"The Man Who Would Be Kzin"

Greg Bear and SM Stirling, "The Man Who Would Be Kzin" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars IV (Riverdale, NY, 1991), pp. 245-311.

OK. Buford Early, whom we know from the two interconnected trilogies, shows up here so these seven stories deffo hang together as a sub-sub-series -

series: Larry Niven's Known Space future history; 

sub-series: the Man-Kzin Wars;

sub-sub-series: 3 stories by Anderson, 3 by Pournelle & Stirling, 1 by Bear & Stirling.

"The Man Who Would Be King" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling so "The Man Who Would Be Kzin" is a clever pun but what does it mean? In Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind some human Avalonians join choths and wish that they were Ythrians so does Bear's and Stirling's title character, Lawrence Halloran, wish that he was a kzin? It turns out that Halloran is a projecting telepath so the question is whether he can spy on the kzinti by persuading them that he is one of them. But the title turns out to have a second layer of meaning. There are ways in which Halloran would like to be a kzin.