The World of Ptavvs

By Larry Niven

The World of Ptavvs, a novel by Larry Niven
Book details About the author

The World of Ptavvs is a classic science fiction novel by Larry Niven.

A good old idea book from the good old days when a book didn't have to be 500+ pages – not that I don't like thick books, but once in a while it's nice to read something that you can actually see an end to.

Ptavvs (how do you pronounce that?), is based on the idea of a mind controlling alien who has an accident with his space ship and is forced to go into suspended animation for a couple of centuries while his ship costs towards an inhabited planet. A couple of not centuries, but million years later his is – much to his surprise – re-awoken on earth a century or two from our present day (no date is given, but we have space travel, flying cars and mega cities).

Like I said in the first paragraph this is an idea book, which sometimes is a nice way of saying that the character in the story is as entertaining as eating chalk – this is one of those times. But there are a few good ideas and I found my self entertained by the story, all it takes in a small effort to ignore (or laugh at) the things in the book that may have seemed fresh in the sixties, but seem a bit cliché today.

A couple of hours with rocket ships pushed to the limit and aliens that are not quite as intelligent as humans when you really get down to the important stuff – now that's what I call real Science Fiction.

Written on 1st January 2000 by .

You may also like

Floating Worlds
View
Footfall
View
Man Plus
View
The Black Hole
View
The Centauri Device
View
The Other End Of Time
View
The World of Ptavvs
View
Time out of Joint
View