World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven
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My Rating: 
3 out of 5 stars
First Published: August 1966
Read from: July 23 to August 12, 2013
The World of Pshaw… I mean, Ptavvs [Niven Re-Read]
Reread this recently during one of my many “Niven binges”. This is one of Niven’s first novels (converted from a serial?) and it is NOT really one of his best.
The World Of Ptavvs is in Larry Niven’s “Known Space” universe but is a stand alone adventure. You get to see some aliens & alien tech from the “early days” of the galaxy. As usual with Niven, there are lots of cool scientific ideas for the most-part well developed. Lots of space travel, hi-tech gadgets, aliens, and a life and death plot… and characters that are very shallow even compared to the Niven standard.
Niven’s ideas on telepathy and mind-powers are particularly interesting. Unlike some of his later stuff there are also some plot and character motivation problems and the pacing seems weird in places. Overall though the story is still a fun and interesting bit of sci-fi.
A short list of spoiler-laden specifics of some “pshaw”-like issues I had with the book follow.
| Spoiler: Top 6 'Pshaw Moments' |
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Top 6 ‘Pshaw Moments’ in World of Ptavvs
- So an alien creature that once enslaved the galaxy is off to capture a device that will let it do so again and regardless of who else might be injured or the possible political and military repercussions, you DON’T try to immediately NUKE IT?
- You finally capture said alien which has been incapacitated, for now; but rather than make sure it can possibly become a threat again, you keep the creature in stasis in a museum? You put its mind-control amplifier into the atmospheric depths of Jupiter, why not place it AND the alien that tried to use it in, say, the heart of the sun?
- Maybe I missed something in this reread, but I don’t get the alien’s drive. The ship is stuck at some tremendous speed. He can precisely control where its going but CAN’T slow it down or stop it?!
- So alien aims his runaway spacecraft at an outer planet in our system and it impacts the planet at speeds so high that it knocks the planet (Pluto) into an eccentric orbit that takes it far outside its original orbit. How is it that the planet wasn’t obliterated entirely?!
- And after all that, the stasis-field protected contents of this spacecraft are still relatively near the surface of this planet?
- Finally, the goofiest of them all is a bit that I loved so much I think it HAD to be in the novel no matter the silliness, namely the way in which the protagonist manages to defeat the alien.
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World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven