The Man-Kzin Wars 02

Introduction

The franchise universe lives!

When I first began sneaking into the playgrounds of other authors, I had my doubts. Still, Phil Farmer seemed to be having a lovely time reshaping the worlds he'd played in as a child. So I wrote a Dunsany story and an extrapolation of Lovecraft and an attempt at a Black Cat detective story and a study of Superman's sex life.

Fred Saberhagen invited me to write a Berserker story, and I found it indecently easy.

MEDEA: Harlan's World was a collaboration universe. Slow to become a book, it ultimately became a classic study of how creative minds may build and populate a solar system.

So Jim Baen and I invited selected authors to write stories set 14,000 years ago, when magic still worked. We filled two books with tales of the Warlock's era. (We also drove Niven half nuts. The idea was for Jim to do all the work and me to take all the credit. But Jim parted company with Ace Books, and I had to learn more than I ever wanted to know about being an editor!)

I entered a universe infested with lizard-like pirate slavers, because of David Drake's urging, and because of a notion I found irresistible: the murder of Halley's Comet. When Susan Shwartz asked several of us to write new tales of the Thousand and One Nights, I rapidly realized that Scheherazade had overlooked a serious threat. I stayed out of Thieves World — too busy — but I was tempted.

Still, would readers and the publishing industry continue to support this kind of thing? It seemed like too much fun.

And now DC Comics has me reworking the background universe of Green Lantern! Green Lantern is almost as old as I am! But his mythos will be mine, for the next few years at least.

I'm having a wonderful time. I've got to say, being paid for this stuff feels like cheating.

What began with “The Warriors” has evolved further than my own ambitions would have carried it.

Jim Baen and I decided to open up the Man-Kzin Wars period of known space, because I don't have the background to tell war stories. Still, I had my doubts. I have friends who can write of war; but any writer good enough to be invited to play in my universe will have demonstrated that he can make his own. Would anyone accept my offer? I worried also that intruders might mess up the playground, by violating my background assumptions.

But the kzinti have been well treated, and I'm learning more about them than I ever expected. You too will be charmed and fascinated by kzinti family life as shown in “The Children's Hour,” not to mention Pournelle’s and Stirling’s innovative use of stasis fields. Likewise there is Dean Ing's look at intelligent stone-age kzinti females: Ing finished his story for the first volume, then just kept writing. Now Pournelle and Stirling are talking about doing the same.

I too have found that known space stories keep getting longer. It's a fun universe, easier to enter than to leave.

One thing I hoped for when I opened up the Warlock's universe to other writers. I had run out of ideas. I hoped to be re-inspired. My wish was granted, and I have written several Warlock's-era stories since. If the same doesn't hold for the era of the Man-Kzin Wars, it won't be the fault of the authors represented here. I'm having a wonderful time reading known space stories that I didn't have to write. If I do find myself re-inspired, these stories will have done it.

– Larry Niven