A World Out of Time

by Larry Niven

Paperback, 1977

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Library's review

Jorden og rummet, 2190 og ca mllioner år frem

Indeholder kapitlerne "1. Rammer", "2. Don Juan", "3. The House Divided", "4. The Norn", "5. Stealing Youth", "6. The Changelings", "7. The Dictators", "8. Dial at Random", "9. Peerssa for the State".

Jaybee Corbell vågner op efter lang tid som

nedfrossen. Eller rettere hans hjernemønstre vågner op i en anden krop. "Staten" har slettet en forbryders hjernemønstre og den har et stort lager af nedfrosne, som den kan forsøge sig med. Corbell får at vide at han er nr 4, de prøver med, så han gør sig en vis umage for at bestå deres tests. "Staten" mener at han skylder ca 30 års arbejde, hvis han vil være en fuldgyldig borger. Han bliver uddannet som pilot på en ramjet og sendt afsted. Han skal egentlig på en tur rundt til 10 stjerner og aflevere biopakker, men han vil se mere, så han stikker af med skibet. Og keder sig. Så han tænder for forbindelsen tilbage til Jorden og hans vejleder Piercy eller Peerssa uploader sig selv til skibets computer. Corbell kan få skibet op på nær-lyshastigheder, så i forhold til jordtid var den oprindelige mission på ca 70.000 år. Han tager imidlertid til kernen af galaksen, hvor han opdager et massivt sort hul. Peerssa hjælper med en kurs omkring hullet, som tager ca 3 millioner år på meget mindre subjektiv tid. Med brug af Cold Sleep og avanceret medicin kommer Corbell faktisk tilbage til Jorden og Solsystemet takket være Peressas evner som pilot. Corbell får ombygget en af biopakkerne, så den kan bruges som landingsfartøj og lander på Jorden. Der er i de forløbne tre millioner år flyttet lidt rundt på tingene, så Jorden er parkeret som en måne omkring Jupiter og klimaet er blevet meget varmere. Corbell er landet tæt ved noget, der ser ud til at bruge strøm og det viser sig at være en slags hus. Med Peressas hjælp bryder han ind i huset og finder et transportsystem, der kan flytte ham lynhurtigt rundt. Han havner i kløerne på en gammel dame, Mirelly-Lyra, der også har været en tur omkring det sorte hul. Hun leder efter en ungdomskur, som angiveligt er forbeholdt Diktator-klassen og forsøger at pine ud af ham hvad han ved om det. Det lykkes ham at flygte fra hende og hun aftaler med ham at han får et år til at finde kuren. Han tager en transport til en stor by, der virker forladt, men i parken lever han fint af at samle frugt og fange småvildt. Han bliver dog bidt af en slags slange med kattehoved, men den virker ikke farlig. Senere dukker nogle "drenge" op. Faktisk er de bare sat i stå, så kroppen bliver ved med at være en dreng. Samfundet har været delt op i "piger" og "drenge" og "diktaer".

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Genres

Science Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

English paperback sf

Publication

Del Rey (1977), Mass Market Paperback

Description

Jaybee Corbell awoke after more than 200 years as a corpsicle -- in someone else's body, and under sentence of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars.But Corbell picked his time and made his own move. Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors.Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of -- perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!

User reviews

LibraryThing member gbanville

Its the sort of book that makes you want your money back after you've read it.

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LibraryThing member Amtep

The first part has some interesting ethical questions. Then it turns into naive future history. It's best to stop reading there.

