bigenk's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
A telepathic and mind-controlling alien Kraznol is forced to crash land in a time stopping stasis field on earth, where he is excavated billions of years in the future by humans. In his own time, Krazol's race was supremely powerful, seeding the galaxy with life and enslaving many alien species. A
telepathic human is asked to penetrate the status field to better understand the alien, when his mind becomes overpowered by Kraznol's memories. Thus begins a chase that spans the solar system, as both the telepath who believes he is the alien, the alien itself, and multiple following parties chart courses to Neptune, where the Kraznol sent many of his powerful tools before his vessel crashed, some of which could lead to the total control of humanity.
A short book that is plot focused and fast-paced. I read most of the book in one sitting on a flight, and was impressed by Niven's ability to push the plot ever faster, jumping from one scene to the next. The real gem in the novel is the two alien races: the Thrints (Kraznol's race) and the species of genetically modified food animals that the Thrint's seeded on suitable worlds, known as Bandersnatchi. Niven has a knack for writing alien species in a way that is both extraordinary and believable. This same ability was on display in The Mote In God's Eye, and while I enjoyed the moties more, both of the new species are wonderful in their own right.
The problem, you ask? Niven doesn't spend nearly enough time with them. He insists on writing long sections of boring dialogue between boring human characters explaining the events of the plot. Most of the book feels like a worse version of The Stars My Destination, where the plot is muddled and the characters are bad. I just wish that Niven had figured out his skillset and leaned into it instead of away from it. It's a pretty lighthearted and adventurous book, something that you would take to the beach in 1960.
Other than that, not much to say. It's not particularly interesting on level other than the aliens. Mostly it wasn't awful either, but I got kinda tired of it half way through and struggled to finish the last forty or so pages.
telepathic human is asked to penetrate the status field to better understand the alien, when his mind becomes overpowered by Kraznol's memories. Thus begins a chase that spans the solar system, as both the telepath who believes he is the alien, the alien itself, and multiple following parties chart courses to Neptune, where the Kraznol sent many of his powerful tools before his vessel crashed, some of which could lead to the total control of humanity.
A short book that is plot focused and fast-paced. I read most of the book in one sitting on a flight, and was impressed by Niven's ability to push the plot ever faster, jumping from one scene to the next. The real gem in the novel is the two alien races: the Thrints (Kraznol's race) and the species of genetically modified food animals that the Thrint's seeded on suitable worlds, known as Bandersnatchi. Niven has a knack for writing alien species in a way that is both extraordinary and believable. This same ability was on display in The Mote In God's Eye, and while I enjoyed the moties more, both of the new species are wonderful in their own right.
The problem, you ask? Niven doesn't spend nearly enough time with them. He insists on writing long sections of boring dialogue between boring human characters explaining the events of the plot. Most of the book feels like a worse version of The Stars My Destination, where the plot is muddled and the characters are bad. I just wish that Niven had figured out his skillset and leaned into it instead of away from it. It's a pretty lighthearted and adventurous book, something that you would take to the beach in 1960.
Other than that, not much to say. It's not particularly interesting on level other than the aliens. Mostly it wasn't awful either, but I got kinda tired of it half way through and struggled to finish the last forty or so pages.
fabian2301's review
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
robintelldrake's review
3.0
Niven is one of the real reliable science-heavy sci-fi writers--always exploring what might be legitimately possible. The funky ideas come at you awfully fast in this one. And the science is always plot-critical. To pick one example and leave the rest: the third act here is a big space chase within the solar system, and in a blessed antidote to Star-Wars-style fighter jet flying, the ships act as though they're in a vacuum crossing vast distances. You burn the engines as hard as you can until halfway, but then you have to flip the ship around and burn them just as hard the other way, or you'll just keep sliding on out of the solar system entirely. And if you don't know for sure whether your quarry is headed for Neptune or Pluto, you have a judgment call to make. You can catch up either way, but you have to guess right, because there's no hope of correcting if you choose wrong. That kind of thing is what Niven is wonderful for.
Character development and dialogue--not so much. I'd forgotten, in the years since I last read this, just how klunky his human-behavior passages can be. He just kind of sketches them in as if impatient to get on to the next physics bit, and it hurts the book. (This is true of far too many sci-fi writers.)
The basic driving idea here isn't hard science, but it's still a neat bit of nuts-and-bolts questioning. Okay, Niven seems to have said to himself. Suppose for whatever reason you do have people with telepathic powers, able to commune with each other directly, mind-to-mind, in this deeply immersive experience, as with Spock's mind-melding in Star Trek. Once you have two minds tangled up together, how do you go about getting them disentangled? What if two minds join together but one is much more experienced than the other with the trick of remaining itself amid that tumult?
It's a good ride, if the woodenness of the people in it doesn't bug you too much.
Character development and dialogue--not so much. I'd forgotten, in the years since I last read this, just how klunky his human-behavior passages can be. He just kind of sketches them in as if impatient to get on to the next physics bit, and it hurts the book. (This is true of far too many sci-fi writers.)
