A World Out of Time
 First edition cover | |
| Author | Larry Niven |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Rick Sternbach |
| Language | English |
| Series | The State |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Holt, Rinehart and Winston |
Publication date | 1976 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 243 |
| ISBN | 0-03-017776-6 |
| OCLC | 2202363 |
| Followed by | The Integral Trees |
A World Out of Time is a science fiction novel by Larry Niven published in 1976. It is set outside the Known Space universe of many of Niven's stories, but is otherwise fairly representative of his 1970s hard science fiction novels. The main part of the novel was originally serialized in Galaxy magazine as "Children of the State"; another part was originally published as the short story "Rammer". A World Out of Time placed fifth in the annual Locus Poll in 1977.[1]
Plot summary
[edit]Jerome Branch Corbell has incurable cancer, so he has himself cryogenically frozen in 1970 in the faint hope of a future cure. He is revived in 2190 by a totalitarian global government called "the State". His personality and memories are extracted (destroying his body in the process) and transferred into the body of a mindwiped criminal.
After awakening, he is continually evaluated by Pierce, a "checker" who has to decide whether he is worth keeping. With the threat of his own mindwiping looming, Corbell works hard to pass various tests. Pierce concludes that Corbell is a loner and born tourist, making him an ideal candidate to pilot a one-man Bussard ramjet, seeding suitable planets as the first step to terraforming them. Figuring out it is a one-way trip and disgusted with the State's treatment of him as an expendable commodity, Corbell hijacks the ship after its launch and decides to visit the center of the galaxy instead. (It was at this point that the original short story ended.)
Pierce (actually named Peerssa) cannot talk him out of it. Through subterfuge, an artificial intelligence (AI) program based on Peerssa's personality is secretly beamed into the ship's computer. Though the Peerssa AI opposes the detour, it cannot disobey Corbell's direct orders.
After a lengthy journey, made possible only by Corbell undergoing suspended animation, he returns to the Solar System. Only about 150 years have passed on the ship, but three million years have elapsed on Earth due to extreme time dilation. Viewing him as a potential threat to the State, Peerssa did not offer a different route home which would have returned him to an Earth only seventy thousand years older, when the State might possibly still have existed.
At first, Corbell wonders if he is in the wrong system because it has changed considerably; the star is a red giant and what might be Earth is in orbit around what could be a much hotter Jupiter. Having followed a message clearly from humans (warning not to visit other human-occupied star systems), and being too old to survive going anywhere else, Corbell puts the ship into orbit around what turns out to be Earth.
The climate has changed, especially the surface temperature; the poles are now temperate, while the former temperate zones reach temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius (120+ degrees Fahrenheit). The poles also experience six years of night and six of day. Almost all remaining life has adapted to live in Antarctica, except for some indications of biological activity in the Himalayan mountains.
When Corbell lands (in a modified biological probe), he is captured by Mirelly-Lyra, who is a fellow returned starship crewperson and refugee from the past — though from Corbell's future. She explains that the human species has fragmented; it is dominated by a race of immortal, permanently pre-adolescent males (the Boys). Sometime in the past, they had defeated the equally immortal (though now extinct) Girls in the ultimate war of the sexes. The Boys have enslaved the dikta, unmodified humans (though they have evolved somewhat), from whom they take boys to replenish their ranks.
Mirelly-Lyra had initially been a captive toy of the Girls. After their downfall, she obsessively searched in vain for the lost adult-immortality treatment, extending her life as much as possible using her own anti-aging drugs and a form of zero-time stasis, while waiting for another returning starship and potential help. Because she could not stop the aging process entirely, she is an old crone by the time she captures Corbell. He manages to escape from her, only to be caught by the Boys, who take him to a dikta settlement. Corbell finds out that the Girls moved the Earth to a habitable distance from the Sun, made much more energetic by a breakaway interstellar colony in its war with the State, but an error caused Jupiter to overheat. In desperation, the Girls tried to take over the Boys' territory to save themselves, but lost. With Gording, the dikta leader, Corbell escapes once more.
Eventually, Corbell discovers the adult-immortality treatment by accident, only realizing it after he shows signs of rejuvenation. He uses it to enlist Mirelly-Lyra's help, which in turn gives him control of his ship. (Peerssa has decided that Mirelly-Lyra is the last survivor of the State and will obey only her.) Peerssa maneuvers the planet Uranus (previously used by the Girls to move the Earth using its gravitational attraction) to drag Earth into a new orbit further from Jupiter to lower the temperature without killing the plants and animals that have adapted to the extreme conditions.
He figures out a way to liberate the dikta and enable them to regain control of their own destiny and repopulate the world.
Literary significance and reception
[edit]The New York Times reviewer Gerald Jonas wrote that, in a novel filled with wonders, "Niven describes everything in the toneless accents of a tour guide on a fall foliage caravan. . . . after a while, the wonders begin to blur together [and] the reader begins to yearn for less matter and more art."[2] Jerry L. Parsons in his review for the Library Journal said that A World Out of Time was reminiscent in parts of 2001: A Space Odyssey and To Your Scattered Bodies Go. He wrote, "a wonderfully escapist adventure, this story has a minimum of character development and description, but a maximum of excitement."[3]
Geoff Ryman has described A World Out of Time as one of Niven's "hardest" works, but went on to specify that many of the concepts Niven used as plot points were "disintegrated by later research".[4]
Robert Silverberg reviewed World unfavorably, terming it a "rambling, loose-jointed novel that seems to have assembled itself out of the handiest pieces in the heap while its author's attention was elsewhere."[5] Richard A. Lupoff was similarly critical, saying Niven "starts out like a Saturn V and all too soon fizzles like a Vanguard. . . . this is either a novel that begins well and then goes dreadfully wrong or a cobbling together of several novelettes the first of which is a beauty and the others of which are stinkers."[6]
Awards and nominations
[edit]A World Out of Time was a nominee for the following awards:
- 1977 Locus Award in the Novel category (5th place)[7]
- 1977 Ditmar Award in the international science fiction category[8]
Connections to other Niven works
[edit]The story does not take place in Niven's Known Space. It does share the same setting as two of his other novels, The Integral Trees (1983) and The Smoke Ring (1987) as well as the short story "The Kiteman". All three novels feature the totalitarian interplanetary State, "corpsicle" personality transfers into mind-wiped criminals without civil rights, police-like enforcers called "checkers," and a computer artificial intelligence personality in charge of a ramship expedition that seeds life in other systems to prepare them for human colonization.
Literary reference
[edit]The protagonist's name is a play on that of the author James Branch Cabell, whom Niven also mentions in some of his other writing.
See also
[edit]- The Wandering Earth, a Chinese film and novel that also features an interaction between the Earth and Jupiter in an attempt to escape the Sun's death
References
[edit]- ^ "Locus Index to SF Awards". Archived from the original on July 30, 2011. Retrieved July 29, 2011.
- ^ "Of Things to Come", The New York Times Book Review, October 17, 1976
- ^ Parsons, Jerry L. (September 1, 1976). "A World Out of Time (Book)". Library Journal. 101 (15): 1800. ISSN 0363-0277.
- ^ Notes from Novacon 40, transcribed by Nelson Cunnington, from Ansible 281, posted December 2010, retrieved February 28, 2010
- ^ "Books," Cosmos, July 1977, p.35.
- ^ "Lupoff's Book Week", Algol 28, 1977, p.55.
- ^ "The Locus Index to SF Awards: 1977 Locus Awards". Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
- ^ "The Locus Index to SF Awards: 1977 Ditmar Awards". Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
External links
[edit]- A World Out of Time title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- A World Out of Time at Worlds Without End