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332nd out of 2,946 books
—
12,414 voters
Protector (Known Space)
by
Larry Niven
Phssthpok the Pak had been traveling for most of his thirty-two thousand years. His mission: save, develop, and protect the group of Pak breeders sent out into space some two and a half million years before...
Brennan was a Belter, the product of a fiercely independent, somewhat anarchic society living in, on, and around an outer asteroid belt. The Belters were rebels, one...more
Brennan was a Belter, the product of a fiercely independent, somewhat anarchic society living in, on, and around an outer asteroid belt. The Belters were rebels, one...more
Paperback, 224 pages
Published
September 12th 1987
by Del Rey
(first published 1973)
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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.
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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...more
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...more
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I read a few of Larry Niven’s novels and story collections when I was in high school. I remember him as an author who would take an interesting speculative idea and chase it to an imaginative extreme, while still keeping a foot in the readable realms of popular science fiction.
Protector, one of Niven’s earlier books, is a bit rough around the edges, but a fun ride. The plotting this First Contact story is a little uneven and most of the characters aren’t too memorable, but the story includes cla...more
Protector, one of Niven’s earlier books, is a bit rough around the edges, but a fun ride. The plotting this First Contact story is a little uneven and most of the characters aren’t too memorable, but the story includes cla...more
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This was the first Sci/Fi book I ever encountered. My dad read it to me when I was 8, and it was awesome. Happily, it's still awesome. New Niven.... eeehhhh, not so much. But as many readers have said, for science fiction? True science fiction? Best there ever was. King of alien species, alien thinking, and theoretical extremes.
Read Integral Trees, Flight of the Horse, The Patchwork Girl (really, any of the Gil the Arm stories), Neutron Star, The Kzin Wars. And don't forget Ringworld, or A Mote...more
Read Integral Trees, Flight of the Horse, The Patchwork Girl (really, any of the Gil the Arm stories), Neutron Star, The Kzin Wars. And don't forget Ringworld, or A Mote...more
One of the best of the Know Space Series.
Larry Niven is best known for his Known Space series and it outgrowth, Ringworld. One of the majors players in Ringworld are the Protectors, beings of great strength, intelligence, and a homicidal desire to protect their offspring, the idiot hominids that are their offspring. Millennium before a colony had been sent to Earth and never reported back, so a childless Protector comes here to find out what happened. It finds a space faring civilization, someth...more
Larry Niven is best known for his Known Space series and it outgrowth, Ringworld. One of the majors players in Ringworld are the Protectors, beings of great strength, intelligence, and a homicidal desire to protect their offspring, the idiot hominids that are their offspring. Millennium before a colony had been sent to Earth and never reported back, so a childless Protector comes here to find out what happened. It finds a space faring civilization, someth...more
One of the weaker Known Space novels, actually expanded from an earlier short story that sort of "explained" why humans get arthritis and swollen joints in old age, with an earlier evolutionary throwback. I've always found it sort of annoying that the Known Space books present two different theories of human evolution: that we came from Pak protectors fleeing the explosion at the core, or that we evolved from the single-celled food yeasts used by the Thrinti 2 billion years ago (which nicely exp...more
i was a kid when i read this one the first time - the idea of nothing but distance making a seperate society (the belters) was novel to me and the idea of being able to plan long range because your life would be several thousands of years long was also new. both ideas went far further in my mind than the actual novel's story line and i was pleased that niven continued to write in his "Known Space" universe.
This novel's pace is excellent and the characters are sparklingly believable. The science...more
This novel's pace is excellent and the characters are sparklingly believable. The science...more
I "read" this one in audiobook format. It was only about six hours long, so I could make an afternoon about it at work. Larry Niven is one author whose work I have in the past idolized, but after this, I don't think I do so much.
While there were parts of the stories (this is a pair of novellas set 200 years apart) that flowed well, some of it was extremely boring, especially near the very end of the second novella. There were other parts that were incredibly choppy, and there was even a few mom...more
While there were parts of the stories (this is a pair of novellas set 200 years apart) that flowed well, some of it was extremely boring, especially near the very end of the second novella. There were other parts that were incredibly choppy, and there was even a few mom...more
This book is divided into two parts:
Basically, a strange alien called a Pak arrives in our solar system, kidnaps a Belter (a miner living in the asteroid belt), and the guy starts some strange transformation. The story leading up to it is really enthralling...Niven's got a Heinlein/Asimov sort of feel to his writing, but this had a much greater tension that developed. This was followed by an Interlude, which recapped life in the solar system during the 300 year gap. I really enjoyed the short I...more
Basically, a strange alien called a Pak arrives in our solar system, kidnaps a Belter (a miner living in the asteroid belt), and the guy starts some strange transformation. The story leading up to it is really enthralling...Niven's got a Heinlein/Asimov sort of feel to his writing, but this had a much greater tension that developed. This was followed by an Interlude, which recapped life in the solar system during the 300 year gap. I really enjoyed the short I...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Audio version.
Still on a Niven Known Space kick.
PROTECTOR delves into the Known Space "Ringworld universe" of Larry Niven from the Pak/Protector point of view. Clearly, this is an expanded novella, one of the slimmer Known Space books. It does contain some big ideas-- about human evolution (which Niven attributes to not one but two forms of alien intervention (the Pak colonists referred to int his novel and to "seeding" from the alien "Thrint" in another novel). When it comes to a science fictio...more
Still on a Niven Known Space kick.
