Talk:Pierson's Puppeteers

Star Trek Reference

The following sentence is simply untrue: A Puppeteer, as well as several other Known Universe species, appears in episode 14 of Star Trek, The Animated Series, "The Slaver Weapon".

Whoever added that likely hasn't seen the episode. The Kzinti and a Thrintun appear in the episode, but not a Puppeteer. That should be removed.

Conjecture

"Conjecture: The Puppeteers are known liars and stingy with the truth. Niven already wrote about "pocket" black holes in at least two stories, one in an early-works collection, and again in a Beowulf Shaeffer novelette included in Crashlander. Pocket holes controlled with Stasis Fields would be enough."

Isn't this original research? NHammen 02:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Quote

The quote from The Soft Weapon:

The first man to see a puppeteer had done so during a Campish revival of Time for Beany reruns. He had come running back to the scout ship, breathless and terrified, screaming, "Take off! The planet's full of monsters!" "Whatta they look like?" "Like a three-legged centaur with two Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent puppets on its hands, and no head."

"Take a pill, Pierson. You're drunk."

Puppeteer names

Puppeteers tend to choose centaur names? That would seem to be a pretty limited choice. See the centaur page.

How about "names from classical Greek mythology?" Schoop (talk) 15:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

read Juggler of Worlds- Niven & Lerner speculate that Puppeteers are egotists and choose Greek myth names to elevate themselves above humans. The naming convention is inconsistent... In reality, the authors have to name them something so dont read too much into it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:01, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

They often use different names from Greek mythology, but not always and not just centaurs. Nike (named after a goddess), for example, is the name taken by the Hindmost, Achilles is the name taken by another Scout, and Baedeker is presumably named after a travel guide publisher. Merennulli (talk) 01:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

ingestion

"They use the "mouths" to manipulate objects, as a humanoid uses arms and hands. Respiration and ingestion are performed with an orifice on the front of the torso." Where is this stated? I don't have the books available at hand, but don't Puppeteers eat and breath through the mouths also? VikÞor [[User talk:Vik-Thor|Talk]] 03:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

yes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Correct. In Betrayer of Worlds, they specifically mention Nessus having difficulty breathing with his heads tucked too-tightly under his belly in defensive posture. Achilles in the same book also is able to breath when his ship is opened to vacuum as soon as he puts one of his heads into a suit. Nessus also ate with one mouth while speaking in a restricted manner with the other in Destroyer of Worlds. In no depiction I've seen of puppeteers, and in nothing I've read has there been any indication of an "in" orifice on the torso anywhere. Merennulli (talk) 23:50, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Tides

The Puppeteers have millenia of experience a interstellar travellers, and have been moving their own planets around for centuries, yet they don't know what tidal forces are? I smell a red herring (or just one ignorant GP Regional President) Noclevername 01:03, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

There was a collection of Beowulf Shaeffer stories (cannot recall the name right now) that had new text in-between the older stories that retconned this. I can't remember the details, but the puppeteers did know about tides and their claim to not understand what happened was misdirection. The current configuration of their homeworld would cause tides far beyond those Earth experiences. 12.40.5.69 (talk) 21:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The collection is Crashlander, and the details are discussed in Neutron Star (short story)# Notes. 58.147.52.66 (talk) 08:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Fleet of Worlds goes into detail about the tides. remember the original stories were written in the 1960's for fun and not for "historical" purposes. Niven himself wrote an essay in one of the collections how as Known Space developed, he had to make hasty corrections to everything to keep it consistent. He wrote how as soon as he wrote a story set on Mars real science disproved it. That's why he made the leap from exploring the Sol System "Wait it Out" and "Becalmed in Hell" and the near future Gil Hamilton/Lucas Garner stories, skipped about four centuries and started writing the stories we're more familiar with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Picture

We need a picture of a puppeteer.

There is one now, but it seems to have been made in the spore creature creator. Would that be considered vandalism or fan-fiction or something like that?

I think it's fine, just add it correctly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.182.51.67 (talk) 02:49, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

call it Fan Fiction and you can get away with anything

If anyone can find the pink copy of Ringworld (circa 1980) the inside covers have the officially commissioned pictures of a puppeteer and its skeleton —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:10, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

It is not an accurate representation, imo. I will draw one up.
this picture: http://www.simplydixon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/meatchickendiagram.jpg
would be a better representation, although it does require a bit of imagination (the center picture, with 2 heads, and fur not feathers, and a third leg, lol)
;>jamvaru (talk) 18:32, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The picture (as of today) is not correct, it doesn't have hoofed feet. More like chicken feet. 88.84.182.202 (talk) 06:20, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Pupeteers are also supposed to be furry and frequently fawn, tawny or white... not purple. --76.24.24.247 (talk) 15:34, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

claim about instability of klempere rosette

I removed this from the page since it was more discussion than enlightening:

It should also be noted that the Klemperer rosette is a very unlikely formation for a paranoid species to choose as its own custom solar system, as this simulation (bottom of page) shows. (note, this simulation appears to suffer from major floating point innacuracies leading to instability. A more reliable source for the validity of a Klemperer rosette should be cited.)

