Protector- Larry Niven’s dark revision of Known Space

 Larry Niven is a fun author. One of the things that has always struck me is how determined he is to make aliens really alien, at least biologically. And in Protector, he takes that in a direction I don’t think he had before. (Other than the short story Protector was expanded from)

Rereading Protector, I also took a look at when it was published. Considering how much it defines a lot of his Known Space setting, I was surprised to see that it was published relatively late, after Ringworld.

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Okay, the core conceit of Protector is that the human race is descended from extraterrestrials. But, man, Niven goes about it in one of the weirdest ways. Which he kind of had to since, even in 1973, that was a dead horse.

The idea is that humanity is a mutated/evolved initial state of a multi-state organism. The next stage, which requires a virus-laced plant, turns several effects of old age into superpowers. Hair loss because the brain gets bigger, arthritis because the joints get more leverage, heart failure because a second heart develops, loss of teeth to develop bills. 

Obviously, Niven was working backwards (growing bills?) but it makes the Pak Protectors really stick in your head.

And their psychology is even stranger. The second stage, the Protector stage, is so hard wired to protect their biological descendants that it overrides everything else, including long term planning. They are intensely violent and xenophobic. They don’t become super smart super heroes. They become super smart super villains.

The original species only becomes sentient when they become protectors. When humans get infected and become protectors, they become ridiculously smart. While still being genetically hardwired to be xenophobic.

Protector is ultimately a remarkably dark book. The Pak contact with humanity, long before the crazy galaxy spanning stories of the later Known Universe, creates one human protector and the knowledge that future contact will result in a genocidal war. So we have one super brilliant super villain who will do anything to save the human race. And some of the things he does are indeed monstrous. But Niven forces us to ask if they were still reasonable.

In Protector, Niven gives us a hidden history of the Known Universe, one full of messy secrets. But it also adds several fascinating layers to the setting.