published in N-Space in 1990.)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Encyclopedia of Known Space
• The Incompleat Known Space Concordance
• Timeline of the Known Space universe
• Website for the Man-Kzin Wars novel Destiny's Forge
• Homepage of MKW author Paul Chafe
• "Known Space Home Page" (semi-official fan site)