RICK:
“I don’t advise talking to a Grog. She can take over your mind. At least if you run she can’t chase you. Heh heh.”
LARRY doesn’t get the joke.
ENTER THRINT
LARRY turns to look at Thrint.
RICK continues:
“Now, that’s a rare one. That’s a Thrint, what you’d call a Slaver. Stay away—”
RICK interrupts himself to circle the bar, rapidly, carrying LARRY’s drink.
LARRY:
“Why?” (Double take.) “Hey! That’s my drink!”
RICK gives the drink to THRINT, hastily, and bowing low. LARRY moves to intercept, too slow.
KZIN is holding a chair for the THRINT. JINXIAN moves a table for him.
FREEZE FRAME
EXEUNT [the hale help the clumsier costumes]
• • •
• • •
TRANTORCON REPORT
“TrantorCon in 23,309! Lazarus Long says, ‘I’ll be there! Will you?’”
It started as a toast. Eventually I got the Heinleins’ permission to use it in a larger context.
Trantor is given (by Isaac Asimov in the Foundation stories) as the ruling planet of a galaxy-wide Empire, sited in the galactic core, 33,000 light-years away. We started the bidding twenty-one thousand years early, to avoid time pressure.
We didn’t intend to stick to the laws of the Foundation universe. Why restrict a daydream? TrantorCon was to be the ultimate convention, attended by every intelligent species anyone ever wrote about, with every technology available to add to the fun. Something like the party at the end of Robert Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast.
I got Marilyn involved. We designated ourselves the Bidding Committee. Randall Garrett became intrigued. Ultimately we gathered others:
Guest of Honor: HARI SELDON
Fan Guest of Honor: ISAAC ASIMOV
Toastmaster: LIEUTENANT COMMANDER SPOCK*
The Committee
Chairbeings: LARRY NIVEN; FUZZY PINK*
Secretary: FRANK CATALANO
Publications: RANDALL GARRETT
Artwork: MIKE MERENBACH
We wrested promises from several Big Name Writers: they will attend the TrantorCon “barring acts of God.” I wrote a hotel report, a restaurant report and a travel guide. We passed out buttons, sold some memberships, published a Progress Report…
And then I was busy with other things, Randall got sick, Isaac moved Trantor to a globular cluster, and it all kind of faded. But before that happened I did some work that never appeared in the first Progress Report.
MEMBERSHIPS
You’re either a member or you’re not. Right? Your Committee didn’t see the implications until the Pelzes registered their cat.
Memberships can be passed to heirs and descendants; given the time span, that’s reasonable. Bandit is a great cat; it’s likely enough that he’ll have mutated or gene-tailored sapient descendants. If not, what’s lost? In 1976 a TrantorCon membership costs only three bucks.
But what if Bandit’s heir is not sapient? Our members include small mammals, big-headed birds of varying sizes, and hives of brightly colored moths. Then there’s the machinery. I’ve let my cat use my typewriter on occasion, and the results were cryptic at best. The thought of a cat wandering over the keys of one of Trantor’s superrealistic war games computers is enough to send your Committee diving under the bed.
The membership situation is a bag of snakes (No offense intended to our Kitht and Shssifsir members). We need at least eight classes:
FULL MEMBERS are sapient at all times and have paid their membership fees.
Fees vary among species according to mass, volume, the volume of room they occupy, nutritional needs, and the cost of protecting them or protecting members from them. We’ve registered no bandersnatchi at all due to their mass and the need for artificial swamp terrain. Our only coeurls are bonded guards. Humans, being roughly equal in size, pay a flat fee.
Badges must be worn at all times. They broadcast their position—an advantage where attendees are expected to number in the low trillions. They identify species, special needs, and membership level. Some project protective forcefields. Without your badge, the kzinti and coeurl guards may consider you prey.
