World of Ptavvs

De: Larry Niven

Narrado por: Bradford Hastings

Nothing quite prepared telepath Larry Greenberg for mind-to-mind contact with an alien. In the interest of science, Larry tapped the mind of Kzanol - and that was his first mistake.

Kzanol was a thrint from a distant galaxy. He had been trapped on Earth in a time-stasis field for two billion years. Now he was on the loose, and Larry knew everything he was thinking. Thrints lived to plunder and enslave lesser planets - and the planet Kzanol had in mind was Earth!

©2019 Larry Niven (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Larry Niven is amazing

I marathoned this book in a day and a half. I find the aliens that he writes to be fascinating. just like Babel 17, the mind and thought processes play a unique role ik the story.
My only problem is that Niven thought Dolphins had a moral code. I am sorry to say I read that and I choked on my tea because now we know Dolphins are monsters.

Very Imaginative - AKA Niven

Larry Niven is a wondeful storyteller with an amazing imagination. I always enjoy his books. This particular audiobook is well read and performed. A very emjoyable listen.

loved it

Loved it! Larry Niven's work is excellent. The characters are well thought out & relatable giving them almost addictive readability, and the performance was excellently done.

A decent listen

the narrator made the best out of a difficult book to listen to (vs reading)

1963? could have been written lat week!

Great story! Excellent performance. A little hard to follow at first. Nice development of characters early on. Listened and smiled as our hero (s) made their way towards a wonderful end. Bravo!!

Where it all began

I read the original as a short story in Worlds of Tomorrow magazine in 1965. Don’t remember if I ever read this novelization, but the story hooked me on Niven and was the first of his many Tales of Known Space, of which Ringworld is the best known. Amazing how well it survives the advances of science and social attitudes over nearly 60 years; you have to overlook the pervasive use of tobacco and the continued existence of phone booths! There are women in professional roles but males, as in many stories of that era, are definitely the prominent actors. Nevertheless still a great story and essential reading for any Niven fan.

Well read

Been a fan of Niven since high school. I’ll have to listen to more. The story is very well narrated.

Would make a great movie

Would make a great movie as an introduction to the known universe before a Ringworld movie.

Early Niven felt somewhat dated

Great concept for a futuristic sci fi story involving an alien being but with the passage of time there are things that make the story anachronistic. Larry has the Soviet Union still going strong and smoking cigarettes a strong part of the culture. He also has the story finishing on a version of Pluto which, while interesting, is very much in disagreement with what we now know to be fact. Otherwise, the story was an interesting picture involving a highly advanced civilization with lack of morals. Also, this is my first experience of a book with Bradford Hastings as the reader. I found him excellent and look forward to experiencing him on future books.

We're all just Ptavvs on this bus

Larry Niven's World of Ptavvs is one of his earliest offerings set in his known universe. An alien artifact dug up on Earth is hypothesized to contain an alien in a stasis field which humanity has recently discovered. A telepath volunteers to enter the stasis field, but emerges with alien memories and an uncertain identity. The alien has been in stasis for 1,5 billion years after a space disaster. The alien is also a telepath and his race controlled the galaxy through mind control (Ptavvs is the term for slave, which is how the alien views Earth), but his thought amplifying equipment was sent to a moon of Neptune which is now the planetoid Pluto. The human/alien entity and the alien both steal spaceships in a race to the device. Meanwhile the asteroid belt contingent doesn't know what to believe and threatens to just blow everyone up.

For a relatively short tale, Niven throws in everything, but the kitchen sink. Stasis fields are almost treated as a throwaway. Telepathy is advanced with ongoing communications with dolphins. Solar system expansion is commonplace with an active economic exploitation of the asteroid belt that has resulted in a Cold war sort of détente between the belters and Earth. Then there's the interesting suggestion that Pluto is a former moon of Neptune. While the existence of a previous intelligent alien race running the galaxy 1.5 billion years ago is not novel, Niven has Earth used for food production which after their overthrow and dissolution of their galactic empire, life as we know it developed.

The narration is well done with good character distinction and reasonable pacing.