Teela Brown
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
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 in Teela's luck: She was the descendant of six generations of winners of the Birthright lottery. Teela could be called the "good luck charm" of the expedition.
Teela and her luck were one of the more improbable and unbelievable elements of the Ringworld story. 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, then her luck is explained away as a "statistical fluke".
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.
