[net.sf-lovers] Nessus' name

stuart (02/27/83)

From: Stuart.Friedberg
I don't have most of my library readily available, but
from what I remember of Nessus' character, and some of
the comments a puppeteer made about the voice most (all?)
of the puppeteers who dealt with humans had (sexy contralto,
if I recall accurately), I would venture that someone with
a classical bent tagged Nessus with the name and Nessus 
either didn't care or thought it was amusing. The chances
are poor that Nessus did that much study of human mythology;
but, who really knows?

Remember that Nessus had a very strange sense of humor in
his manic modes. But then all the puppeteers we ever saw 
were nuts ...

By the way, do you notice how we speak/write of these
characters as though they had physical existence. This,
even when such existence would be in our future? I take
this as a mark of high achievement. That an author can
create new worlds that we appreciate enough to make our own ...

					Stu Friedberg
				{seismo, allegra}!rochester!stuart

kaufman (02/28/83)

Well, it was actually Beowulf (how's that for a name) Shaeffer who first
remarked that 1. No alien had any right to a voice like a puppeteer had,
and 2. that many puppeteers sounded the same (same English teacher, probably).
In the restaurant on Earth (Cherenko's??), Nessus said he was "styled" Nessus,
and that his real name was <something like a car crash set to music>.  I assumed
from that that someone conciously chose that name for him.  It seems to me that
a puppeteer would be aware of the history of the name he chose - somehow, that
just seems like them.  Maybe I'm reading too much into all this but - in my
original article, I mentioned that there were three puppeteers whose names we
were told, one was Nessus, another is the Hindmost, and the third was, Louis
thought, a "projection" on the puppeteer planet.  The third one's name was, if
memory serves, "Chiron", possibly related to Charon?  Possibly some other
mythological figure?  Oh well, I probably made it all up myself.

	I have always considered it a great loss that Niven stopped writing
in Known Space.

	Hoping I haven't gotten too much of this wrong because all my
	Niven's at home,

		David H. Kaufman
		..!decvax!yale-comix!kaufman