The State is a fictionaltotalitarianworld government in afuture history that forms the back-story of three ofLarry Niven's novels:A World Out of Time (1976),The Integral Trees (1984), andThe Smoke Ring (1987). It is also the setting of two short stories, "Rammer" (which became the first chapter ofA World Out of Time) and "The Kiteman" (printed inN-Space), as well as a stalled fourth novel,The Ghost Ships. After several years in development, Niven announced thatThe Ghost Ships would never be made and wroteThe Ringworld Throne instead.[1] The novel would have focused on a race of self-aware naturalBussard ramjets birthed in the supernova that created Levoy's Star and were returning to their place of birth to mate.[2] According toPlaygrounds of the Mind, Kendy and the kite-fliers from "The Kiteman" would have returned also.[3]
Works set in the fictional universe The State:
Most information regarding the State comes fromA World Out of Time, including a brief overview of its formation in the aftermath of two globalbrush-fire wars. The precise timeframe the State occupies is not defined. InA World Out of Time, the State exists as of 2190; Kendy notes that the State was established 455 years beforeDiscipline reached the Smoke Ring (which itself was 512 years beforeThe Integral Trees, 532 years beforeThe Smoke Ring, and 580 years before "The Kiteman"). It rules over an extremely crowded world, in which privacy is no longer a concept. Religion (or at any rate Christianity) is apparently no longer in practice, as acorpsicle on theDiscipline is noted as having to explain to others what aChristmaswreath is. A comment from Kendy inThe Smoke Ring indicates that the State abolished capitalism when it was established. InThe Smoke Ring, Kendy also states that as of the time whenDiscipline left Earth, the State had colonized all ten planets of the Solar System, thirty moons, and hundreds of asteroids, with twenty-eight extrasolar worlds in the process ofterraforming. According to Niven,The Ghost Ships would have revealed that the State had split into two factions, the Inner State based in theSolar System and the Outer State based on the extrasolar colony worlds, which would have featured in the novel.[2] This is also implied by a graphic presentation inA World Out Of Time, which the protagonist interprets as showing a distinction between "people, like us" (the Inner State) and "not people, not like us" (the colonies).
The State employs fusion-assisted interstellar spaceflight and technologies that enable personalities to be transferred chemically from one body to another. It may transfer personalities extracted from medically unsalvageable bodies of "corpsicles" frozen in the past tomindwiped criminals to use them as agents in circumstances where their free-thinking skills can still be useful to the State, such as in pilotingramships to other stars. The State has also perfected the storage of human personalities withinAI systems, and can install copies of the personalities of "checkers" loyal to the State into the ramships' control computers, in order to keep a watch on potentially disloyal revived corpsicles.
The temporal dilation of the novel permits the protagonist ofA World Out of Time a view of the State in several widely spaced time periods, over three million years. He describes it to his AI minder as ahydraulic empire, accounting for its very long life and stability. He claims that hydraulic empires only fall to barbarians from outside - but there is nothing "outside" of the State, which encompasses all of human civilization. It is eventually revealed that the State created its own "barbarians" by establishing colonies in other systems.
A World Out of Time was nominated for aLocus Award in 1977,[7] andThe Integral Trees won a Locus Award in 1985.[8]