19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Take time out for "A World Out of Time", January 13, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: A World Out of Time (Mass Market Paperback)
I had read darn near everything Niven's written, and finally got around to this novel.
I wish I'd read it sooner!
Lots of action, a sense of discovery around every corner, and with every turn of the page a new puzzle to solve within the plot of the story. Of course it also has the big big science that Niven is famous for. What a treat after his less than spectacular recent efforts. If I had one bad thing to say, it's that a small portion of the science no longer holds up to current theories--but that's a small price to pay for such fun!
If you're a sci-fi fan, and haven't yet read Niven, I highly recommend this book for your first read. Every bit as good as "Ringworld", with none of the overhead of that novel's "Known Space" universe to catch up on. If you're already a Niven fan, and haven't yet experienced this novel--read it now before you run out of time!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My first Niven book..., June 21, 2001
This review is from: A World Out of Time (Mass Market Paperback)
AWOoT was the first Niven book I have ever read (at age 15). My family owns a convenience store/newsstand in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in 1977 my father received a batch of SF books in consignation for the store's book section. He brought home three of them for me, 'The Space Machine' by C. Priest--a very enjoyable pastiche of H.G.Wells' 'The Time Machine' and 'War of the Worlds', another one so bad I do not remember even its title, and 'A World Out of Time'. At the beginning I was skeptic. The blurbs on the back cover sounded kind of 'New Wavish' and even freakish. Being a hardcore-SF fan weaned on A.C.Clarke and I.Asimov, I was militantly anti 'New-Wave' SF (the fashion in Argentinian SF publishing at the time) or 'unscientific'. I did not want to waste my time on another 'character' story or fantasy tale. I wanted at least planetary size action and ideas...Man, I got them in spades and of Galactic size!!! To say it blew me away it is too little to express the impact of this book on me. It was like an intellectual sledge-hammer crashing on my brain. Only J.Varley's 'The Persistence of Vision' collection had a similar effect on me--and only because I was ten years older and wiser at the time. I read and reread the books more times than I remember. It was also humongously popular with my HS friends--but I suspect more due to the then 'titillating' sex scenes than the gigantic space and time range of the plot, action and ideas. After that, Niven entered the Pantheon of 'hunt for' SF authors, so 'Ringworld' and "Tales of Known Space' (plus everything he has written alone or in collaboration) followed, increasing my awe and admiration for his work. But AWOoT is still my most beloved Niven's book.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why is the Earth orbiting Jupiter?, August 14, 2011
Jaybee Corbell's adventure begins after he dies. Rather than return to dust, Corbell has himself frozen in the off-chance that future science might find a cure for his cancer. Corbell's gamble pays off and he is decanted two hundred years in the future, but into a radically different world where the all-powerful State treats people like objects and into the body of a condemned criminal. The State decides that Corbell's one function is to be a "ramship pilot" who will spend three hundred years seeding Earth-like planets with Earth-like "reducing atmosphere" with algae, in order to cause them to develop an Earth-like atmosphere in the next sixty to seventy thousand years.
Being a rebellious guy from the 1970s, Corbell hi-jacks his ramscoop and decides to journey to the center of the galaxy. Corbell is hijacked in turn by his State-appointed "loyalty checker" who takes him on a long, long journey from the massive black hole at the center of the galaxy and back.
Corbell returns to Earth three millions years after his departure and discovers that Earth is orbiting Jupiter, the sun is a swollen red giant, Jupiter is emitting way too much energy, a new gas giant is orbiting the sun in a wild angle, and - oh, yeah - Ganymede is completely missing.
Also, it seems like nobody is home.
What happened?
The bulk of the story involves Corbell's investigation of Earth, his encounter with a crazy old woman desiring eternal youth, his discovery of the end result of the ultimate battle between Boys and Girls, and the answers to his questions.
It's all done in Niven's inimitably efficient and captivating style. I remember reading the first part - the ramship pilot episode - in Analog back in the '70s. I think that I was disappointed that it was not part of Niven's "Known Space" cycle and didn't read the novel when it came out, but some things stuck with me, such as the black hole at the center of the galaxy and the idea of a "water empire" (which probably made its way into several of my high school and college term papers.) It's interesting how Niven's postulate about the black hole at the center of the galaxy has made its way from science fiction to accepted science in the last forty years.
I found "A World Out of Time" to be an engaging, page turning read that held up after forty years. I found myself keenly wanting to know what happened to our solar system, and I was satisfied with the resolution of the questions.
A final point: it is interesting how Niven seems to have a knack for depicting grand planetary engineering projects - e.g., Ringworld and moving Earth to Jupiter - after their collapse, when all that is left are ruins and people with some stories about the Good Old Days. The idea of a people with unimaginable power collapsing back into savagery seems to have been a theme that captivated Niven.
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