bstempleton (01/06/83)
D O W N I N F L A M E S
- - - - - - - - - - - -
OUTLINE FOR AN UNWRITTEN EPIC NOVEL
BY LARRY NIVEN
COPYRIGHT (c) 1977 by Larry Niven
The following requires some explanation. At least!
On January 14, 1968, Norman Spinrad and I were at a party thrown
by Tom & Terry Pinckard. We were filling coffee cups when Spinny
started this whole thing.
"You ought to drop the known space series," he said. "You'll get
stale." (Quotes are not necessarily dead accurate.)
I explained that I was writing stories outside the "known space"
history, and that I would give up the series as soon as I ran out of
things to say within its framework. Which would be soon.
"Then why don't you write a novel that tears it to shreds? Don't
just abandon known space. Destroy it!"
"But how?" (I never asked why. Norman and I think alike in some
ways.)
"Start with the premise that the whole thing is a shuck. There
never was a chain reaction of novae in the galactic core. There
aren't any Thrintun. It's all a gigantic hoax. Write it that way.
"Then, Spinny said, "if the fans write letters threatening to lynch
you, you write back saying, 'It's only a story...'"
We found a corner. During the next four hours we worked out the
details. Some I rejected. Like, he wanted to make the Tnuctipun into
minions of the Devil. (Yes, the Devil.) Like, he wanted me to be
inconsistent. I can't do that, not on purpose.
The incredible thing is that when we finished, we did indeed have
a consistent framework. I wrote it up during the following week, as a
set of assumptions and a plot outline. It would have been the longest
of my novels up to that time.
What happened?
About April 1968, I ran into an idea called a Dyson sphere. It
gripped my imagination. I designed a compromise structure, less
roomy, but with some distinct advantages: the Ringworld is prettier,
it's got gravity without the unlikelihood of gravity generators, and
you can see the sky.
So I wrote RINGWORLD, and the PROTECTOR, and then the three
SF-detective novelettes lumped under THE LONG ARM OF GIL HAMILTON. In
1968 the "known space" history included about 250,000 words. In 1977
it's more than twice that large, and some of the assumptions in DOWN
IN FLAMES have gotten lost.
So I was writing RINGWORLD, and I gave the DOWN IN FLAMES
material to Tom Reamy for his fanzine TRUMPET. The material wasn't
all that consistent or well organized; it was done for my own
benefit, and I stopped halfway.
It's nine years later, and I can't resist the impulse to put the
thing into better shape. Those of you who haven't read any of the
"known space" series are going to find it incredibly cryptic, and what
can I do but apologize? For those of you who have, remember: it's
all a hoax.
PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS
1) Beowulf Shaeffer never visited the galactic core.
2) The Long Shot, the alleged Quantum II hyperdrive ship used in
AT THE CORE, was a hoax. For eight months that "spacecraft" rested
somewhere in the West End of Jinx, while Beowulf Shaeffer was treated
to an elaborate movie of a trip to the galactic core and back. The
hyperdrive machinery he saw through LONG SHOT's transparent hull was
hiding other machinery: 3D movie projectors, artificial gravity,
computer controls on a fake mass sensor. It wouldn't take much.
3) The core suns are not exploding.
4) The Thrintun or Slaver Species, supposed to exist a billion
and a half years ago (WORLD OF PTAVVS), never existed.
5) The Tnuctipun (supposed to be a slave race to the Slavers) are
real enough; but they are contemporary with humanity.
6) The Puppeteers are in their pay.
7) They have accepted employment because they dare not refuse.
The Tnuctipun are vicious and vindictive.
8) Since the Puppeteers are not fleeing the explosion in the
galactic core, what are they fleeing? Why, they're fleeing the
Tnuctipun, of course. And taking some of their funds from the
Tnuctipun.
9) Kzanol (WORLD OF PTAVVS) is neither the last Thrint (Slaver),
nor a robot. He is, now get this, he is a product of Tnuctipun
biological engineering: a tailored species with only one member. His
memories are heavily detailed science fiction.
10) Many of the stasis boxes are relics of the Tnuctipun
occupation of known space. So are the genetically tailored species,
the sunflowers and stage trees and Bandersnatchi, found throughout
known space.
The Tnuctipun were all through here. They evacuated our region
of space not long ago, certainly less than a million years ago. They
were forced to leave a lot of gene-tailored life and a number of lost
stasis boxes; though they could count on most of the relics of the
empire disintegrating with age.
But they had time to leave other evidence, in stasis boxes, to
contribute to the hoax. Later they created Kzanol and left him in
stasis on the continental shelf off Brazil.
The major hoax is the Slaver War, supposed to have occured a
billion and a half years ago. The Tnuctipun could not conceal their
presence in known space; but they could hide the fact that they are
contemporary.
11) The truth is that the Tnuctipun are all through known space.
It will be seen how this is possible.
12) Clearly the Bandersnatchi were not designed to spy on the
Slavers for the Tnuctipun. Tnuctipun get a kick out of eating meat
that was sentient when alive. So, they designed the Bandersnatchi
sentient.
13) When the Tnuctipun cleared out, some of their number got left
behind. That group went to savagery, then built its civilization
again, and began carving out an interstellar empire. We call them the
Kzinti. The Kzinti know nothing of the Tnuctipun; but there are
Tnuctipun hidden among the Kzinti.
14) There's proof of sorts: a psychological point. Female
Kzinti are dumb animals, no more. The Kzinti may be thought of as
asexual. So it is with the Tnuctipun too. A Kzin will understand the
kick they get from eating intelligent beings. There has to be
something to replace the kick of mating with someone of your own
intelligence.
15) And a second point of proof. The Grog's psi power is very
like the Slaver's. The Grog might well be a degenerate Slaver, except
that with the Grog the female is dominant and intelligent. How could
that be?
Obvious. The Thrint (Kzanol) was copied from the Grog and
modified. But the Tnuctipun got it garbled; they could not believe
in a sentient female.
16) The core of the hoax is the Core explosion: the lie that our
galaxy is a Seyfert galaxy, that in twenty thousand years the wave of
radiation will make all of known space uninhabitable, and most of the
galaxy too. The hoax may extend much further than known space.
Refugees will be passing through from nearer the Core. Dozens of
species will be mothballing whole planets, expecting eventually to
return. They will sheath seeds and eggs of useful life-forms in lead
or stasis fields, and make every effort to preserve their artifacts
for thousands of years.
Now look at it from the viewpoint of Tnuctipun returning to known
space. They'll find all the worlds of known space deserted, with
their most valuable artifacts preserved. They'll find trillions of
beings in spacecraft moving at Quantum I hyperdrive. All flavors,
these beings. All moving at that single velocity, three days to the
light year. Match direction and you match course for boarding. In
many cases, no weapons; too many species would concentrate solely on
the tremendous task of moving billions of individuals clear out of the
galaxy.
Obviously this would have been the last of the known space
stories (If only Blish had stopped with his second Okie novel! He
ended the universe, then had to back up!) I've given the assumptions I
have to make in order to get a coherent picture. The framework does
answer some questions left open in the "known space" series and raises
others.
1) The Quantum II hyperdrive was advertised for sale by the
Puppeteers. Why didn't someone buy it? (Those who tried got the
runaround. The QII ship never existed.)
2) If the Grogs are degenerate Slavers, how did the sex get
changed? (We figured it backward. The Tnuctipun reversed the sexes
through male chauvinist piggery.)
3) The "soft weapon" (see the NEUTRON STAR collection) has to be
a real abandoned Tnuctip artifact.
It's too powerful to have been allowed to fall into human hands
deliberately; even if it didn't remain there. Why didn't the handle
fit a Kzinti (i.e., Tnuctip) hand? Probably because the Tnuctipun
have their own slave races.
4) Even if the Ringworld is edge-on to the Core, it isn't thick
enough to shield itself (and Teela Brown!) from the gamma rays. But
Teela's "luck" requires that she be safe there. She is, if there's no
Core explosion.
5) What of the Outsiders?
With their Helium II metabolism, they are not "meat" to a
Tnuctip. If they maintain their neutrality, nobody should harm them.
And they must have known of the Tnuctip plot for some time.
Now we know why the Outsiders charged such a tremendous price for
the answer to a simple question. What are they going to do, now that
the galaxy is becoming uninhabitable? Answer: it isn't!
Can we use the Outsiders? How well can we balance profit against
their fear of the Tnuctipun?
6) What happens to a ship that goes too deep into a gravity well
while using Outsider hyperdrive?
Snatched by the Tnuctipun! There is no relevant physical law, no
mysterious singularity in hyperspace. The need to enter a system at
sublight speeds will restrict the spread of humanity and keep us from
regions where the fraud is apparent.
