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"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
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In the future universe of Larry Niven, mankind encounters a very warlike species, the kzin. Described as looking like an eight-foot tall tabby cat, with paws the size of baseball mitts and long retractable claws, the kzin had a warrior culture that demanded fighting at the slightest provocation. The journey has been arranged by puppeteers, an obsessively cautious species. How to travel safely with a kzin?
Niven uses the word "tasper" to describe a person who pranks with a tasp:
"Have you ever been hit by a tasp? None of my business, of course."
Teela grinned derision for his delicacy. "Yes, I know what it feels like. A moment of - well, there's no describing it. But you don't use a tasp on yourself. You use it on someone who isn't expecting it. That's where the fun comes in. Police are always picking up taspers in parks."
The puppeteer is a three-legged plant-eating herd animal; ordinarily, not much of a threat to a kzin. The puppeteers as a species rarely engaged in direct physical confrontation (too dangerous); they tended to use long-range planning and indirect actions. The tasp is well-suited to their purposes; it induces a current in the pleasure center of the brain at a distance.
The author remarks that
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'
Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
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