World of Ptavvs
by Larry Niven · first published 1966
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2019–2026first – last mentioned
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"GET OUT OF MY MIND!" Nothing quite prepared telepath Larry Greenberg for mind-to-mind contact with an alien.
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Ditto Larry Niven's "World of Ptavvs". Written in our Cold War, set within a future Cold War between Earth and Belt and a final act that is actually described as pure Dolphin. And completely agree on Startide Rising. The first time I saw…
on “Days of the Dolphin: Cetaceans in Cold War Science and Science Fiction (2018)” ↗…Space books but something happened to him after 1970 that was worse than what happened to Heinlein around then. I don't think the books he wrote w/ Pournelle where anywhere near as good as Neutron Star, World of Ptavvs, etc. His great disaster short story Inconstant Moon dates from that period.
on “J.G. Ballard: My Favorite Books” ↗My favorite Sci-Fi AI is probably in Larry Niven's World of Ptavvs, the "brain board". It's not covered in much depth but I like it because it's basically vibe coding GPT3.5 from 1966: > He read, "Time to recharge battery:" followed by the spiral hieroglyph, the sign…
on “Isaac Asimov: The Last Question” ↗…an intergalactic slaver empire from a neolithic culture in one generation. So red queen effect [1]. Maybe telepathy evolves in tandem with resistance to telepathy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Ptavvs [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen's_race
on “The control group is out of control (2014)” ↗