A World Out of Time

I’m still not entirely sure why I’m continuing to read, or reread, Niven’s novels. He was never a favourite of mine when I was reading science fiction back in the early 1980s, although Ringworld does continue to hold some fascination. A World Out of Time, which is not part of Niven’s Known Space universe, was a reread – at least, I used to own a copy of the book (the 1982 Futura edition with the Peter Andrew Jones cover art) and I’m pretty sure I read it… But reading the book this year, none of it was familiar. And I’m usually pretty good at remembering books I’ve read, no matter how long ago.

Anyway, A World Out of Time is a Larry Niven novel. Corbell is dying of cancer, so he has himself frozen. And wakes in 2190, in show more the body of another man. Criminals in the worldwide State of 2190 have their personalities wiped. And the personalities of people who had themselves frozen in earlier centuries are then decanted into the criminals’ bodies (the process destroys the frozen body). The State which runs the world is mostly fascist, although Niven wants to present it as near-utopian. But people such as Corbell are considered less than human, and are employed in the sort of professions that would otherwise be occupied by slaves and, well, inmates in present-day US corporate-run prisons.

Corbell seems best-suited to become the pilot of a “rammer”, which is a single-person Bussard ramjet-powered spaceship which carries “biological package probes” used to terraform planets that are almost Earth-like. He is trained in his new role by being injected with RNA (not how it works, but never mind). Eventually, he is launched in his ship on a mission planned to take some 200 years at near lightspeed, returning him to Earth 300 years later. He’d spend most of the trip in cold sleep. But Corbell rebels, and aims his spaceship at the galactic core, intending to return to Earth 70,000 years later (not how it works, but never mind).

He judges it likely the State will still exist 70,000 years in the future, because it is a “water empire” but has no external enemies to bring it down (not how it works, but never mind; in fact, the concept of water empires has long since been debunked). Unfortunately, his watchdog back on Earth manages to upload his personality into the spaceship’s computer and it sabotages Corbell’s plan. So Corbell actually returns to Earth three millions years after he left.

Unsurprisingly, a lot has changed since 2190. Not least of which is that the Sun is now a red giant (which it won’t be three million years from now), and Earth has been moved into orbit about Jupiter. The State has long since vanished – eventually brought low by its own colonies. The secret of immortality was discovered, but only a select few, the Dictator class, were privy to it. But then an alternative process arrested development at the age of eleven, resulting in warring civilisations of immortal Boys and Girls.

On landing on Earth, which is now mostly inhospitable desert, Corbell is taken prisoner by the pilot of a Bussard ramjet spaceship who left centuries after him, and returned millennia before him. She had been kept in a “zero-time prison”, but later escaped. She is now old, but repeatedly mentions how beautiful she used to be (you can probably guess where that leads). She wants the secret of immortality for herself. Corbell escapes, and flees to Antarctica, which is temperate, and where some surviving Boys live in the ruins of one of their cities.

Nothing in A World Out of Time is even remotely believable, even for a science fiction novel. The trip through the galactic core manages to make a hash of everything from cosmology to physics. The Earth of three million years hence is just far too familiar – cars might fly, but cities have subways (and matter transmission booths, huh) and hospitals and police stations. The characterisation of the female antagonist is mostly offensive; Niven struggles to show the Boys are as super-intelligent as he tells us they are. The politics are everything you would expect of a white American male who lives a life of unearned wealth and privilege.

A World Out of Time is actually a fix-up of three earlier stories, and the State apparently makes an appearance in two later novels, The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring. show less

Who starts their novel with a trip to the center of the universe? That’s how you end a novel! Well, not Niven, he starts out this novel with complex, incredible, hard sci-fi ideas (at least at the time), and then follows it up with a whole another series of imaginative and complex concepts including solar system engineering, artificial intelligence, terraforming, and immortality to name a few. It’s the hard sci-fi ideas that kept me turning pages, unfortunately not the plot or characters.

Niven wrote this novel in the mid-1970’s, which started in pieces and parts as a short story and a serial in ‘Galaxy’ magazine. He combined and published these as a novel in 1976. The book finished seventh in the novel category of the 1977 show more Locus awards. He went on to write two more sequels which are titled “The Integral Trees” and “The Smoke Ring.”

To me, the book felt like a collection of separate components, rather than a single cohesive story. There are enough ‘big ideas’ to support several novels, but unfortunately, while the book exceeds in ideas, it underperforms in character development and engaging prose. It might be a stretch, but I saw inspiration from H.G. Well’s “The Time Machine” and even J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan.”

The book starts strong with our protagonist, Jaybee Corbell waking from a cryogenic sleep only to find he is basically a slave to ‘The State.’ (Now I know where Dennis E. Taylor got his inspiration for “We Are Legion (We Are Bob).”) The State has awaked Corbell to become a starship pilot and embark on a mission to several distant star systems and seed worlds for future terraforming. Well, Corbell has other ideas and heads for the galactic center. Eventually, Corbell returns to Earth, only to find a reorganized solar system and a barely recognizable planet, due to the passing of millions of years from space travel time dilation. From here on, we follow Corbell as he journeys though a wonderous, yet hostile environment. There were also a few extremely ‘cringy’ sex scenes (an orgy and one that borders on violence), despite multiple descriptions of Corbell’s low sex drive. I could have done without those. Anywho, I enjoyed the future worldbuilding and the slowly revealed history of Earth and its inhabitants, but the storytelling itself was lacking.

