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 Belter and Phssthpok the Pak seems to enjoy a bit of cult status, and it’s easy to see why. It’s an enjoyable enough tale, with some nice surprises to keep things spicy. It also gets fairly technical, with...

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.Hyperspace Shunt: "Protector" by Larry Niven(Original Review, 1980-07-29)Some apparent anomalies in Niven's "Protector".I am reasonably comfortable with Larry Niven's "Known Space" universe, however I have just finished rereading "Protector" for the umpteenth time and I am somewhat disturbed by the apparent incompatibility with other "Known Space" stories.

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 mind as a kid.The premise of Protector is pretty interesting, as are the protectors themselves. Niven covers a lot of logical & moral ground in this book. I was constantly asking myself if I thought th...

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 most of his work, I found it fairly dry, heavy on the info dumping and science and light on story and character development, which generally feels didactic. In particular, he gets into the weeds way too

The last time I read this was in 7th grade, towards the end of my first real "I'm going to read everything this author has written" phase in which I devoured everything Known Space. (Come to think of it, I never did get around to reading The Integral Trees...) It's interesting to see what I actually remember about the Known Space universe and the stories in it. Niven's universe was very interconnected. I caught references to World of Ptavvs and A Gift From Earth, but I'm sure I missed others.Thi...

"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 originally colonists from another planet a long way from here. On the home planet, humans go through two life stages. First, they are Breeders. Breeders, as the name suggests, are only interested in h...

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 are signs not of a body breaking down, but the beginnings of a third-stage of human development: the super-strong, hyperintelligent "protector" stage.The frailties of old age become the strengths of a

The Origins of Humanity19 January 2021 I’d heard of the Pak Protectors before, but that was in the Ringworld Novels, and they were basically mentioned as, well, being around, but there didn’t seem to be too much detail with regards to them. In fact, I found out about them simply by doing a Wikipedia search. Well, it turns out that this is the book that tells us a lot more about them. Well, not quite because it involves one of them arriving in the Solar System, and us humans getting in contact wi...

3.5 stars. Great book by one of the masters of Hard SF "storytelling." This is a book with "big" ideas that are well thought out and explanined and yet such explanations are not given at the expense of the story. Translation = Big concept, Hard SF that is a lot of fun. Recommended. Nominee: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1974)Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1974)

Written in that classic sci-fi style where characters are, at best, secondary to the idea.The book is composed of two parts. The first part lays out the premise and I found it interesting. The second is a mystery, then a chase sequence, and a drag to get through.The premise, though, is worth it: (view spoiler)[Humans are not native to Earth. Instead, humanity is descended from an alien species, the Pak, with a three-stage life cycle: Child, Breeder, Protector. A Pak is born a Child, not sentient...

Old read. Probably my favorite Niven book.

Being part of Niven's Tales of Known Space this is a somewhat older book. It's a mans first contact story and concerns the arrival in the solar system of the first alien visitor. From there things do not go as you might expect and the book covers several hundred years due to lots of travelling at sub light speeds. In a few places it did seem a bit dated, and I was not at all convinced about the mono-pole (single ended magnet) technology, but overall, still a great book. Bringing together scienc...

Re-reading Ringworld earlier this month as part of Sword & Laser book club selection got me in the mood for a re-read of Ringworld Engineers. Part way into that I dug out Niven's Protector and decided I should re-read that before getting much further in RW Eng. Overall I like this book ALMOST as much as Ringworld, some parts more so, some less. I would rate it a 4.5 if I could, putting this just under Niven's Ringworld, Mote in Gods Eye & Dream Park novels which are my favorites.I enjoy a number...

Outstanding! One of the greatest science fiction books ever written. This would have to be in my Top Ten books and definitely my favourite Larry Niven book.And did I mention the cover? What a great cover!

(After reading the 5 books of the Ringworld, I decided to read the related works in Larry Niven's Known Space universe. Protector figured largely in the unfolding of the Ringworld series and I thought it would be interesting to revisit this book. As such enterprises tend to do, it brought up memories of a youthful life and all the silly things one can get into. Like hitching a ride with the Pak, you never know where you'll wind up.) So Protector is the book, also the race and the spaceship. T

To some extent I consider Larry Niven's Known Space stories the default setting for science fiction. Not early enough to be pulp, yet still definitely not New Wave, let alone modern; never quite OTT enough to be space opera, yet even in the earlier stories too relaxed about the science to feel like mundane SF. The science has gaps and handwaves, but there's also a keen awareness that sub-light space combat would be incredibly boring. And so forth. This might sound like an insult, like calling th...

Larry Niven's concept is strong, but "Protector" often fails in its execution. Although any one of my basic criticisms might seem trivial if taken by itself, together they detracted from my enjoyment of this sometimes frustrating novel.First, praise: The idea that human beings might represent a mutated form of extraterrestrial life is a basic premise so rich in possibilities that I'd be surprised if Niven was the first to think of it. Regardless, he runs with it admirably. Although some might fa...

The first half of this book was published separately in 1967 and is a classic tale of first contact with another intelligent species (the Pak). It has sense of wonder, great ideas, humour, pace, everything. The human characters are not great, but they're varied and have some degree of humanity.Some years later, Niven decided to write about what happened next, and the book got its second half, which is set a couple of centuries later! It remains well thought out, imaginative, and interesting in a...

Five stars for the first half. Three stars for the second. Read the other reviews to find out why. Contains key information about the Pak protectors, which are threaded throughout Larry Niven's Known Space story arch including the Ringworld series.

With a world that is surprisingly consistent with the Expanse series of novels (and TV show), and a story that is light on characterisation but heavy on interesting concepts, Protector is a thoroughly engaging short novel.(Interesting bit of trivia: the cover art of the UK edition by Peter Andrew Jones was also used as the cover of the 1989 videogame Blood Money by DMA Design, the team that would later go on to fame as Rockstar North, the developers of the Grand Theft Auto games).