So much for background. What of the story itself?
Obviously I'm setting up Armageddon. Exposure of the Tnuctip
fraud will result in a cataclysm to shake the stars. Fire and death,
and the Tnuctipun may win.
They will have no allies. The Kzinti have been changed, by four
Man-Kzin Wars in which the most serious war-mongers, and the ones with
the least self-control, were the ones who died. The Kzinti population
has been considerably reduced. Those left are not peaceful, but they
can think first before they jump. Telepaths are their own
development. And they have reason to have the Tnuctipun who abandoned
their ancestors. The Kzinti will fight on our side, though we must
watch for planted Tnuctip spies.
No allies...but Tnuctip technology must be enormous. Slaver
stasis boxes were largely planted. What we found in them was
technology the Tnuctipun threw away! What more are they hiding?
I know some of the characters I'll need. Oddly, the most
necessary are the most familiar. And known space isn't that
defenseless.
I need either Kzanol or Larry Greenberg: the only two characters
capable of recognizing a Tnuctip. Kzanol is out of the question, as
you will see. We've got to rescue Greenberg from where we left him
last: aboard a slowboat, one of the Lazy Eight series, which lost its
drive systems while moving at near lightspeed. By Louis Wu's time it
will be several hundred light-years from known space.
(Louis is out of it. So are Teela Brown and the entire
Ringworld. The Tnuctipun dare not attack the Ringworld. For reasons,
see THE RINGWORLD ENGINEERS in a couple of years).
I need Beowulf Shaeffer, who was at the heart of the Core
explosion hoax. If I set DOWN IN FLAMES after RINGWORLD, Shaeffer is
200-odd years old: middle-aged despite boosterspice.
I need an expert on Slaver relics.
I need money and brains to work this. That's easy. I'll use the
Truesdale-monster (see PROTECTOR).
Three more: a mountaineer woman with Plateau eyes (Matt Keller's
talent; see A GIFT FROM EARTH), and a Kzin for a central character,
and a Grog for her mind-reading ability.
Ready?
DOWN IN FLAMES
SOON TO BE A MINOR MOTION PICTURE
I
Old Beowulf Shaeffer is relaxing somewhere when the
Truesdale-monster taps him on the shoulder. "I need you," he says,
and produces whatever credentials it takes. ARM, Belt Speaker, King,
Secretary-General, he's got 'em. Shaeffer's interest is captured.
Truesdale leads him away, talking a blue streak.
We last saw the Truesdale-monster taking a fleet of ships to
confront an oncoming fleet of Pak refugee ships. Whatever they found
out there (evidence of existence of the Kzinti Empire? Maybe.) it
caused them to send one of their number home to watch over human
space. They sent the only flatlander: Truesdale.
At sublight speeds he arrived only recently. Things seem calm
enough in known space. Against all expectation, the Kzinti seem
harmless. But there is a mystery to be tracked down, and the Core
explosion needs some attention too.
II
They are attacked at the spaceport. The weapons are of the Soft
Weapon type: "soft" in the sense used by Salvidor Dali, in that the
weapon changes shape. The species attacking is an unfamilar one,
agile as a Pak, without much brain, and with hands to fit their
weapons.
Truesdale takes them in a mad run for his ship. He loses a leg,
cauterizes it with his own laser, and off they go, Truesdale hopping.
The alien weapons do ferocious damage; they include a
total-conversion setting; but Truesdale's ship is largely stasis
fields.
III
Truesdale takes them to Camelot: his refuge in the cometary
halo. Camelot is similar to Kobold (see PROTECTOR) in that Truesdale
has been using gravity generators as an art form. On the way,
Truesdale gives his own background, and gets Shaeffer to go over his
tale of the trip to the Core (AT THE CORE).
IV
At Camelot Truesdale takes Shaeffer once more through the Core
trip, under drugs. He still hasn't said what he's after. He doesn't
get it. But they were attacked, and that must be important.
He examines the corpse of their attacker. It would have been no
brighter than a chimpanzee. Something else is training these.
They talk endlessly. Shaeffer mentions the trip to Swoosh
(FLATLANDER). Brennan knows a good deal about the Outsiders, and
shows it. Shaeffer wonders about some of the questions he asked the
Outsiders during that single meeting. When he mentions one question
("What will you do now that you know the Core is exploding?") Brennan
hops up yelling, "That's it!"
The attack starts in that instant.
