Man-Kzin Wars XIV

Another revisiting of Man-Kzin interaction, and of other Niven concepts. By now the Niven universe is so richly diverse that even vignettes can exploit the background development to great advantage.

There is varied interaction of post-third-or-fifth-war Kzinti and humans, and even cross-species adoptions in Hal Colebatch’s Marmalade and Alex Hernandez’s Lions on the Beach

Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox teamed to write A Man called Saul in which Vaemar, Chuut Riit’s son, reemerges as a significant actor. Elsewhere, Lucas Garner is history, Jack Brennan is declared dead, and another formerly female protector reveals a developmental escalation of capability in humans’ protectors, thanks to Matthew Joseph Herrington’s skillful reveals in Leftovers.

The original Pak protectors are addressed at a distance, as are those of the Wunderland Morlocks. Herrington adds some blood chemistry and pulls a few other bugs out of the woodwork, laying foundation for more exciting developments. Of course, there will be other MK Wars anthologies. By now, the series has the inertia of being almost a genre of its own.

The puppeteers are shown to be grand manipulators, long overdue for comeuppance. What is frightening is their probable motive for grinding Kzinti and Humans together to weapons-forge whole species.