The basic driving idea here isn't hard science, but it's still a neat bit of nuts-and-bolts questioning. Okay, Niven seems to have said to himself. Suppose for whatever reason you do have people with telepathic powers, able to commune with each other directly, mind-to-mind, in this deeply immersive experience, as with Spock's mind-melding in Star Trek. Once you have two minds tangled up together, how do you go about getting them disentangled? What if two minds join together but one is much more experienced than the other with the trick of remaining itself amid that tumult?
It's a good ride, if the woodenness of the people in it doesn't bug you too much.
akirathelemur's review
3.0
A fine enough plot, but the writing is incredibly sloppy. Characters are indistinguishable, and the storyline, more than once, verges in incoherent. How did an editor not catch this?
tome15's review
4.0
Niven, Larry. World of the Ptavvs. Ballantine, 1966. Orbit, 2000.
World of the Ptavvs is a landmark book in the science fiction genre because it is the first novel set in Niven’s Known Space universe. If you accept a few basic genre tropes, such as telepathy and interstellar civilizations, the science holds up well. The story is engaging, Niven puts us in the minds of a marooned alien and of Larry Greenberg, the human character who is under its control. The novel looks forward to the Expanse series in that it creates a believable political tension between Earth and an independent nation based in the asteroid belt. 4 Stars.
World of the Ptavvs is a landmark book in the science fiction genre because it is the first novel set in Niven’s Known Space universe. If you accept a few basic genre tropes, such as telepathy and interstellar civilizations, the science holds up well. The story is engaging, Niven puts us in the minds of a marooned alien and of Larry Greenberg, the human character who is under its control. The novel looks forward to the Expanse series in that it creates a believable political tension between Earth and an independent nation based in the asteroid belt. 4 Stars.
sleeping_while_awake's review
3.0
Since I had read Ringworld, I was more interested in The World of Ptaavs than I think I otherwise would have been.
The story is simple and straight to the point. A statue is recovered from the deep sea and is suspected to be an alien frozen in stasis. Scientists conduct an experiment to unfreeze the alien.
They release the alien, Kzanol, a thrintun, who crash-landed on Earth about two billion years ago. However, it all goes terribly wrong. Larry Greenburg, a telepath, is taken over by Kzanol's mind.
Larry ends up thinking he is truly Kzanol, although the real Kzanol is on the loose. Both of them travel to Neptune to locate a device Kzanol had left there (Larry still thinking he is Kzanol). And so ensues a long chase in which the scientists follow both of them.
There are many ideas talked about in the story but never really explained. Humans and dolphins can now communicate with one another, which I thought was a really fun idea. It's even suggested that maybe dolphins will travel into space.
However, there's not much elaborated on the dolphins, and maybe such a plotline would have been too ridiculous. But I would be all for dolphins colonizing the universe.
The telepathy, Belter and Earth politics, honeymooners and the Fertility Board - they're not elaborated in Ptavvs. Lots of ideas, but not much execution on them. Characters were shallow.
The beginning in which Kzanol imprints his mind on Larry is really confusing.
Fortunately, it is short. If the novel was longer, it would have become very tedious. I had fun reading it.
The story is simple and straight to the point. A statue is recovered from the deep sea and is suspected to be an alien frozen in stasis. Scientists conduct an experiment to unfreeze the alien.
They release the alien, Kzanol, a thrintun, who crash-landed on Earth about two billion years ago. However, it all goes terribly wrong. Larry Greenburg, a telepath, is taken over by Kzanol's mind.
Larry ends up thinking he is truly Kzanol, although the real Kzanol is on the loose. Both of them travel to Neptune to locate a device Kzanol had left there (Larry still thinking he is Kzanol). And so ensues a long chase in which the scientists follow both of them.
There are many ideas talked about in the story but never really explained. Humans and dolphins can now communicate with one another, which I thought was a really fun idea. It's even suggested that maybe dolphins will travel into space.
However, there's not much elaborated on the dolphins, and maybe such a plotline would have been too ridiculous. But I would be all for dolphins colonizing the universe.
The telepathy, Belter and Earth politics, honeymooners and the Fertility Board - they're not elaborated in Ptavvs. Lots of ideas, but not much execution on them. Characters were shallow.
The beginning in which Kzanol imprints his mind on Larry is really confusing.
Fortunately, it is short. If the novel was longer, it would have become very tedious. I had fun reading it.
linz0683's review
5.0
1966?! REALLY? This was incredibly creative and certainly felt up to date. I'm falling in love with Niven's "short and sweet" work.
jonathanpalfrey's review
5.0
This was Niven's first novel and rather oddly remains my favourite of the ones he wrote by himself. His ability to come up with imaginative concepts and tie them all together persuasively is already in place, and here he invents various alien species, in particular the thrintun, but also the tnuctipun and the bandersnatchi.
