World of Ptavvs

World of Ptavvs is a science fiction novel by Larry Niven, first published in 1966 and set in his Known Space universe. It was Niven's first published novel and is based on a 1965 short story of the same name.

Plot summary

A reflective statue is found at the bottom of one of Earth's oceans, having lain there for 1.5 billion years. Since humans have recently developed a time-slowing field and found that one such field cannot function within another, it is suspected that the "Sea Statue" is actually a space traveler within one of these time fields. Larry Greenberg, a telepath, agrees to participate in an experiment: a time-slowing field is generated around both Greenberg and the statue, shutting off the stasis field and revealing Kzanol. Kzanol is a living Thrint, a member of a telepathic race that once ruled the galaxy through mind control.

Eons ago, Kzanol's spaceship had suffered a catastrophic failure; its reactive drive system failed and the navigation computer automatically jettisoned it. Faced with insufficient fuel, Kzanol sent his amplifier helmet to the planet he had just left (Neptune), aimed his ship at an uninhabited Thrint planet (which turns out to be Earth) used to grow yeast for food, and turned his spacesuit's emergency stasis field on to survive the impact. Although he assumed that the resident thrint overseer would be able to rescue him after seeing his ship's impact, his timing could not have been worse; while in stasis on the way to the planet, the slave races revolted against the Thrint. Facing extinction, the Thrint decided to take their enemies with them by constructing a telepathic amplifier powerful enough to command all sentient species in the galaxy to commit suicide. They set it to repeat for centuries and every sentient being in the galaxy perished. After hundreds of millions of years, the yeast food mutated and evolved into complex life on Earth.

After his telepathic encounter with the Thrint, Greenberg is confused by having two sets of memories, his own and Kzanol's. He instinctively assumes he is the Kzanol. Both Greenberg and the real Kzanol steal spaceships and race to reclaim the thought-amplifying machine on Neptune, which is powerful enough to enable control of every thinking being in the Solar System. Eventually, Greenberg's personality reasserts itself and, armed with the knowledge of how to resist the Power (one of Kzanol's own memories), Greenberg traps Kzanol again in a stasis field.

A major element of the story is the Cold War existing between Earth and the "Belters," which threatens to burst into a highly destructive war over control of the same device.

Reception

Algis Budrys described World of Ptavvs as "snappy, ingenious, and upbeat," praising Niven for "treat[ing] telepathy as the phenomenon it should logically be."^[1]

Reviewer Alan Brink noted that "Niven has made a very effective use of a teaser. A person who had not read the book has no way of knowing who or what 'Ptavvs' are; then you read it and find that we are ourselves Ptavvs and that Earth is the World of Ptavvs - as seen through alien eyes. The success of this book testifies to the effectiveness of Niven's curiosity-arousing device"^[2] .

Concepts

• The Thrintun had been mentioned in the earlier Known Space story "The Handicapped". World of Ptavvs reveals a number of new aspects to them, including that they were not a particularly intelligent species and only built their empire through the control of more intelligent species.

• A Ptavv is a Thrint who lacks telepathic powers. Thrintun consider it a matter of great shame to have a Ptavv in their family and usually tattoo them pink and sell them as slaves.

• Bandersnatchi are enormous intelligent creatures, consisting of one gigantic cell, and resembling a mountain-sized white slug. They were supposedly created as food animals for, and were found delectable by, the Thrint, but were actually spies for their designers, the Tnuctipun, a highly intelligent slave species that led the revolt against the Thrintun. Only the Bandersnatchi survived the war, as they were specially designed to be immune to Thrintun mind control. Humans encountered the Bandersnatchi when they colonized the planet Jinx, and were able to deduce that they were intelligent.

• Larry Greenberg, the protagonist of World of Ptavvs, had volunteered to emigrate with his wife to Jinx to help the colonists communicate with the Bandersnatchi. By the end of the story he is even more qualified now knowing the Thrint writing system which the Bandersnatch appear to use.

• Cultural Relativism - Kzanol seems a highly ruthless and cruel character, taking for granted his right to enslave any human he meets and planning to enslave the entire Earth. Gradually it turns out, however, that he is relatively "liberal" by Thrint standards, his family having traditionally treated their slaves a bit better than other Thrint. This is especially manifest in his decision, when having been faced with the destruction of his ship, to save the life of the slave being who was with him in the ship - which other Thrint would not have done. In the end of the book, it is the human Greenberg who takes the ruthless decision not to release this being out of the stasis field which it shares with the telepathic amplifier, and throw it into Neptune for aeons to come.

Similar themes by other writers

The theme of a human telepath "absorbing" the mind of an alien and thereby gaining various abilities and pieces of information was also at the center of Clifford Simak's Time is the Simplest Thing.

References