The State (Larry Niven)

For the DC Comics super-villain, see Kite Man.

"The State" is a fictional totalitarian world government in a future history that forms the back-story of three of Larry Niven's novels: A World Out of Time (1976), The Integral Trees (1984), and The Smoke Ring (1987). It is also the setting of two short stories, "Rammer" (which became the first chapter of A World Out of Time) and "The Kiteman" (printed in N-Space) as well as a stalled fourth novel, The Ghost Ships. After several years in development, Niven announced that The Ghost Ships would never be made, and wrote The Ringworld Throne instead. The novel would have focused on a race of self-aware natural ramjets birthed in the supernova that created Levoy's Star and were returning to their place of birth to mate. According to Playgrounds of the Mind, Kendy and the kite-fliers from "The Kiteman" would have returned also.

Works set in the "The State" fictional universe

Most information regarding the State comes from A World Out of Time, including a brief overview of its formation in the aftermath of a "global brush war". The precise timeframe the State occupies is not defined. In A World Out of Time, the State exists as of 2190; Kendy notes that the State was established 455 years before Discipline reached the Smoke Ring (which itself was 512 years before The Integral Trees, 532 years before The 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 a corpsicle on the Discipline is noted as having to explain to others what a Christmas wreath is. A comment from Kendy in The Smoke Ring indicates that the State abolished capitalism when it was established. In The Smoke Ring Kendy also states that as of the time when Discipline 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 of terraforming. According to Niven, The Ghost Ships would have revealed that the State had split into two factions, the Inner State based in the Solar system and the Outer State based on the extrasolar colony worlds, which would have featured in the novel. This is also implied by a graphic presentation in A 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).

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