SUPERVISED MEMBERS are not sapient at all times or under all conditions. (For instance, a Vulcan in pon-farr is irrational and violent.) These must designate a supervisor, who must be a Full Member and must be capable of controlling his charge. Some guards “moonlight” in this capacity. SM badges carry a stun device.
PETS must be placed in stasis for the duration of the convention.
SYMBIOTES. What one member considers a symbiote may be dangerous or lethal to another. The Committee will attempt to provide protection; the cost will be reflected in membership fees. In many cases there will exist technology to replace a symbiote for the duration.
The Committee will decide what constitutes a symbiote. Human intestinal flora are symbiotes, for instance, though they threaten a good dozen species and can be replaced by diet supplements. Cats are not. Any member may choose to keep his symbiotes, for sentimental or religious reasons; but his membership fee may be affected.
CHILDREN. The Committee has arranged extensive babysitting facilities. Guards may moonlight in the case of really dangerous children. However, the stasis vaults offer a cheaper alternative: children may be registered as pets.
Or as full members, if they can demonstrate intelligence. As with pets and symbiotes, the Committee’s decision is final.
HIVES AND HERDS, creatures sapient only in clusters, may register as one entity.
However, any member of a registered hive found wandering loose may be considered an animal, expendable, and prey. For hives that reproduce fast, this is a reasonable assumption. For a commune or a kibbutz, it is probably not a good way to save money.
DISCORPORATES—ghosts, espers, Guardians, and wizards capable of leaving their bodies home—may attend the Convention free.
Why not? We can’t catch you at it, and you’re not bothering the other members. However, discorporates may buy memberships for the material advantages: the badge, calling service, a guided luggage carrier, credit at the huckster tables…
If distance is a problem, discorporeals may register as pets and leave their bodies in the stasis vault.
TIME TRAVELERS must pay full membership fees each time they attend!
This ruling is not intended to make your Committee rich. Buy your memberships in 1974 at a dollar each, as many as you need. Our purpose is to prevent confusion. Things could get messy if a message to David Gerrold went to a dozen badges!
Time travel is the only case where a Supervised member may name himself as Supervisor.
• • •
* Alien names have been transliterated or translated to the best of our ability
• • •
WHY MEN FIGHT WARS, AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!
THE SURRENDER REFLEX
Virtually every animal with a backbone has a reflexive surrender signal. It applies only between members of a single species. Dogs do not take surrender from rabbits. But stags fighting for mates do not fight to kill. They fight until one turns tail—a popular surrender reflex. When a Siamese fighting fish has lost his plumage and leaves the fight, the winner will not pursue.
Members of a species will not normally kill each other even to steal food. It is common enough for one male of a group to grab all the females and the lion’s share of the food—not only among lions. The rest go hungry and horny, and some die of it. You may consider this reprehensible. But it isn’t murder, and it isn’t war.
Lions have a problem. Too often, the juvenile male challenges the head of the pride before he is ready. The elder male kills him. It’s a bug, not a feature, and a costly one in evolutionary terms.
Man has a problem too.
Man kept his surrender reflex. If you want to see it in action, watch children roughhousing in a playgroun
d. A child gets hurt, he cries, and the others stop picking on him. If a bully refuses to obey the surrender signal, the others may turn on him.
The problem with Man is that he can kill faster than his victim can decide to surrender, and from farther away than he can see a surrender signal.
Watch a bar fight. In most cases it continues until one fighter is tired and bloody. The other has proved he can win; he is in a position to kill his opponent. They stop.
But if one knows karate, the other may be dead or maimed in seconds. If one has a heavy glass ashtray at hand, or a knife, it will take less time yet. The surrender reflex becomes useless as tits on a boar if either opponent has a gun.
And we’ve had weapons for two million years!
