
A Gift from Earth
by Larry Niven · first published 1968
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No Place for Bleeding Hearts The world named Mount Lookitthat was never meant for humans—it was shrouded in lethal mists. Life only existed on the one plateau, unreachable except from space. But the disastrous decision to colonize the planet could not be reversed. So the settlers surved somehow under a ruthless dictatorship. Mount Lookitthat was rebellion-proof. Then fate dealt the colonists a wild card named Matthew Keller, who had a talent that neither he nor anybody else knew about. At last the colonists had a glimmer of hope!
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Shades of A Gift From Earth there. Good novel.
on “FDA clears first contact lens with light-adaptive technology” ↗…these organs, though? There's a shortage now, even though transplantation is an unpleasant last resort; unless xenotransplantation is sorted out or we go full Niven (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gift_From_Earth), it doesn't seem interesting as a routine procedure, even if rejection isn't an issue.
on “I hacked my body for a future that never came” ↗The article mentions Larry Niven’s A Gift From Earth, but in fact Bussard Ramjets are tightly integrated into several of the stories in Niven's Known Space [0] sequence. Briefly, humanity sends colonists to several nearby stars in manned Bussard Ramjet…
on “When Ramjets Ruled Science Fiction” ↗Or Larry Niven's "A Gift From Earth" where the protagonist can make their pupils to contract and thereby cause others to lose interest in them (psi invisibility) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gift_from_Earth
on “Man can change his pupil size on command” ↗Not just a short, Niven wrote numerous books on the subject. For example, "A Gift From Earth" was about a bloody revolution on a colony planet where the ruling class oppressed the working class via executions through organ harvesting.
on “Chinese inmates had hearts or lungs removed during executions, study says” ↗Has anyone here read Larry Niven's Gift From Earth? This is literally the plot (but on another planet).
on “Report on forced organ harvesting in China” ↗