"Larry Niven - Tales of Known Space (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

systems are being explored and settled. The organ bank problem is at its sociological worst on
Earth. The existence of nonhuman intelligence has become obtrusively plan; humanity must adjust.

There is an intermediate era centering around 2340 AD. In Sol System it is a period of peace
and prosperity. On colony worlds like Plateau times are turbulent. At the edge of Sol System, a
creature that used to be Jack Brennan fights a lone war. The era of peace begins with the subtle
interventions of the Brennan-monster (see Protector); it ends in contact with the Kzinti Empire.
The fourth period, following the Man-Kzin Wars, covers part of the twenty-sixth century AD. It
is a time of easy tourism and interspecies trade, in which the human species neither rules nor is
ruled. New planets have been settled, some of which were wrested from the Kzinti Empire during
the wars.
The fifth period resembles the fourth. Little has changed in two hundred years, at least on the
surface. The thruster drive has replaced the less efficient fusion drives; a new species has
joined the community of worlds. But there is one fundamental change. The Teela Brown gene--the


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"ultimate psychic power"--is spreading through humanity. The teelas have been bred for luck.

A fundamental change in human nature--and the teelas are that--makes life difficult for a writer.
The period following Ringworld might be pleasant to live in, but it is short of interesting
disasters. Only one story survives from this period; "Safe at Any Speed:" a kind of
advertisement. There will be no others.
There is something about future histories, and Known Space in particular, that gets to people.
They start worrying about the facts, the mathematics, the chronology. They work out elaborate
charts or they program their computers for close-approach orbits around point-masses. They send
me maps of Human, Kzinti, and Kdatlyno space, dynamic analyses of the Ringworld, ten-thousand-word
plot outlines for the novel that will wrap it all up into a bundle, and treatises on The Grog
Problem. To all of you who have thus entertained me and stroked my ego, thanks.
Thanks are due to Tim Kyger for his aid in compiling the Bibliography, and to Spike MacPhee and
Jerry Boyajian for their assistance with the Timeline. They belong to the above group and they
saved me a lot of research.

-Larry Niven
Los Angeles, California
January, 1975


The Coldest Place


IN THE COLDEST place in the solar system, I hesitated outside the ship for a moment. It was too
dark out there. I fought an urge to stay close by the ship, by the comfortable ungainly bulk of
warm metal which held the warm bright Earth inside it.
"See anything?" asked Eric.
"No, of course not. It's too hot here anyway, what with heat radiation from the ship. You
remember the way they scattered away from the probe."
"Yeah. Look, you want me to hold your hand or something? Go."