（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - Tales Of Know Space.doc

Tales Of Know Space Larry Niven Introduction: My Universe and Welcome to It! TWELVE YEARS AGO I started writing. Eleven years ago I started selling what I wrote. And eleven years ago I started a future history-the history of Known Space. The Known Space Series now spans a thousand years of future history, with data on conditions up to a billion and a half years in the past. Most of the stories take place either in Human Space (the human-colonized worlds and the space between, a bubble sixty light-years across by Louis Wus time) or in Known Space (the much larger bubble of space explored by Human-built ships but controlled by other species); but arms of exploration reach 200 light-years up along galactic north, and 33,000 light-years to the galactic core. The series now includes four novels (World of Ptavvs, Protector, A Gift from Earth, Ringworld) plus the stories in the collection Neutron Star, plus the book now in your hands, plus one other to be published in February of 1976 to be called The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton. Future histories tend to be chaotic. They grow from a common base, from individual stories with common assumptions; but each story must--to be fair to readers stand by itself. The future history chronicled in the Known Space Series is as chaotic as real history. Even the styles vary in these stories, because my writing skills have evolved over eleven years of real time. But this is the book with the crib sheets. The stories Published here are in chronological order. Ive scattered supplementary notes between them, to explain what is going on between and around the individual novels and stories, in a region small on the galactic scale but huge in human experience. A few general notes are in order here: 1. The tales of Gil the ARM are missing. This book became so big that we had to cut these three science- fiction/detective stories--60,000 words worth-to make room. Gils career hits its high point around 2121 AD, between World of Ptavv