The Man-Kzin Wars

This anthology opens the shared-universe project Larry Niven built around a war he'd only ever mentioned in passing in his Known Space fiction: humanity's first, catastrophic contact with the Kzinti, a militant feline species that badly underestimated a peaceful-seeming human civilization armed with lasers, fusion drives and mass drivers. It gathers three novellas -- Niven's own 'The Warriors,' Poul Anderson's 'Iron,' and Dean Ing's 'Cathouse' -- tracing the opening battles of a conflict that reshapes Known Space once humans gain access to hyperdrive technology. It became the first of many Man-Kzin Wars volumes, eventually drawing in other Known Space-adjacent writers. The book that launched Niven's long-running Man-Kzin Wars series.