A World Out of Time (State Series, Book 1)
A World Out of Time (State Series, Book 1) book cover

A World Out of Time (State Series, Book 1)

Audio CD – Unabridged, March 1, 2012

Price
$19.46
Publisher
Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1455153190
Dimensions
5.3 x 0.7 x 5.7 inches
Weight
6.4 ounces

Description

''This fantastic novel is a mix of Niven hard science and a time-travel concept to boggle the mind . . . Even after the last line the feeling remains of the story still rushing on into the magic distance of the universe.'' --A. E. van Vogt, winner of the SFWA Grand Master Award ''Niven rams this fantastic tale at the reader with taut authority, mixing hard science with mind-boggling concepts of time and space to give us a whole new kind of trip.'' -- Publishers Weekly ''Niven's intoxicating concepts, ideas, scientific extrapolations, and exotic hardware bubble up from every page. Rich in imagination and astonishing in breadth . . . Will challenge the most sophisticated readers.'' -- Booklist ''Terrific fun!'' -- Kirkus Reviews ''Niven's intoxicating concepts, ideas, scientific extrapolations, and exotic hardware bubble up from every page. Rich in imagination and astonishing in breadth . . . Will challenge the most sophisticated readers.'' -- Booklist ''Terrific fun!'' -- Kirkus Reviews

Features & Highlights

  • A terrific ride through time and space--and into unimaginable peril! After more than two hundred years as a corpsicle, Jaybee Corbell awoke in someone else's body and under threat of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars. But Corbell bided 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 three million years to develop perils he had never dreamed of--perils that became nightmares that he had to escape . . . somehow.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(293)
★★★★
25%
(244)
★★★
15%
(147)
★★
7%
(68)
23%
(225)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

A dry hard sci-fi novel that hasn’t aged that well.

I’m starting to realize that science fiction in the 1970s might need to stay there. While there was a lot of progress in the genre past the golden era of the 1950s, many of these books are unfortunate snapshots of a time that has not aged well. Similar to Ringworld , I found A World Out of Time to rely heavily on the sexism that runs rampant through 1970s sci-fi. Additionally, while the hard science presented in this book was generally plausible, the way it was presented was so dry and dense as to make it more of a Ph.D. thesis than an entertaining read.

On the plus side, A World Out of Time explores many scientific ideas that were well ahead of its time. Aside from the normal sci-fi tropes of mind implants and artificial intelligence, this book also deals with climate change in a way that hasn’t been felt until now. Granted, it blames this extreme change of the Earth’s environment on the sun and less on the humans who inhabit it, but the thinking about what would happen to our planet if such a thing were to happen was thorough enough to be believable.

Despite these forward-thinking ideas, A World Out of Time treats sex and drugs as inconsequential parts of life in the future. It’s clear the culture of the 1970s influenced this part of the book, but it feels so outdated compared to today’s standards that it was difficult to read without rolling my eyes. Sure, it’s probably less prominent than the pulpy science fiction stories that came before it, but the fact that the author felt these things needed to be included tells me more than I need to know about him.

A dry hard sci-fi novel that hasn’t aged that well, I give A World Out of Time 2.0 stars out of 5.