Dodechahedrons And Other Shapes

Let's check some more vocabulary.

"...a dome in the form of half a dodecahedron, three concentric helices bent into a semicircle, several curving dendritic masts or antennae..."
(Man-Kzin Wars III, p. 224)

"...a horizon vague with scud." (p. 213)

"She had arranged to hypothecate her half of the equity..." (p. 218)

"...sea and wrack." (p. 220)

"'...how everything aboard a ship bleshes together.'" (p. 234)

(A portmanteau of "blend" and "mesh," coined by Theodore Sturgeon, apparently.)

"...instruments on his vambrace..." (p. 238)

"...a haft of plastic riveted to the tang..." (p. 252)

"...a microtome edge." (p. 252)

"...a corner of the napery..." (p. 253) (and here)

"...cut back on a boondoggle..." (p. 265)

"'Let's throw a proper luau.'" (p. 266)

Overlapping Trilogies

(I have discovered that "Man-Kzin Wars IX" looks like "Man-Kzin War Six" if it is typed in lower case without punctuation or spaces: mankzinwarsix.)

"Iron" by Poul Anderson is in The Man-Kzin Wars (1988).

"The Children's Hour" by Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling is in Man-Kzin Wars II (1989).

"The Asteroid Queen" by JE Pournelle & SM Stirling and "Inconstant Star" by Poul Anderson are in Man-Kzin Wars III (1990).

"In The Hall Of The Mountain King" by Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling is in Man-Kzin Wars V (1992).

"Pele" by Poul Anderson is in Man-Kzin Wars IX (2002).

Each of these trilogies should be read in the order of publication. However, how do they relate to each other chronologically? I think that "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" precedes "Inconstant Star." However, any such judgment is subject to further reading/rereading and to other readers' comments.

Future histories are a subject of endless research.

Species With A Subordinate Sex

Merseian females are subordinate and confined to domestic roles, several wives to one male. Kzinti females are not intelligent, each successful male owning a harem! And -

"...the Sterile Ones...non-bearing females were kept as a rare privilege for Heroes whose accomplishments were not quite deserving of a mate of their own."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Children's Hour" IN Larry Niven, Ed., Man-Kzin Wars II (London, 1991), p. 206.

Kzinti are like Merseians but more so. They not only enslave other rational species but also eat them.

Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers have three sexes of which one is not intelligent and is really of a different species.

Merseian and kzinti females sound like how some male human beings think of women. A kzinti visitor to the inhabited Map of Kzin on the Ringworld is interested to find females who are intelligent.

AI Alternatives

Artificial Intelligence:

is impossible;
is possible but impractical;
will supersede organic intelligence.

These are possibilities considered by Poul Anderson. Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling suggest a fourth:

conscious computers quickly go insane.

This might be because a consciousness able to think in nanoseconds and to control its sensory input prefers to make a universe that will last subjectively forever in a few objective milliseconds.

In Anderson's A Circus Of Hells, an abandoned conscious computer alone on an isolated planet for five hundred years plays robotic chess and war games in order to preserve its sanity. Thus, it is moving in the direction of Pournelle's and Stirling's AI's.

Anderson covers nearly every possibility.

Ythrians And Kzinti

In an Ythrian flagship:

"The air blew warm, ruffling their plumes a little, scented with perfume of cinnamon bush and amberdragon. Blood odors would not be ordered unless and until the vessel got into actual combat; the crew would soon be worn out if stimulated too intensely."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 518.

And in a kzinti Slasher:

"...the cabin was furnace hot and dry, full of the wild odors of fear and blood that the habitation-system poured out in combat conditions."
-Jerry Pournelle & SM Stirling, Man-Kzin Wars II, p. 185.

Although Ythrians and kzinti are hunting carnivores, the former are fliers, needing room to spread their wings even in a spaceship and would soon go insane if confined in spacesuits. Thus, although they are stimulated by blood odors like the kzinti, they cannot travel or fight in the same cramped conditions as either kzinti or human beings.