Cromis 03:14, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Save it for two reasons, 1: yes it is unlikely unless 2: they have a steerable drive system as finally developed in Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds. Wait until Destroyer of Worlds (2010) to see if they explain it further and why a Rosette at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Potential changes

Hi, has anyone read the Fleet of Worlds novel? Judging from some of its content, some (maybe a lot) of this article would need to be changed. --Kjoonlee 20:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I updated the section on GP Hulls, but there's probably a lot of other things that should change, too. ChrisHibbert (talk)

Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds explain that everything humans know about puppeteers is a lie. They are not cute and cuddly, they are in fact the purest evil. They are not friends of humanity at all. They are in fact very alien, and treat humans exactly the way we treat cattle. Expect what we "know" about Puppeteers to change over the next few books. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.80.228 (talk) 08:16, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

That's going a bit far. Yes, they lie, but they aren't evil either. In fact, the novels you mention, as well as the Destroyer of Worlds novel that follows, go into great detail about the moral dilemmas from their perspective. In each instance, the character Sigmund is shown making observations based on his own paranoia to show the reader more clearly how the Puppeteer reasoning leads to such seemingly horrible actions as those that lead to the human slaves on Nature Preserve 4. And the lying isn't a new revelation, just the details of it. Even in the Ringworld novels it was indicated that they were considered dishonest, manipulating human evolution to produce people like Luis Wu and Teela Brown. The only positive thing they were known for in terms of honesty was a very generous payout in the event one of their hulls failed. Merennulli (talk) 01:43, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Homeworld Movement

Re: "(one would think that Louis Wu would have noticed this when flying there on the Long Shot in Ringworld)" in Homeworld — The Fleet of Worlds

I think the parenthetical remark here is speculative, but I think there's supporting evidence in Ringworld. Particularly:

"By now you know," said Chiron, "that we have been moving north along the galactic axis for the past two hundred and four of your Earth years. In kzin years --"

"But, Louis thought, it was about two hundred light years away. And it was along the galactic axis. Perhaps the puppeteers had chosen to move out of the galaxy along the shortest direction, then travel above the plane of the galaxy to reach the Lesser Cloud. Thus they would avoid interstellar debris: suns, dust clouds, hydrogen concentrations ..."

Which implies that the Puppeteer homeworld movement wouldn't preclude a final destination at the core or rim, since so far it's only moved "upwards" or "north" out of the galactic plane. Should this be thrown in as corroborating evidence?

Strangename (talk) 07:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Image

Is it appropriate to have a completely fanmade image like this?128.211.160.72 (talk) 04:19, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't look right. If it's going to be displayed, should probably be with other pictures to show the variety of interpretations. I always pictured them being a little stockier and certainly more fluffy. Where's the hair? And that thing doesn't look like it could roll into a ball very well. --DanielCD (talk) 01:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Gregory Pelton

Removed statement about General Products and Gregory Pelton. It was a mistake, based on a joke in one of the books. If there were ever an article on Gregory Pelton (unlikely), that would be the place for it. MikeR613 (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Puppeteer Souls

"In Ringworld, Nessus, a Puppeteer, explains how his race's cowardice is partly a result of a science experiment (the details of which are not given) that proves the Puppeteers have nothing equivalent to an immortal soul, and therefore death is, for their species, eternal oblivion." While this paragraph is correct from a strict reading of the text, I think it overlooks a whole pile of nuance and gives some false impressions. There's no indication throughout the Known Space stories that ANY species has souls. I always took this as Nessus being simultaneously diplomatic and condescending. By specifying only Puppeteers, he diplomatically avoids trampling over any of the other species religious beliefs, and implies their "insane" courage makes a kind of sense. On the other hand, Puppeteers clearly have a very high opinion of their own specific brand of rationality, with the implication that Nessus really thinks the other two species are simply too irrational to have fully grasped their own mortality. It comes across as a "lie to children" more than anything, but without any actual lying. LordQwert (talk) 20:32, 17 July 2018 (UTC)