A 1970’s hard sci-fi novel which, while starting strong and filled with big intriguing hard sci-fi ideas, eventually falls short on character building and storytelling. Three stars. show less

I found this book last summer at the annual Newtown Library book sale. Having enjoyed Niven's Ringworld series, I thought that I'd give it a try. I didn't notice that cat-snake thing on the cover right away. I think my mind blocked out the head because you look at that thing and think, "WTF?"

The book blurb covers the events that transpire over the first third of the book. The remaining two-thirds deals with Corbell alternating between figuring out how to stay alive—he's well over a century old and not long for the world—and figuring out how the hell Earth got so screwed up while he was away.

Published in 1976, it has a lot of the literary elements common to sci-fi during this period (New Wave): sex, the end of civilization, show more alienation, social isolation, and class discrimination. Throw in a dose of libertarian distrust of the state and you're good to go. Niven also spends a good deal of time playing with physics puzzles to convince the reader that this is hard sci-fi and not space fantasy. I don't think it was necessary, but maybe he felt the need to placate that crowd.

It was an entertaining story despite the warts: The sex scenes were totally male fantasy, and women were reduced to the maiden/mother/crone trope. Corbell isn't the best person to be a protagonist—he could be annoying at times—but he occasionally shows promise. Ultimately, he's all we've got. We have to root for him so that we can find out why things got to be the way they are. The explanation was worth the ride, though I wouldn't blame women for disagreeing. show less

I always hear Niven is worth reading for people who enjoy science fiction. I tried Mote in God's Eye and felt unimpressed so I Figured I'd give his work another try. This try fared worse than the previous. The other I at least finished. for this one, I reached page 112 out of 214 for the book but I kept finding reasons to not read the book.

The premise sounded interesting, with someone stealing a ship from the State to fly to the galactic center and back to earth. This is listed in the blurb, so not a spoiler. The problem that made me stop reading: None of the characters were sympathetic enough to want to follow. Honestly, the POV character J B Corbell came across as a pompous arse. Perhaps because of the time since the book was written, show more the science felt off regarding the planet and what happened in the solar system. Yes, millions of years have passed, but all the suggested changes don't work for where we are now. Maybe things changed from 1976 to when I read it.

Another book to fall onto my Dud pile. Not recommended. show less

Jerome Corbell, a man cryogenically frozen in 1970 for cancer, awakens in 2190 to a totalitarian Earth where his mind is implanted into a new body for a one-way mission to seed planets. Disgusted, Corbell hijacks his starship, heads for the galactic core to escape, but due to relativistic time dilation, returns to an Earth 3 million years later, finding a radically changed world with strange, immortal boy-rulers and a desperate struggle to survive and find a true home.

"A World Out Of Time", Larry Niven (1976)

This is a novel that has stuck with me for more than 30 years…and it is only now at the third (fourth?) reading that I claim it for myself and proclaim it a wonderful story. For some reason, every time I read it in the past, the title and author never really registered in my memory…but the story did.

It's probable that the first third of the book put me to sleep. This is the part where the protagonist awakens from cryogenic freezing to find his cancer cured—via a new body, and his only option for life is to pilot an interstellar ramjet to seed the stars. When he cuts loose and decides to visit the galaxy's core instead (and contends with a recalcitrant computer personality) we get an show more interesting read…but not an exciting one.

The real action comes when he finally returns to Earth several million years after he left it to find… Well, that's the story; that's the part that has stuck in my memory to resurface repeatedly, at odd intervals, over the years:

• A crazy woman with super weapons and a desire for a lost youth
• Immortal children
• The search for a lost immortality procedure for adults
• An irresistible aphrodisiac

This book is filled with little vignettes that I could not, and cannot forget. I challenge you to not contemplate what you would do in the hero's place—would you fight? or bide your time? (they are only children, after all.) Would you accept the ramship computer's offer to transfer your awareness into a cloned body? Do you think you could handle sex with several dozens of people watching? Would you be upset that you are finally tricked into sex, against your will(?)

In researching if Niven wrote a sequel to this book I find that this story is part of the "State" series, with the "Integral Trees" as a sub-serial. So I've already ready much of the series but never connected them as such. (It's comforting to know that I can probably find all the missing episodes online and get them for just a few dollars.)

If you like Niven, you'll like reading this one. show less

Okay boys and girls, are you ready for the ultimate water-controlling state? No? Well tough, because other boys and girls have become immortal and have misplaced the Earth next to Jupiter and you're a corpsicle and you're a LONG way from home. Or at least a short hop to the center of the galaxy and back can be considered a long way, if only in relativistic time.
Sure, the characters are sometimes spotty, but as a fantastic idea-generator, Niven excels. I think I might enjoy the novels even more because I like to use my own imagination while I read and fill in the blanks as I go, giving more depth to the worlds I see. There's plenty to add, and they're always a fun ride. When I was younger I absolutely adored them, and as I am now, I'm show more tempted to say I still adore them. Don't get into these expecting a great artistic masterpiece, but if you don't mind coloring in a few lines yourself, you'll be richly rewarded. show less