Writing Prisoner of War This discussion assumes you've read the short story Prisoner of War. If you haven't you should go and read it before proceeding, otherwise this won't make much sense to you, and will spoil the story! Prisoner of War was the first serious story I wrote, and my first sale. I didn't write it to sell it, I wrote it because the company I was working for at the time made me keep timesheets, and time spent away from my desk had to be made up later, which meant spending unpaid evenings and weekends in the office. Writing software, like writing books, is a creative endeavour and I find time with my head out of the problem as important as time with my head in the problem. Prior to working for this company my approach to head-out-time was to take a quick walk. The timesheets penalized this approach, so instead I simply flipped screens on my text editor and wrote the story. It took a long time, perhaps six months, to produce the ten or twelve thousand words that went into it, but I was in no hurry. I chose to write a story set in the Man Kzin Wars for a few reasons. First and foremost was simply that I loved Larry Niven's work and the Kzinti in particular. I was delighted to see the series when it debuted. The first books served to reveal one of the central mysteries of Known Space, how a pacific human race which has abandoned both war and weapons manages to defeat an aggressive predator species possessed of both high technology and a drive to conquest. This concept makes for good prose and drama, but by the third book this had been done so effectively that it seemed to me that it was the Kzinti who were the underdogs, and well on their way to becoming an endangered species. This is in accordance with the canon of Known Space, where it is established that the kzinti lose 85% of their population in the wars, but it took away some of the tension from the stories. The kzinti are the masters of an interstellar empire older than human civilization and are individually both brave and lethal warriors and I wanted to show them in all their predatory ferocity. In the canon the Puppeteers breed humans for luck by rigging the Birthright lotteries that determine who gets to have children, and breed kzinti for restraint by pitting them against humans. The story's central character, the kzin known as Fleet Commander, has evolved not to docility but to subtle strategy. When captured he outwits Major Long, his human interrogator, at his own game and escapes, singlehandedly gutting a capital ship in the process. I originally intended to have end the story by having Fleet Commander destroy the ship and himself with it, but by the time I got to that point in the story that ending was impossible. Destroying the ship would inevitably kill Major Long, and while Fleet Commander is heroic enough to die as a martyr the trick he plays on Long to gain his freedom also binds his honour to Long's safety. In due course I left the dysfunctional consulting company, and had the story sitting on my hard disk, waiting for nothing in particular. Some months later I polished it up and sent it off to Larry Niven. I really didn't expect to hear anything back, except possibly a terse rejection arriving months later. I was accordingly stunned when about two weeks later a letter with his return address arrived in my mailbox. I tore it open on the spot, dreading a rejection, and read instead his enthusiastic praise along with a a carbon copy of a letter to Jim Baen recommending publication. It was a wonderful moment. Having Larry Niven put your first-ever story into the Man/Kzin Wars series is the science fiction equivalent of having Mick Jagger put a track from your basement band on the latest Stone's album. Visions of fame and fortune danced through my head. Of course one short story does not make for fame and fortune, no matter where it's published. At the time volume four of the MKW had just come out, and I had to watch two more volumes go to press before my story finally hit the shelves.