Carl Brown wrote:

> I'm sure I've also seen the data on the net as an Excel file somewhere...
> Also be sure to check out extrasolar planets on the web to keep up to
> date and fill in all those systems not visited by Beowulf and Lois et
> al. (unless of coarse like me you want to harken back to the classic
> stories of the 70's).

Actually, I only plan to map those stars (and between-star locations,
such as where the /Angel's Pencil/ made first contact with the Kzinti)
which are significant to the stories. There are at least hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of stars within 50 light-years of Sol. While it may
be helpful for gaming purposes to map them all, for the purposes of my
Known Space Concordance, including stars having no significance in any
story would only make it difficult to spot the significant ones.

And I deliberately choose to use that game's data, which according to
what I've read on the Internet is from 1966. That's the "classic era"
of Known Space, and the data from that era is much more relevant to the
data Niven used when writing the stories. I'm shocked to discover in
one of the latest Known Space stories a reference to our galaxy being a
"barred spiral". This is *completely* incompatible with "At the Core".
Obviously the Known Space galaxy has a spherical core, as described in
"At the Core", indicating it's a *normal* spiral, as was theorized until
rather recently.

And as long as I'm complaining about Known Space revisionism, I don't
care for the reference to "virtual mail" in "Fly-By-Night", either. (I
was just looking at "The Defenseless Dead", and noted that Gil had a
computer spit out data onto his desk in tape format. Now it's true that
the Beowulf Shaeffer and Ringworld stories occur centuries later, but
note that in "Grendel", Bey and Emil *go* to the spaceport to look up
records; they don't look up online records via their own computers.)

E-mail and the Internet do *not* exist in Known Space. No doubt those
are among the many technologies suppressed by the ARM.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clear ether!
Lensman

Visit the Incompleat Known Space Concordance at:
http://www.freewebs.com/knownspace/