WHY MEN FIGHT WARS
You already have a good intuitive grasp of this subject. Read new or old newspapers. Wars start for an insult, or because a bluff failed, or a nation’s leaders claimed certain territory, or certain rights within certain territory…for economic reasons, or to keep an alliance, or because citizens must be distracted from trouble at home…
Scenario: There’s a famine going in Nation N. Basic statesmanship says that the army must be kept happy. To feed the army, King N could wrest food from the peasants; but King N knows a better answer. A peacetime army is always a problem anyway. He can send the army into Nation N + 1 and let them forage. Maybe they’ll come back with loot. Maybe they’ll annex some cropland. Maybe they’ll all be killed.
Wars aren’t always fought for stupid reasons.
The interesting question is, why does this species choose that solution? Why can’t these things be accomplished before people are dead? In any other species, when armies N and N + 1 come together, soldiers would be surrendering one-on-one.
WHY WARS DON’T STOP
Remember the Peace Talks during the Vietnam War? Not once did any diplomat on either side drop to his knees and burst into tears, wailing, “Don’t hurt me any more!”
And none ever will. This is clearly the losing ambassador’s function, and clearly he will never fulfill it. He doesn’t feel like a loser. The bad news of his nation’s defeats comes to him on paper. His nose isn’t bloody. He may be tired, but only of sitting too long. Tomorrow he won’t be tired any more. Nobody’s hitting him. If he’s breathing hard, it’s probably anger, and it’s probably fake.
Wars continue because ambassadors are not in a position to prevent them or to end them.
When does a soldier surrender? When he’s tired and bloody? But he’s always tired, and a bloody soldier is usually a dead one. His weapons are intended to let out all the blood. He can only surrender to a threat.
If he surrenders, or flees, his superior may shoot him. The enemy may shoot him despite his own formalized surrender signal. His white flag has nothing to do with evolved reflexes. There are forebrain functions involved in the decision as to whether to accept an enemy’s surrender.
There are always forebrain functions. A winner in war can’t trust a surrender signal. It can be faked. In wartime a prisoner cannot be turned loose to run away crying and wiping his bloody nose. He’ll get another gun and come back. If he cannot be guarded and fed, he may have to be shot.
Then who can end a war? The leaders of embattled nations? They aren’t bleeding, except by proxy. It’s only their own imaginations that make war different from a complex chess game.
The citizens at home? They are usually assured either that they are winning, or that the enemy are inhuman monsters, or that to lose would be annihilation, or all of the above.
Aside from all this, surrender is dishonorable. This is only partly an ethical judgment. It feels dishonorable. Nobody fakes a surrender reflex without cost. Surrender is losing a fight, and we aren’t wired to take that lightly. All of evolution is against losing casually, for trout as well as men.
Wars continue because there is nobody who can end them.
WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
You can’t do anything about it.
• • •
• • •
COMICS
To write the bible for the Green Lantern comic book was always beyond my ambitions.
There’s a forty-year-old oil painting in my mother’s living room, commissioned from a family friend, Cleanthe Carr. It’s a crowded Hermosa Beach scene showing friends and relatives and some typical beach denizens playing on the sand. Cleanthe showed me ignoring everyone around me while I read the Sunday funnies.
My love affair with comics is almost as old as I am. When other eight-year-olds were supposed to be socializing (yes, it was that kind of culture), I was in my host’s basement reading through the comics pile.
I found the E.C. titles in Martindale’s bookstore in Beverly Hills. Those would not have been on display in any home. What stuck in my head was the tale of an unseen closet-dweller that befriended a butcher’s battered child, and presently…well, the industrial size meat grinder had been left running, and there on the floor was 200 pounds of fresh hamburger. Scared the liver out of me.
When I hit my mid-teens. I supposed I had given up comics.
“Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” was an analysis of fertility problems in Kryptonians, written in my late twenties. I wasn’t reading comic books then, but there were comics fans in the LASFS. I used this stuff for party conversation. One rainy Sunday, Bjo Trimble made me write it up for a one-shot fanzine. It was all done from memory. The only research was a phone call to Harlan Ellison to get Superman’s birthdate. (June 1938, Action Comics. He’s two months younger than I am. Wears it better, though.)
