The mission was to seek out planets suitable for terraforming. 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. If he refused this assignment his mind would have been wiped.

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.

Corbell learned that he had become a prisoner of a totalitarian State. 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. If you like Niven, you'll like reading this one. (It's comforting to know that I can probably find all the missing episodes online and get them for just a few dollars.) So I've already ready much of the series but never connected them as such. 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. 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(?) This book is filled with little vignettes that I could not, and cannot forget.

The search for a lost immortality procedure for adults.

Ě crazy woman with super weapons and a desire for a lost youth.

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: 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.

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. It's probable that the first third of the book put me to sleep. Show More really registered in my memory…but the story did.

A World Out of Time by Larry Niven