LibraryThing member clark.hallman

A World Out of Time, by Larry Niven, was published as a book in 1976. However, part of it had been previously published in Galaxy Magazine and another part had been previously published as a short story. The protagonist, Jerome Branch Corbell, had been cryogenically frozen in 1970 because he was

dying from cancer. He was awakened in 2190 and discovered that his mind had been extracted from his dying body and had been transferred to the body of a criminal whose mind had been wiped. Corbell learned that he had become a prisoner of a totalitarian State. He was forced to become a “Rammer,” i.e., the pilot and sole passenger of a Bussard ramjet, which was a one-person star ship. If he refused this assignment his mind would have been wiped. Corbell was accompanied on the voyage by an artificial intelligence, Peerssa, which helped him operate the ship, especially when Corbell was in cryogenic sleep, and fulfilled some of Corbell’s needs for companionship. The mission was to seek out planets suitable for terraforming. However, Corbell revolts and hijacks the ship for his own journey to the center of the Galaxy. After a journey of three million years (Earth time), but only a few hundred years for Corbell due to relativistic time dilation, he returned to a very different solar system. The sun had become a red giant and the Earth orbited a very hot Jupiter. Corbell went to Earth’s surface and discovered that the climate of Earth had become extremely hot and civilization had been decimated. The remaining population was dominated by a race of immortal pre-adolescent boys. There had been a war between the sexes that resulted in the loss of immortality and subjugation for the girls. In addition, an enslaved race of unmodified humans existed for breeding. Added to this, Corbell was captured by Mirelly-Lyra, who was also a returned star ship pilot and refugee from the past, although she was from Corbell's future. Corbell escaped from Mirelly-Lyra and became enmeshed in the struggle to survive in a very harsh environment and negotiate his way through hostilities between warring factions on the planet. In the end, the entire planet is in danger of destruction. This book presents a very complex plot with awesome time-travel consequences, mind-boggling physical transformations of the solar system and the environment of Earth, and inexplicable societal turmoil. There is no question that Niven’s creativity abounds in this book. However, it just seemed perhaps too creative and more like a Hobbit fantasy than a science fiction book to me. In my opinion Niven’s attempt to mesh the two short stories resulted in a disjointed story, which never really allows the reader to become comfortable with the characters or their exploits.

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LibraryThing member majackson

"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 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.

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LibraryThing member LordValois

The worst Sci-fi I've read in 45 years. Boring, tedious, rambling, just utter garbage. Hard to believe he wrote Ringworld. On the other hand, it's clear this mess was cobbled together form Ringworld reject subplots.

LibraryThing member tursach_anam

I like Niven, but this book was mediocre at best. For being 3 million years in the future, you'd think we'd get past waterbeds and barely modified cars (granted he predicted the air bag!). The people weren't remarkably different either. Basically, it had that typical 70's sci-fi feel (i.e.

exploration of sexual themes), but there wasn't a lot of scientific creativity. The writing was okay.

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LibraryThing member TadAD

Not my favorite Niven book by a long shot.

LibraryThing member jeanned

"In his second life CORBELL Mark II had suffered enough future shock to kill a whole cityful of Alvin Tofflers." Jerome Branch Corbell puts his trust in future mankind to develop both a cure for his cancer and the capacity to reverse cell damage from cryogenic storage. He remembers the lethal

injection, and then he awakens in a different body. Is he still Corbell? Does he owe his existence to the State that may have use for his personality? He is hurled still farther in the future in his new career as a ramjet pilot. Nominated for both the Ditmar and Locus Awards in 1977, I rate this bit of time-traveling action-adventure story at 8 out of 10 stars.

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LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

A revived personality is placed in a Bussard Ram-jet and sent on a reconnaissance mission to find earth-normal planets. He revolts and then sling-shots himself around a black hole, returning to the Earth system three million years after his departure. Things have changed, and our story really

starts. The character development is wooden.

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LibraryThing member buffalogr

A fantastic theme: time traveler is pressed into service by the "state" and shifted 3 million years into the future to find an alien civilization. Larry Niven has a strange mind and his view of the "future", engaging. The science is fun and the characters are fleshed out well enough to understand.

However, there's really a couple of books/plots in this one. Either one would make a good Star Trek episode.

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LibraryThing member ikeman100

Typical of the Larry Niven style. I loved "Ring World" and it's first sequel. I also like what he and Parnell did with "The Mote In God's Eye" but, this one just doesn't work as well.

LibraryThing member ikeman100

Another good Niven book. I seldom read SF written after 1970 but this author is one for which I make exceptions. This is on one of his better efforts. I read the wole book in 2 sittings. Fun and interesting.

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