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Betelgeuse the star
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David Hess:

--- Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on February 07, 2020, 11:24:06 pm ---
--- Quote from: rdl on January 28, 2020, 11:08:52 pm ---Now you guys have done it. I'm gonna have to drag all my old Niven books out of storage and read 'em again.
--- End quote ---

You know, I find A Gift From Earth enjoyable. World of Ptaavs is also a nice one.

My favorite stand-alonish novel is Protector.

I like his early stuff. Quick, fun, to the point, done.
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I always thought Protector would make an excellent movie but it would take a good music composer.  It could start with a pull out from Phssthpok's eye as he watches his fusion flame and end with a pull out from Truesdale's eye as he composes his letter to Earth.

You might like the non-canon follow up stories to Protector by Matthew Joseph Harrington in the later Man-Kzin war books.  I think they make more sense than Niven's Ringworld prequels as far as the Pak and they tie up many Known Space plot lines.  Niven never said what ultimately happened to Roy Truesdale and the Home Protectors.

The Man-Kzin novel Destiny's Forge by Paul Chafe is excellent if you can put up with a retelling of the plot from Dune.
Alex Eisenhut:
A World Out f Time would be good too.

For Protector, you'd need to expose the entire back-story of what a Protector is, the relationship to humans, how single-minded and smart and quick and strong they are, why they need Tree Of Life, why they'd come here sub-light, and what kind of havoc they would wreak.

World of Ptaavs relies on 1960s-1970s fascination with ESP which would not work well today.
David Hess:

--- Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on February 09, 2020, 05:12:16 pm ---For Protector, you'd need to expose the entire back-story of what a Protector is, the relationship to humans, how single-minded and smart and quick and strong they are, why they need Tree Of Life, why they'd come here sub-light, and what kind of havoc they would wreak.
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Conveniently the story already includes that in Phssthpok's flashbacks.  Later Truesdale discusses it with Nick and Garner although Truesdale was an unreliable narrator from the start.  Not everything has to be explained, just enough.

The whole plot just does not work at least if only canon Known Space stories are included but that is no worse than practically all Hollywood science fiction.  The original assumption about humans not being native to Earth is just wrong.  The Protector stories by Matthew Joseph Harrington that I mentioned earlier address this directly which is why I prefer them as an alternative.
Mr. Scram:

--- Quote from: David Hess on January 27, 2020, 11:00:08 am ---Betelgeuse is in its helium burning stage so its core is very hot and small which is why the outer envelope is so large.  There is every reason to expect it to become a supernova and produce a neutron star in the next 100,000 years at the soonest but consider that that is 50 times longer than recorded history so do not hold your breath waiting for it.

Jupiter is not even large enough to be a brown dwarf which can be distinguished by lack of lithium which gets fused in a significantly larger gas giant.

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Interestingly Jupiter is roughly as big as planets get. They can get heavier but compress that mass into similar or smaller spaces until they become a brown dwarf or star. There are larger planets but these hot Jupiters tend to be very close to their stars and are consequently hot and have swollen to very low densities.
David Hess:

--- Quote from: Mr. Scram on February 10, 2020, 12:14:46 am ---
--- Quote from: David Hess on January 27, 2020, 11:00:08 am ---Betelgeuse is in its helium burning stage so its core is very hot and small which is why the outer envelope is so large.  There is every reason to expect it to become a supernova and produce a neutron star in the next 100,000 years at the soonest but consider that that is 50 times longer than recorded history so do not hold your breath waiting for it.

Jupiter is not even large enough to be a brown dwarf which can be distinguished by lack of lithium which gets fused in a significantly larger gas giant.
--- End quote ---

Interestingly Jupiter is roughly as big as planets get. They can get heavier but compress that mass into similar or smaller spaces until they become a brown dwarf or star. There are larger planets but these hot Jupiters tend to be very close to their stars and are consequently hot and have swollen to very low densities.
--- End quote ---

Just going by memory, the distinction between gas giants and brown dwarfs is whether enough mass is present allow the fusion of residual lithium from the time of formation.  So Jupiter has lithium present and a brown dwarf, which will have more mass, does not because the lithium was used up in fusion which has since stopped because the mass is not enough to fuse hydrogen.

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