Teela Brown

Teela Brown is a fictional character created by Larry Niven in the Ringworld novels. Teela was the fourth crewmember sought by the Puppeteer Nessus for the expedition to the Ringworld. Her sole qualification was the Puppeteer's trust (see below) in Teela's luck. She was the descendant of five generations of winners of the Birthright lottery. Teela could be called the "good luck charm" of the expedition.

According to the story, Puppeteers intervened with the birth control laws of Earth and set up the Birthright lottery through front men specifically to breed human beings for luck, which they believed to be a psionic ability.

Niven later realized the problem such a character and such a psionic trait would pose to his story and to his fictional universe. In subsequent Ringworld novels, Teela is first killed off, and then her luck is explained away as a "statistical fluke." Once Teela herself becomes a superintelligent Protector, she states that she herself did not believe she had been lucky.

In Ringworld's Children we learn that Teela Brown and Louis Wu had a child, who remained on the Ringworld after the Fringe War was brought to an end. Louis then suggests that it might be Teela's genes, not Teela herself, that are lucky. However, using the biology of the Pak as a guide, the book suggests that one might argue that what is lucky for Teela is becoming a Protector and safeguarding her descendants.

Criticism
Teela Brown's "luck" has often been criticized as a deus ex machina, although it was not used as such in Ringworld. Louis Wu specifically points out to Nessus that what is lucky for Teela could be dangerous to her companions. The concept has also been criticized on logical grounds; the usual reasoning is that if "good luck" were truly a genetic characteristic, one wouldn't need to breed for it. As the ultimate survival trait, it would automatically become the dominant characteristic of the human race. The supposed breeding method to get a lucky human, selecting five generations of people who win only one contest (no evidence is shown that these individuals ever had any other good fortune) has also been ridiculed. Niven's response of changing the power to "lucky genes" rather than individuals has lessened these arguments, since as long as a person has at least one surviving offspring, it could still be said that their bloodline is "lucky" from an evolutionary standpoint, even if that person suffers or dies.

It has been suggested by some fans (though not confirmed by Niven) that the story of a "good luck charm" was merely a ruse by the Puppeteer leadership to convince Nessus (who was shown in Ringworld and "The Soft Weapon" to be very suggestible) to take part in a dangerous expedition.

Teela Brown ティーラ・ブラウン Teela Brown