Some of his aliens (the Pak, the kzinti, the puppeteers) became an enduring part of his world and appeared in multiple books, but I think he never returned to the thrintun, partly because he made them too powerful, and partly because they all died two billion years ago. It would have been possible and not surprising for others to survive in stasis fields, as Kzanol did; but perhaps Niven couldn't think of a new twist to put on such a story.
Niven isn't good at human characterization, and his aliens tend to be his most appealing characters. In this story too, Kzanol the thrint is the character who makes the most impression on the reader. His humans are usually just Niven wearing different hats. However, in this first novel he was at least trying to Do Characterization, so he gives us carefully distinct physical descriptions of each character, some of whom even have slight traces of distinct personality.
I think there are only two women with speaking parts here, both of whom are wives of someone more important, and definitely minor characters. Women are better represented from his second novel onwards.
I enjoy reading about the thrintun, I think because they're basically so human, despite being alien monsters. Mentally, they're what humans would have become if we'd developed their kind of telepathic power during our prehistory. Kzanol has the body of an alien monster and the mind of a human slob; but, in describing him from his own point of view, Niven actually makes us feel sympathy at times for this unlovable character.
The story of World of Ptavvs falls roughly into two halves: the first half on Earth and the second half in the outer reaches of the solar system. Both halves are entertainingly supplemented by flashbacks from Kzanol's memory; however, on the whole I enjoy the first half more. The second half has its moments, but I find it rather dry overall.
At least in his youth, Niven seemed most relaxed and playful at the beginning of a book, when he introduced the situation and the characters. Later on, he has to think his way towards an ending, he concentrates, and becomes more serious.
My main conceptual criticism of the story is that the telepathic power of the thrintun seems implausible. OK, a thrint can get into someone's head by telepathy and control him by mental power; though being able to do this to a being of a different species from a different planet seems already somewhat implausible. What's much more implausible is being able to control an unlimited number of beings simultaneously. An "amplifier helmet" wouldn't suffice. Power is a secondary issue here: this is primarily an issue of control and multitasking. We regard a juggler's ability to keep a few inanimate balls in the air as an accomplishment.
Some of his aliens (the Pak, the kzinti, the puppeteers) became an enduring part of his world and appeared in multiple books, but I think he never returned to the thrintun, partly because he made them too powerful, and partly because they all died two billion years ago. It would have been possible and not surprising for others to survive in stasis fields, as Kzanol did; but perhaps Niven couldn't think of a new twist to put on such a story.
Niven isn't good at human characterization, and his aliens tend to be his most appealing characters. In this story too, Kzanol the thrint is the character who makes the most impression on the reader. His humans are usually just Niven wearing different hats. However, in this first novel he was at least trying to Do Characterization, so he gives us carefully distinct physical descriptions of each character, some of whom even have slight traces of distinct personality.
I think there are only two women with speaking parts here, both of whom are wives of someone more important, and definitely minor characters. Women are better represented from his second novel onwards.
I enjoy reading about the thrintun, I think because they're basically so human, despite being alien monsters. Mentally, they're what humans would have become if we'd developed their kind of telepathic power during our prehistory. Kzanol has the body of an alien monster and the mind of a human slob; but, in describing him from his own point of view, Niven actually makes us feel sympathy at times for this unlovable character.
The story of World of Ptavvs falls roughly into two halves: the first half on Earth and the second half in the outer reaches of the solar system. Both halves are entertainingly supplemented by flashbacks from Kzanol's memory; however, on the whole I enjoy the first half more. The second half has its moments, but I find it rather dry overall.
At least in his youth, Niven seemed most relaxed and playful at the beginning of a book, when he introduced the situation and the characters. Later on, he has to think his way towards an ending, he concentrates, and becomes more serious.
My main conceptual criticism of the story is that the telepathic power of the thrintun seems implausible. OK, a thrint can get into someone's head by telepathy and control him by mental power; though being able to do this to a being of a different species from a different planet seems already somewhat implausible. What's much more implausible is being able to control an unlimited number of beings simultaneously. An "amplifier helmet" wouldn't suffice. Power is a secondary issue here: this is primarily an issue of control and multitasking. We regard a juggler's ability to keep a few inanimate balls in the air as an accomplishment.
latepaul's review
3.0
The World of Ptavvs concerns the re-awakening from stasis of an ancient alien who has the power of mind control, so when a human psychic tries to use a mind-to-mind contact machine to communicate it all goes a bit wrong. The alien escapes from stasis and goes on a chase across the solar system looking for something he left in his other stasis suit. That something, if he finds it, would spell enslavement for the population of earth.
Early Niven like this is big on ideas, big on science, full of plot and not so great with characters or the "human" side of the story. I think you either forgive the later because of the former or it bugs you. Fortunately I'm in the first camp and able to enjoy it.
Early Niven like this is big on ideas, big on science, full of plot and not so great with characters or the "human" side of the story. I think you either forgive the later because of the former or it bugs you. Fortunately I'm in the first camp and able to enjoy it.
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