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From: VAF@CMU-CS-C.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Niven's Protectors (SFL V10#313)
Message-ID: <3220@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 22:26:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3220
Posted: Fri Aug  9 22:26:55 1985
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From: Vince.Fuller@CMU-CS-C.ARPA

        Bigger question, though.  This one has always bothered me
  about Niven's universe.  What the heck happens to Home after the
  Protectors left to beat off the Pak ?  Obviously, our guys win,
  because even by Louis Wu's time, Pak were unknown.  But what happens
  to Home itself, with all that Tree-Of-Life virus floating in the
  atmosphere ?  It bugs me.

My guess would be that the Home Protectors continue to keep the human race as
a whole as its charge, looking out for us and keeping us out of trouble. The
Home colony was given as a failure in the timeline in "Tales of Known Space",
and "Protector" has, at least for me, the impression of being a report that
was never seen by most of humanity - the Protecors probably just kept Home for
themselves as a base. Keep in mind that Protectors live a LONG time,
O(10Kyears), so they need not even supplement their numbers very often. Maybe
the Puppeteer "eugenics" program for Kzinti and humans is really the result of
the Protectors manipulating the Puppeteers... It protects humanity from its
most dangerous adversary to date, and makes more sense than the Puppeteers just
doing it because "they like humans" (as stated in "Ringworld Engineers").

	--Vince
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