In later years (my thirties) I got regular invitations to the Comic-Con in San Diego. Eventually Marilyn and I went. We didn’t expect a lot, but the Sturgeons had enjoyed it…
I was pleasantly surprised. The inner circles of the comic book industry regard science fiction as their honored ancestor! I’ve been back many times, but Marilyn hasn’t. I don’t think she was ever a comics fan.
I don’t know how I got on their mailing list, but it came about that a package of Marvel comic books would reach my mailbox from time to time. Sometimes there would be material from DC. Later I wound up on the First Comics list too.
I was delighted. I’ve never been a collector; just a reader. Do you know the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel? If you try to read a graphic novel in the sauna, it comes apart. Glue melts; staples don’t.
From time to time one or another of my stories went to comics. “Man of Steel…” appeared in an underground comic, dramatized. Julius Schwartz published a wonderful graphic version of THE MAGIC GOES AWAY.
Near the end of 1988, comics entered my life like a conquering army. Several letters arrived at once—
Malibu Comics wanted to buy a lot of Known Space stories. We’ve started easy: they’re publishing all of the “Gil the ARM” stories. They’re treating them very well. I expect we’ll deal again.
Marvel Comics (Kurt Busiak) invited me into a shared universe. I instead offered him “The Gripping Hand,” by me and Jerry Pournelle, the first chunk of a sequel to THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE, for a graphic novel. We agreed on terms; we approved Kurt Busiak’s editorial changes. Then we waited.
No contract ever appeared, and no check. Our agent ran out of patience and tried to offer it to First Comics, with no joy. I hope something works out. You’ll love the “crottled greeps” restaurant scene.
Then there’s the Green Lantern.
Larry Niven
Tarzana, CA
February 3
Dear Larry:
Here’s what we’d like the Green Lantern deal to be:
You write us a bible for the three-issue History of the Green Lantern Corps (or whatever we end up calling it) which will probably also double as the bible for the forthcoming monthly magazine. This will basically spell out everything that you and I have discussed—everything in your letters. Length is impossible to judge, but these things are usually more than ten and less than 20 pages; howeve
r many words you need to do the job is the right number. For this, you’ll be paid the amount agreed upon by your agent and our Executive Vice President, Paul Levitz.
Then, we’d like you to either write or plot one of the stories that will go into the limited series. For this, you’ll be paid a separate amount and, probably, a pro-rated royalty.
Everything is still fluid at this point, so if you’d like to discuss anything, please call. In any case, I’ll be in touch with you next week.
As I told you earlier, I like what you’ve given us this far. I think you’re the perfect writer for the project and I’m looking forward to working with you.
Cordially,
Dennis O’Neil
Green Lantern is a DC Comics character, like Batman and Superman himself. He’s been treated as science fiction throughout…almost. Over the years some silliness and inconsistency has crept in. It can happen to any series. Assumptions made for individual stories are what clogged up Known Space.
Dan Raspler and Denny O’Neil wrote to several SF authors asking help in working out a new background universe to the Green Lantern.
Every so often I have to do something to prove I’m still versatile. Norman Spinrad once warned me against getting into a mental rut, and I took it to heart. I’ve written Saturday morning TV, a newspaper comic strip, and a planetarium show; taught science fact and fiction alongside Jerry Pournelle, off campus at UCLA; built worlds alone and as part of teams; collaborated with every description of writer, excluding stupid and illiterate. I’ll try anything that improves my education and is fun at the time.
So I ran down their list of the questions they most wanted answered. “Why a ring?” Because it’ll stay on almost any shape of alien. “Blue skin on the Guardians? They evolved pink.” It’s a gene-engineered uniform. “Krona introduced evil into the universe—” No. Entropy! “The oath that recharges the magic rings—” is for timing and to concentrate the will power (as Denny suggested). “Antimatter—” Hopelessly fouled up; drop it entirely.