By 1964 he had sold his first story, "The Coldest Place," to
Worlds of If. Two years later he turned another short story into his first published novel,
World of Ptavvs, the book which initiated his "Known Space" series. With this novel, Niven also introduced one of his major themes--contact with an alien civilization by humans. The planet Thrintun wants to enslave all other races through their power of mind control. The "ptavv" in the title is their word for slave, and that is the plan for planet Earth: to create a world of slaves. Kzanol is the alien representative marooned on Earth and his human opposite is Larry Greenberg, who executes a memory transfer with the Thrintun alien. According to Wilson in
Dictionary of Literary Biography, "The novel's success lies in its differentiation of human and alien perspectives." Niven continued his Known Space series with
A Gift from Earth, a book which deals with the ethics of organ transplant. The colonists on the planet Plateau finally revolt against the tyrannical masters known as the "crew"--descendants of the space crew which brought the first colonizers to the planet.
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