Pierson's Puppeteers

Pierson's Puppeteers, often known just as Puppeteers, are a fictional alien race from Larry Niven's Known Space books.

Biology and sociology

Physically, Puppeteers resemble an ostrich with two heads and three legs. The heads are very small, with extensive lips and a single eye per head. The heads do not contain the puppeteer's brain; it resides near the shoulder in a massive mane-covered hump from which the heads emerge. The sobriquet "Pierson's" comes from the name of the human who made first contact in the early 26th century in the Known Space timeline.

Biologically, Puppeteers are herbivores (making them unique in Larry Niven's universe). Originally a herd animal, Puppeteers prefer the company (and smell) of their own kind. Their cycle of reproduction is unusual, but Earth cognates exist in the form of digger wasps.

Technically, the Puppeteers are very advanced, centuries or millennia ahead of most other species (including humans). For example, humans invented a method of cheap teleportation in the twenty-fifth century called a transfer booth, which requires an enclosed space at either end of the transmission. Puppeteers' version of the transfer booth is the stepping disc, which requires no enclosure — simply step on a disc and you are abruptly elsewhere, often thousands of kilometres away.

Socially, the three most notable traits of Puppeteers are their racial/cultural penchant for cowardice, their tendency to congregate in large numbers, and their steadfast honesty in honoring agreements. The cowardice is thought in Puppeteer society to originate with the Puppeteer instinct for turning one's back on danger. However, the trait is thought by many to actually originate from their herd instinct, as the instinct to turn one's back is linked to an instinct to kick the hind hoof at an attacker.

Politics and relations with other species

Politically, the puppeteers have a form of democracy with two major parties: the Conservatives and the Experimentalists. The Conservatives have held power for a majority of Puppeteer history; Experimentalist regimes only take power when a crisis threatens the safety of the Puppeteer race, and action is considered less dangerous than inaction.

General Products

The Puppeteers' renown for honesty in trading allowed the species to accumulate a great mercantile empire called General Products. The most famous (and most profitable) items produced by General Products are General Products hulls, which are impervious to just about everything apart from visible light.

There are four General Products hulls available for sale, each of which can easily be adapted and customised to any specific need. In the story Neutron Star, Beowulf Shaeffer, who is narrating, mentions that around 95% of all contemporary spacecraft are built around a General Products hull.

More work will be done on this section imminently.

Foreign policy

The general foreign policy of Puppeteers consists attempts to control the universe around them to ensure their own safety. As Puppeteers try to expose themselves to as little risk as possible, they try to use other beings as agents, utilizing a combination of bribes and blackmail to encourage cooperation.

In Ringworld, it was revealed that the Puppeteer government meddled in human and Kzinti gene pools. They started a series of wars (the Man–Kzin Wars) between the warlike Kzinti and humans, and guaranteed that the Kzinti lose each time. This was a mechanism to cause rapid Kzinti evolution, in order to suppress their racial instinct for aggression.

Another Puppeteer breeding experiment was the Lucky Human Project. The puppeteer government concluded that humans' most notable quality was luck, and decided to improve this trait. Manipulating politics on Earth, the Puppeteers caused 'Birth Lotteries' on Earth, around 2650, biasing human genetic selection (controlled, in the Known Space universe, by the Fertility Board of the United Nations) towards encouraging luck; the character Teela Brown, who journeys to the Ringworld is an outcome of this Lucky Human Project.

More work will be done on this section imminently.

Homeworld — The Fleet of Worlds

For centuries, the location of the Puppeteer homeworld was a great mystery. No entity in Known Space outside the Puppeteer race was aware of the location and extensive surveys failed to locate it. Puppeteers were willing to pay large sums of hush money in order to suppress even trivial details about their homeworld. Eventually, it was revealed that the Puppeteer homeworld was moved to their system's Oort cloud, due to the conversion of the Puppeteers' sun from a yellow dwarf to a red giant. In 2641 AD, it was discovered that the Puppeteers' homeworld has no moon, information deduced as a result of the single failing of General Products hulls — as the Puppeteers have no experience of tidal forces, GP hulls are not impervious to them.

In the short story At the Core, Beowulf Shaeffer, who made the discovery about tidal forces five years previously, in Neutron Star, discovers that the Galactic Core is exploding. This news prompts the Puppeteer Exodus, where the Puppeteer homeworld and four terraformed 'farming worlds', collectively known as the Fleet of Worlds, flee the galaxy at near light speed for the Magellanic Clouds, in the hope that by the time the explosion reaches the Fleet of Worlds, the Puppeteers will have found a way to protect their civilisation. This exodus prompts a major stock market crash in human society; in 2864, the Fleet of Worlds leaves (human) Known Space.

See also

• I Marc Carlson's Known Space timeline