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