A Gift from Earth by Larry Niven
"A Gift from Earth" is a science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set within the broader context of his Known Space series. The story unfolds on a planet with a toxic atmosphere, where a group of Earth colonists, who have been in suspended animation, find themselves under the oppressive rule of a dictator from the ship's crew. The crew's descendants live in luxury while enforcing a brutal regime that criminalizes dissent, supported by a police force known as the Implementation. The protagonist, Matt Keller, is a young colonist unaware of his psychic ability, which affects people's capacity to remember events.
As the narrative progresses, Matt becomes involved with a revolutionary group, the Sons of Earth, which aims to challenge the crew’s authority. His quest intertwines with themes of rebellion, the struggle for autonomy, and the moral complexities of violence and survival. With the arrival of advanced biotechnology from Earth, which has the potential to disrupt the crew's organ bank exploitation, tensions escalate, leading to confrontations that result in significant character transformations and a shift toward a more equitable society on the mountain. The novel explores profound themes such as power dynamics, the ethics of survival, and the quest for freedom in a dystopian context.
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A Gift from Earth
First published: 1968
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—dystopia
Time of work: Several hundred years in the future
Locale: The Plateau on Mount Lookitthat, on a planet in the Tau Ceti system
The Plot
A Gift from Earth is a segment of Larry Niven’s Known Space series, a group of loosely connected novels and short stories, most from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. The series portrays the first centuries of human interstellar exploration and settlement, along with attendant encounters with various alien races.
After landing on a maze of plateaus, on a mountain rising above the poisonous gases of an otherwise uninhabitable planet, the small crew of an Earth colony ship establishes a dictatorship over the colonists, who had been in suspended animation. Living in luxury on the upper Alpha Plateau, the crews descendants make political dissent a capital crime, thus ensuring a large stock of body parts for their organ banks. The “crews” are protected by the Implementation, a police force whose headquarters are conveniently in the labyrinthine, fortress-like Hospital, where prisoners remains are stored and used for transplantation. The colony receives occasional gift packages from Earth via robot space vessels. The latest arrival is hidden quickly by the police but secretly observed by Polly, a member of a revolutionary group called the Sons of Earth.
Matt Keller, the novel’s protagonist, is a twenty-one-year-old colonist with a psychic power of which he is unaware. In moments of intense anxiety, he can cause the pupils of others eyes to contract, thus producing a lack of interest, indeed a pure forgetfulness, in his enemies. Unfortunately, this power causes a similar reaction in women on the verge of relieving him of his virginity. Early in the novel, Matt is invited by his friend Jay Hood to a party, not knowing it is a coverup for a Sons of Earth gathering led by the host, Harry Kane. At the party, he is rejected by Polly but manages to have sex with Laney Mattson, thanks to their entering a pitch-black room. When the party is raided by the police, only Matt escapes.
Matt finds a flying car, forbidden to colonists. He takes it to Alpha Plateau, hoping to infiltrate the Hospital to rescue his new friends. Against all odds, he succeeds, though Polly is not among the rescued. She has been put into a sensory deprivation chamber as a method of torture by Head of Police Jesus Pietro Castro, the novels antagonist.
Appalled by the rebels slaughtering of Hospital personnel as they escape, Matt feels alienated from both sides. Most of the rebels are recaptured, but Matt, Harry, Jay, and Laney are able to hide out at a sympathetic crew familys mansion. Jay figures out Matts psychic gift. Matt decides to return to the Hospital for Polly, and a wise crew elder, Millard Parlette, reveals the ramrobot gift: biotechnology that eventually will make the organ banks obsolete. Knowing that the news will leak out and cause massive colonist rebellion, Parlette seeks a confederation of crew and colonist before war breaks out and before Castro and the Implementation form a dictatorship of their own.
Again Matt succeeds in his rescue attempt, but Polly is interested only in a suicide mission to destroy the Hospital. A series of violent actions leads to the deaths of both Polly and Castro, as well as to a new and more just order on Mount Lookitthat.