PROTECTOR delves into the Known Space "Ringworld universe" of Larry Niven from the Pak/Protector point of view. Clearly, this is an expanded novella, one of the slimmer Known Space books. It does contain some big ideas-- about human evolution (which Niven attributes to not one but two forms of alien intervention (the Pak colonists referred to int his novel and to "seeding" from the alien "Thrint" in another novel). When it comes to a science fictio...more
"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...more
On the home planet, humans go through two life stages. First, they are Breeders. Breeders, as the name suggests, are only interested in h...more
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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...more
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...more
My favorite Larry Niven work, and my second favorite science fiction novel of all time (after The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress). Niven somehow makes a very unlikely story of human origins perfectly plausible, and a seven-year-long space battle against unseen enemies utterly riveting. I've read this book about two dozen times, and I still pick up details I've missed.
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...more
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...more
Protector is a great read for what concerns the alien intelligence we meet in the narrative. The Pak race and its evolutionary quirks are detailed and believable.
However, the second part of the book drips with technical jargon and the constant guessing of what the invaders will do. It makes for a boring read, I skimmed through many pages.
Still recommended, but mainly for the alien curious.
However, the second part of the book drips with technical jargon and the constant guessing of what the invaders will do. It makes for a boring read, I skimmed through many pages.
Still recommended, but mainly for the alien curious.
I think Niven worked the Protectors into the Ringworld/Known-space universe in order to make this book more popular.
I had a hard time following this story, and only read it because Protectors where involved in the Ringworld Engineers novel.
If I'm not mistaken some the plot elements of this novel were borrowed for an episode or two of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I had a hard time following this story, and only read it because Protectors where involved in the Ringworld Engineers novel.
If I'm not mistaken some the plot elements of this novel were borrowed for an episode or two of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I first read this book when I was about 13. I loved it then, and after picking it up last week, was pleased to discover that it still holds up.
Larry Niven had a streak where he wrote some truly bad ass science fiction. His later stuff isn't as fun - somewhere along the way he stopped being original and started writing "like Larry Niven" - but for a while he was the best there was. Ringworld, World Out Of Time, and his short stories are all very good, and definitely worth checking out.
As for Pr...more
Larry Niven had a streak where he wrote some truly bad ass science fiction. His later stuff isn't as fun - somewhere along the way he stopped being original and started writing "like Larry Niven" - but for a while he was the best there was. Ringworld, World Out Of Time, and his short stories are all very good, and definitely worth checking out.
As for Pr...more
I just browsed what people are saying about this book and one of the most interesting concepts the book offers has been missed. Niven explores intelligence and its relation to free will. Its a facinating thought experiment set in Nivens hard sci fi universe where a couple of spaceships can spend years dueling and the story takes lifetimes.
Of all of Larry Niven's books, this is the one I think about most. Others have commented on the quality of the writing (not great), plotting (meh), and character development (never Niven's strong suit). But this was the first time I encountered the idea that humans might be strangers to Earth, and it knocked me back on my heels.
Wow! This book has a great explanation of why we age the way we do, and turned it into a long-running adversary of humanity. Seeing the Pak appear again and again in other storylines in the Nivenverse makes this book a must-read ofr any Larry Niven fan.
(do I get credit for inventing "Nivenverse"? I haven't seen it anywhere else...)
(do I get credit for inventing "Nivenverse"? I haven't seen it anywhere else...)
If you're intending to read all of Niven's Known Space novels, this is probably a good read. It fills in the details of the Pak protectors and how they came to be at the Home colony. If you haven't, then this will feel like two odd old-SF stories, separated by 250 years, coherent but neither one of them thoroughly compelling. However, it does come together to an interesting (albeit brief) conclusion, many of the details are good classic sci-fi meatiness, and it is an easy read. This is pure Larr...more
A cult sci-fi novel if there ever was one. Belter and Pak society become so familiar concepts in a fairly short book, that you are left grasping for a sequel. Incredibly rich in ideas and alien culture, with an underlying philosophical theme that may connect with the more spiritually minded. Does end a bit too quickly.
Una nave ha aparecido en el Sistema Solar. Se trata de una nave Pak, pilotada por Phssthpok, un alienígena que lleva viajando casi 32.000 años. Su misión, proteger a los criadores que fueron enviados a este espacio hace dos millones y medio de años. Pero la nave Pak ha sido detectada por varios humanos, entre ellos Brennan, un trabajador cinturonio, contrabandista para más señas, que ve una gran oportunidad de hacerse con la nave Pak. Brennan llega primero, efectivamente, y ya no vuelve a sabers...more
I think this book is a classic of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It is my favorite book by Larry Niven.
This book has big ideas and realistic science, which are trademarks of Niven. His other trademark is weak and flat characters, which is not an issue with particular book.
This book has big ideas and realistic science, which are trademarks of Niven. His other trademark is weak and flat characters, which is not an issue with particular book.
One of the best Niven books, the scale is smaller than any Ringworld book and easier to relate to. The characters are better developed and not so much of the book is driven by the unexposed thought processess of the protagonist.
Good book, especially if you like the Ringworld universe.
Good book, especially if you like the Ringworld universe.
This was one of the more challenging books that I read as a teenage scifi fan. But I found that I just could not put it down. This led me to reading other novels by Larry Niven, most of which were a good blend of science, science fiction, and good story telling.
Niven certainl creates interesting aliens, and this story comes with a few interesting twists, but when I reached the end it sort of fizzled out. A good read other than the ending which, while it may indeed make sense, was dissapointing.
Like the stars say, I really liked this book. It was an entertaining story, interesting ideas, totally engaging. I read Ringworld, but don't remember enjoying it as much. Maybe I'm just getting shallow and can only handle shorter works.
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Laurence van Cott Niven's best known work is Ringworld (Ringworld, #1) (1970), which received the Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. The creation of thoroughly worked-out alien species, which are very different from humans both physically and mentally, is recognized as one of Niven's main strengths...more
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