How strong is the restriction against using the Kzinti?

Those barely even count as divergences. Heck, TOS itself used the "Star Fleet" spelling.

 

Not familiar with that book. I've got Star Trek Star charts, but never heard of Star Trek Maps. Maybe a game reference?

 

Star Trek Maps was the predecessor of Star Charts. It came out in 1980 and its main artist was Geoffrey Mandel, who was the main creator of Star Charts. (Rick Sternbach worked on Maps as well.)

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Maps

 

Thanks. Not sure how I could have missed it. Looks like it came right at the end of Bantam's license (I'm surprised; most of the stuff that wasn't narrative fiction came out of Ballantine before the beginning of the Pocket era, although there were notable exceptions, like the "Star Fleet Puzzle Manual" and the "Star Fleet Cooking Manual" (yes, it's a cookbook, and the preface includes a puzzle in the form of a FORTRAN program that was the purported food synthesizer algorithm for McCoy's favorite dish [if executed, as I recall, it prints out "CHICKEN 3.14159 SKEPTIC"]).

Used copies are all over the place in terms of price. Given that it has Humanx Commonwealth "Easter eggs" (I think most people around here already know I'm an ADF fan, awaiting By the Throat and Secretions with a proverbial worm on my tongue*), I can't exactly pass it up, so I just ordered one out of Alibris, at the cheapest price I could see anywhere.

____
* You know: "baited" breath.

 

I don't remember which work established the name of the Kzinti state as the "Patriarchy", but David Mack slipped in a reference to the Patriarchy in Mirror Universe - Rise Like Lions.

 

Kzinti were just mentioned in a new article by Rich Handley at startrek.com: http://www.startrek.com/article/in-the-year-2255

 

In Known Space, the Patriarchy is the name of the central government of the Kzinti Empire (whose ruler is known as the Patriarch of Kzin). The term apparently originated in Ringworld in 1970. In Star Trek, the name was not used in "The Slaver Weapon" or in Alan Dean Foster's adaptation thereof. As far as I can tell, 1980's Star Trek Maps is the first mention of the "Kzinti Patriarchy" in a Trek context. Star Trek Star Charts includes an alien government called simply "The Patriarchy" as a callback to this, though it couldn't actually mention the Kzinti.

 

Niven says that Roddenberry asked him to adapt that story. Niven's original pitch, which he mentions in one of his collections, was what ultimately became the Bey Schaeffer story "The Borderlands of Sol," which I've never been able to see as a Star Trek story.

Niven can't be that opposed to Star Trek; just a few years ago, he allowed John Byrne to use a Pierson's Puppeteer on a cover for IDW's Star Trek: Frontier Doctor mini-series.

 

That might be more about Byrne than about Trek. Byrne and Niven collaborated on Green Lantern: Ganthet's Tale, the Niven-plotted 1992 graphic novel that introduced the character of Ganthet. That comic has a Puppeteer on the cover too -- and a Thrint (Slaver), both depicted as Green Lanterns.

 

True; when asked about it Byrne said he did it with Niven's permission. If Byrne wanted to do a Kzin comic book story and he asked Niven, Niven may well say yes. But if you asked Niven to use the Kzin in one of your Enterprise novels, he might blow you off entirely.

 

I think the folks around here know that I'm the last person who'd want to do that.

 

But that came after ST Maps. That was published in August 1980, and "The Wristwatch Plantation" was a 1982 storyline. The Kzin first appear in the Sunday, April 4 strip, and the Patriarch of Kzin (the monarch) is first name-dropped on April 8. The phrase "Kzinti Patriarchy" as a name of the state doesn't appear until June 24, 1982.

(Checks) Holy off-brand knockoffs, Batman, you're right! I've had the maps for, egad, 36 years, and I either never noticed that or completely forgot it.