Kzin
The Kzin (plural Kzinti) are a fictional, very warlike and bloodthirsty race of felinoid aliens in Larry Niven's Known Space series.
Background and history
Template:Spoiler Kzinti evolved from a plains hunting cat, stole their current space-faring technology, and bred (most of) their own females into sub-sapience. They are larger than humans, standing around eight feet tall and weighing around five hundred pounds. These lion-sized bipeds have large membrane ears, a cylindrical torso without a spine, and large fangs and claws. A small percentage of Kzinti are stunted and exploited addictive telepaths, and they aren't legally allowed to breed.
They are the first on-going alien contact that humanity has met within the Known Space universe. The onset of their relationship with humanity ends the golden era, where humanity had almost completely succeeded in re-writing history into a non-violent whitewash, and where organized violence was only known about by roughly 1 in 1000 people, and there was no interpersonal violence, except occasional out-bursts in the asteroid belt where medical and psychological care were spread too thinly.
The Man-Kzin Wars
The Kzinti, with vast technical superiority (Including gravity drives, telepaths, and a large military empire), contacted a human fusion-driven exploration ship in deep space. After the telepath learned that the humans are unarmed and didn't even understand the concept of weapons they attempted to kill the human crew in a slow, painful manner using an inductive heating weapon hoping to capture their ship intact for intelligence purposes. However, humans being human, they realized that their fusion drive produced a "spike" of energy usable as a weapon. They destroyed the Kzinti ship, which thought they were unarmed, and warned Earth of the warlike aliens. Thus began the First Man-Kzin War.
In the course of the First Man-Kzin War, the kzinti invaded and occupied the human colony of Wunderland, in the Alpha Centauri system, using it as a staging point for an attack on Earth. In a replay of first contact, the peaceful humans used communications lasers, fusion drives, and mass drivers to cut the First Invasion to ribbons. However, after the close-run defeat of the Fifth Invasion, it was becoming clear to Earth's military leaders that the kzin were learning to wage war beyond 'scream and leap', and that the Solar System's defenses would quickly succumb to the kzin's superior numbers, firepower, and technology, were it only wielded with a modicum of tactical and strategic sense. In order to delay the next attack, a starship was deployed as a relativistic kill vehicle at 99% of the speed of light. Its impact on Wunderland devastated a portion of the planet, killing humans and Kzinti alike and throwing back the effort of sending yet another Kzinti attack fleet to Earth. A number of specialists traveled aboard this ship, using Stasis fields for lithobraking, and successfully assassinated the leader of the Kzinti on Wunderland. Yet, it was only a matter of time until the next assault fleet would come.
It was at this point that a passing Outsider ship sold the colony of We Made It the secret of hyperdrive, a technology not known to the kzinti. Hyperdrive ships were dispatched to Earth where the faster-than-light drive was used to pre-emptively attack the Sixth Invasion fleet, liberate Wunderland, and go on to attack other kzinti worlds. The FTL drive allowed the human fleets to coordinate and concentrate their forces beyond anything the kzin could manage, even letting them outrun and jam the news of each successive kzinti defeat. The first indication the kzinti Patriarchy had that much of the kzin empire was gone and that a significant percentage of all kzinti had died was when human warships appeared in the skies above their homeworld.
In several different stories by other authors playing in the universe we see references to a total of five additional Man-Kzin wars take place. The net effect of these wars is summed by a retrospective comment from Louis Wu in the Ringworld novels: "The kzinti aren't really a threat. They'll always attack before they're ready." With decreasingly impressive logistical and technological advantages, each Man-Kzin War results in the confiscation or liberation of one or more colony planets by the humans. In this way humanity contacts the Pierin and Kdatlyno, former slave species, and takes over worlds such as Canyon (formerly Warhead) and Fafnir (formerly Shasht).
Eventually (in Ringworld) we learn that the Kzinti reverses were deliberately engineered by the Pierson's Puppeteers, who lured the Outsiders to We Made It in the first place. The Puppeteers had hoped that the culling of a quarter to a third of the more aggressive members of the Kzin with every war would result in a more peaceful race, or at least one that was capable of coexisting with other species without trying to kill and eat them at every turn. This shift in kzinti attitudes succeeded spectacularly, although the kzinti themselves do not think very highly of the changes, nor of the price they paid to achieve them. As the Puppeteers expected, a form of natural selection occurred, with the more mindlessly aggressive Kzinti dying in ill-advised wars and the more moderate, intelligent, and cautious Kzinti surviving, presumably to think long and hard about the consequences of starting yet another Man-Kzin War. By the time the kzin attain the level of sophistication and foresight needed to win wars against humans, they no longer have the numbers or the drive to do so.
At one point, Louis Wu, while visiting the Kzinti homeworld and given access to the Kzinti Patriarch's game preserve was confronted by a young Kzinti and his father. When the youngster asked "are they good to eat?", Louis Wu responded with a grin (baring of the teeth being a Kzinti challenge to battle) and the older Kzin responded "NO". Wu muses that it would be safer for the young kzin to eat arsenic than a human being.
Kzinti in other science fiction
The Kzinti also appeared, along with allusions to slavers and stasis boxes, in The Slaver Weapon, an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series written by Niven. They were incorporated into the Star Fleet Universe where they became a powerful empire known as the Kzinti Hegemony, mortal enemies of that universe's Lyran Star Empire - although it is alluded that the Kzinti and Lyrans share common ancestry, a claim both sides violently reject. They have not otherwise been mentioned in the mainstream Star Trek universe. (Rumors continue to persist that the Tzenkethi - who have been mentioned in various Trek television shows - were based on the Kzinti, but this appears to be a coincidence based mainly on the similarity of the two races' names.)
The instruction manual for the PC game Star Fleet Command clearly refers to the Kzinti by name in the background story for the rival race, the Lyrans. This race is introduced in Star Fleet Command II: Empires at War by simply changing the Kzinti Hegemony to the Mirak Star League.
Kzinti are thought to have influenced the creation of the similarly Felinoid Kilrathi, the primary antagonists of the popular Wing Commander video game series of early-to-mid-nineties. Whether this is true or not, a small part of Wing Commander II takes place in a region of space called the Niven Sector.
Kzinti in the Star Fleet Universe
The Kzinti in the SFU - who have traits setting them apart (no bat ears, sentient females etc) from the Kzin of Niven's works - have fought wars with all of their neighbours, the Federation, the Klingon Empire and their perennial nemeses, the Lyran Star Empire, and are long-standing allies - or more accurately, co-belligerents - of the Hydran Kingdoms. The Hegemony eventually formed a tentative accord with the Federation and allied with them in the General War, but they have been involved in major wars with the Klingons and Lyrans, such as the Four Powers War and the General War itself, in which a substantial region of their territory was occupied by their Coalition enemies and two full-scale assaults were made on the Kzinti homeworld of Kzintai. Eventually with Federation assistance they forced the Coalition forces from their territory, but after the War ended they were involved in a Civil War as a disgruntled faction - which had been opposed to the Hegemony's ruling Patriarch and sought refuge and developed a power base in the WYN Cluster, launched an attempted coup of the Hegemony itself in the WYN War of Return
In the fictional variant of the Star Fleet Universe as represented in the games Star Fleet Command II: Empires at War and Star Fleet Command: Orion Pirates from Taldren, the Kzinti were renamed as the Mirak.
External links
- Kzin homepage at LarryNiven.org (fansite)
- Kzin image gallery
- Fan page about the Kzin language, including a Kzinti font
- Notes on the Kzinti Language. Another fan page about the Kzin language and script, presented in a mock-scholarly article.