V
It catches them on the surface. In the first moments Camelot's
gravity field goes and the air starts to expand into space. Truesdale
is vaporized in the middle of a leap across a gap between the segments
of Camelot.
Shaeffer dives for a door. Any door: the nearest, despite
warning signs. There's air. Shaeffer inhale once in relief, once in
glorious disbelief, once to find out where the incredibly delicious
smell is coming from. Then his mind turns off, and he's tracking the
tree-of-life root down through the corridors of Camelot's heart.
VI
Shaeffer wakes as a protector stage human, very like Truesdale:
knobby joints, no obvious sex, expanded brain-case, skin thickened to
leather armor, etc.
Escape is his first problem. There's no ship; there's not much
left of Camelot. If the aliens were searching Camelot with a device
to detect thinking minds, then Shaeffer's dormancy saved him. But
they may still be around.
There are gravity generators. Shaeffer repairs them, then lines
them up to accelerate rocks at near-lightspeed. Now he's got a
reaction drive. He heads for the sun.
The enemy attacks as his makeshift ship drops toward the solar
system. Shaeffer's gravity generators throw rocks at them. He
follows with a sphere of neutronium in stasis.
The Pluto Watch picks him up. Shortly he sets himself to
locating and using Truesdale's organization on Earth...and to solving
an urgent problem: the Grogs.
VII
Why didn't Truesdale exterminate the Grogs? Why wasn't it his
second act? His first, of course, was to review the Kzinti problem
and pronounce them harmless. The Grogs look dangerous. They're
sessile, granted. They talk a good surrender. But they're hypnotic
telepaths, and they bid fair to be descendants of the terrible
Slavers! Except they're the wrong sex. How in hell did that happen?
Right, this must have been what Truesdale was investigating.
Shaeffer will retrace his steps.
VIII
Passing himself as Truesdale is trivial; who'd look beyond the
facade of a man-parody done in coconuts and walnuts? To command
Truesdale's organization he need only locate it, and he does.
Truesdale ruled them with money; he's got a nice little commercial
empire going.
Data on Grogs tells him nothing he didn't know. Eventually he'll
have to go to Down. Meanwhile, he investigates Slavers.
IX
His major step is to steal the Sea Statue (see WORLD OF PTAVVS)
from the Smithsonian. Kzanol, the only known Thrint, is in there.
Shaeffer kidnaps an expert on Slaver artifacts. He sets up some
safeguards, hopefully adequate, and opens the suit.
The safeguards include a Grog tourist: a hairy cone, bald on
top, split halfway down by her wide smile, eyeless, earless ... and
her rock, and the tractor treads it's been mounted on. It turns out
she's not needed yet. Kzanol is in the suit when Shaeffer breaks the
stasis field around it. But there's a butcher knife in Kzanol. As
any fool might have guessed, Jack Brennan (see PROTECTOR) would never
have left Kzanol alive in there, and the odd sense of humor (a butcher
knife?) pretty well identifies his work.
But the corpse is enough. There are enough relics of Tnuctip
biological engineering around: sunflowers, stage trees,
Bandersnatchi. Schultz-Mann the expert of Slavers (for economy we'll
make her a woman with Plateau eyes; that trait may well come in
handy) says that Kzanol is of Tnuctip manufacture. So, when Shaeffer
produces it, is the corpse of an alien attacker.
Chains of hypothesis lead Shaeffer to part of the truth. There
was no Slaver race and no Slaver War. It's all Tnuctipun, and they're
still around.
What do they look like? (We know only the attacking alien.)
Why the deception?
What are they planning?
How did Beowulf Shaeffer get into it at all?
X
Shaeffer takes some time to ready Earth's and the Belt's defenses
against a return of the attackers. As a protector Shaeffer isn't
bothered by plans that take years to reach fruition. When he's
convinced that human space is safe, he moves on to the Kzinti empire,
taking with him the Grog, and Schultz-Mann, and a loose Kzinti tourist
with a full name. With his aid, drop the word: something dangerous
is going on, be ready.
Then, a four hundred light year trip in hyperdrive, taking four
years. Shaeffer took a big ship and stocked it with tools and raw
materials. He's got time to build gravity generators. With these he
can match velocities with the lost slowboat, board, and retrieve the
entire crew. There are some problems here with culture shock; these
humans date from the time of Gil the ARM and Lucas Garner.
Larry Greenberg solves one problem fast. He points at the Kzin
and says, "That's a Tnuctip!"
