From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!kaufman Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Title: Re: Nessus' name Article-I.D.: yale-com.982 Posted: Sun Feb 27 16:55:02 1983 Received: Mon Feb 28 20:12:52 1983 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. 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