Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, Fleet of Worlds (Tor, 2007)

I've been reading Niven's Known Space stories for nigh unto thirty years now. That's dozens of novels and probably hundreds of short stories that he (and others) have written since he wrote the very first story nearly forty years ago. His best known tale set in Known Space is Ringworld, a 1970 novel that won both the Hugo and Nebula awards! He went on to write three more novels set around the matter of Louis Wu, Ringworld, and what happens there. What he has not told in any meaningful sense is the mass migration of Pearson's Puppeteers from the Galaxy after they discovered that the Core starts had exploded and a wave of radiation would soon sterilize the entire galaxy. Hence the title of the novel -- Fleet of Worlds.

Niven may well have created one of the most unique alien species anyone has written of in Peirson's Puppeteers. To quote Wikipedia:

Puppeteers have two forelegs and a single hind leg ending in hooved feet and two snake-like heads instead of a humanoid upper body. The heads are very small, with a forked tongue, extensive rubbery lips, rimmed with finger-like knobs, and a single eye per head. The heads do not contain the Puppeteer's brain; it resides near the shoulder in a massive mane-covered hump from which the heads emerge.

Warning -- spoilers follow. Lots of them. There's no way I can do this review without talking about the plot. If you're a Niven fan, just go buy the book. It's that good! Hell, it's the finest Known Space work in many, many years that I've had the pleasure to read.

So what happens when a Puppeteer ship encounters a slower than light colony ship? Oh, servants would be ever so useful So they (apparently) kill off the crew and develop the cold sleep colonists into their farming world population -- a population that does not even know humanity exists. For centuries, this society of Colonists and the Puppeteers (who call themselves Citizens) exists more or less happy with what they know. But the day comes when the Puppeteers need the Colonists to scout ahead of the Fleet of Worlds, which is quite literally a set of transformed worlds traveling just below light speed using a drive the Puppeteers purchased from the Outsiders at a price beyond comprehension (as no sane Puppeteer, being a herd animal, would travel by starship anywhere). (Niven does not make it all clear how a species that are herd dwelling herbivores become intelligent. To quote Speaker-To-Animals in Ringworld, how much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf? Perhaps another Known Space novel or story will answer that puzzler!) Indeed the Puppeteers in their trillions all dwell on one world -- a world that has no artificial sun, as that would add to the already considerable heat problem created by the Puppeteers in their trillions!

But humans are naturally curious, so the crew of the scout ship discovers that the Puppeteers have deliberately lied about what happened to the Colonists, and that the lost history of their voyage and their forebearers still exists. You can guess that all will not be the same with the relationship between Citizens and Colonists ever again. Not that the Puppeteers will stop attempting to pull the strings of their vassal species . . . . Indeed the Puppeteer government believes right to the end that they have manipulated the situation so that the newly freed humans are still doing their bidding, suggesting how little Puppeteers undertsand about how humans really behave.

Fleet of Worlds significantly fills in much of the background of the Known Space history that Niven has created over a very long period of time. The Larry Niven discussion often has long conversations over what is Known Space canon and what is not. This novel will no doubt create new arguments among them as to how the facts here fit into what is now known. Nothing known is contradicted here, but deatils certainly are added in.

This is an essential read for anyone interested in how good science fiction can be. My only caution is that it'll makea lot more sense if you at least read Ringworld first, as it essentially is a prequel to the events there.

[Cat Eldridge]