The Grog says, "No, he isn't."
Deduction comes last for the Shaeffer monster. If Kzinti and
Tnuctip are related species, then there are Tnuctip spies among the
Kzinti. By now they will have a Fifth Man-Kzin War going, probably.
XI
Third piece of the problem comes by straight extrapolation. The
Tnuctipun didn't interfere with Shaeffer's life, throughout 250 years
or more, because he could testify to the Core explosion. But
Truesdale might have seen through that hoax. So the Tnuctipun sent
assasins.
Shaeffer turns back toward known space. On the way he turns all
of the slowboat's crew of fifty or so, except for those too old, into
protector stage humans. (He doesn't need tree of life, he needs only
a culture of the virus, and that's in his own body. A little
biochemical work does it.)
He does not expect the Tnuctipun to attack in hyperdrive! But
then they aren't expecting fifty protectors playing games with gravity
generators. Humans would expect use of a gravity generator in
hyperspace to destroy the ship at once; but that hoax is obvious as
soon as the attacking ships appear.
XII
Eight years after leaving known space, Shaeffer's band returns.
There's no Fifth Man-Kzin War going. The Tnuctipun tried that and
failed. Now they're attacking throughout known space with half a
dozen slave races. The Kzinti Empire (second most powerful among the
Good Guys) is paralyzed by Tnuctipun among them, and distrusted by
their allies because some Tnuctip corpses have been recovered from
attacking ships. Shaeffer leaves a team to clear that up, with the
Grog to point out the ringers. He goes to war.
XIII
Before it's over, we'll need billions of human protectors. It's
a Flash Gordon/E.E. Smith war, with superior Tnuctip technology
battling tools and weapons worked up on the spot by a billion Dr.
Zarkovs. To Outsiders those same new inventions are money; will they
sell us the location of the Tnuctipun?
If they don't it can be deduced. The Tnuctipun are among the
stars of the galactic rim. The Core explosion hoax was to drive
millions of refugee ships right to their tables. Of course the
Puppeteers avoided that; they drove their fleet up along the galactic
axis, and none but the suicidal ever boarded a spacecraft at all.
So we come to the final phase, as Shaeffer's legions bring the
war to the enemy.
I'm not strongly tempted to write this story. The scale of
things near the end gets bigger than I like. There are too few human
characters involved. And there's one assumption I don't like.
The Long Shot spacecraft was used in RINGWORLD and it worked.
What do we have to assume? Either that RINGWORLD was never
written in this universe, or that the Puppeteers modelled their hoax
on something they were only then developing, and they later finished
the job.
Hey, that could be interesting after all. After the Tnuctipun
are finally exterminated, after things settle down in known space,
someone finally takes a Quantum II hyperdrive ship toward the hub of
the galaxy. And he finds that the galactic core is exploding.
ENDWoods.pa@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (03/02/84)
From: Don Woods <Woods.pa@PARC-MAXC.ARPA> Niven's "Down In Flames" outline was sent to SF-Lovers about three years ago. It is must reading for dedicated fans of his Known Space universe. I still have a copy on line, and am willing to make it available to the list, but it's far too large to include in the digest (roughly 25000 characters). How are we set up these days for FTP access to large contributions? -- Don.
kovner%gwen.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (08/19/85)
From: kovner%gwen.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
As I am on the Digital Engineering Net, I do not know how to access
Down In Flames via ftp. If you could either explain how (if it is possible
at all) or mail me a copy which would be left accessible to others on this
net, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Steve Kovner
enet REGINA::KOVNER
uucp: {decval,allegra,ucbvax}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-regina!kovner
ARPA: kovner%regina.DEC@decwrl.ARPAins_apmj@jhunix.UUCP (Patrick M Juola) (10/25/85)
In article <978@jhunix.UUCP> ins_ajsk@jhunix.UUCP (Jonathan Simon Kay) writes: >I think Niven should write Down_In_Flames, _Ringworld_ or no _Ringworld_. >One should never let consistency get in the way of a good story. That assumes that _Down_in_Flames would be a good story -- I disagree.
wildbill@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (William J. Laubenheimer) (10/29/85)
Does the title of this scenario imply that a permanent, albeit final,
solution to The Grog Problem will be implemented at some point? If not,
maybe it should...
Bill Laubenheimer
----------------------------------------UC-Berkeley Computer Science
...Killjoy went that-a-way---> ucbvax!wildbill