A Gift from Earth
	Release Date: 1984-07-12
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Average Customer Rating: (12 reviews)

Reviews from Amazon customers:

Review by: Sugar Fish
Rating:
Really Good Classic Niven
If you've never read one of Niven's stories, this is probably not the one to start with. Start with the short story collections, like Tales of Known Space. But when you get hooked on his style and find that you can't get enough, do come back to it, buy it, and you will enjoy it thoroughly. It's a really fun, very well-rounded look at a colony whose founders choose, at its inception, to divide its society into haves and the have-nots.

Review by: Blue Tyson
Rating:
Super Reader
Invisible man wild card. <br /> <br />This book is set in the part of Niven's future history where organlegging as such, is very common. Set on a colony world the wealthy want access to body parts, so any crime gets you executed and recycled for their use. <br /> <br />Throw in a wild card superpowered outsider with basically the power to cloud men's minds and things get interesting. <br /> <br />

Review by: Dragos Toader, Seal Beach, CA United States
Rating:
Not a big deal
About the happenings on a planet colony of Earth made up of different <br />plateaus (Alpha, Beta, Gamma). You fall off the plateau, you're dead. <br />The planet is run by a dictatorship. There are two classes of people, <br />colonists and crew. Crime is punished by organ dissasembly. Your organs <br />end up in an organ bank. The crew benefits from the mostly colonist <br />crime. The police force is called Implementation. There's a rebel group <br />called the Sons of Earth that want to overthrow crew rule. The power <br />centers / hospitals / police headquarters are located on and around the <br />landed space ships. The fusion drives provide electrical power for the <br />plateaus. Delivery arrives from Earth. Heart and liver beasts. <br /> <br />Implementation raids a Sons of Earth party. A mutant with the psychic <br />ability to make people forget him and / or become fascinated by him escapes. Goes to rescue a girl crush he met at the party. Rescues some <br />of the Sons of Earth leadership. Tries second time. Gets her out of <br />coffin cure. She goes nuts, breaks into the defunct ship control room, <br />starts jets, gets ship to fall over the Edge. Mutant escapes <br />death, joins new world order. Somewhere off into space, an alien race <br />is headed toward this world -- they will probably give them hyperspace <br />drive. <br /> <br />I'll have to read the next book in the series for all of this to make <br />sense -- there's probably a grand plan, not just disjointed stories. <br />Is there a second book? Is this a series?

Review by: William A. Hensler, Holt, Michigan United States
Rating:
One of Larry's early novels
I used to a big Larry Niven (Lawrence Van Colt) fan. And this story is from the days when I would search high and low for a good novel that Larry made. Now, is this novel bad? Not really. Is this novel great? Far from it. <br /> <br />This novel was written at the beginning of the 1970s. So, it's a little dated. This novel was written before the implications of transplants were fully understood; if you have a general transplant you'll spend pretty much the rest of the your life on anti-rejection medicine. Larry's writing treated humans body organs as spare parts; a kidney from person "A" would work just fine in person "B". <br /> <br />There are two parts to this book. First, the main character works and is slightly oppressed by an overclass of "crew"; the dictators of this world. The second part of this book deals with gifts from earth, basically engineered animals that live off the "gunk" in a human body. <br /> <br />I liked this novel. It's fast paced and a fun, light read. It's dated, that's for sure. This was written long before DNA, RNA, and the implications of stem cells. So, while the characters of this novel are taking spare body parts and giving them to another person it's completely out of the gasp to merely grow new parts. <br /> <br />This novel is enjoyable if you're a Niven fan. But if you're not a Niven fan it's plain obsolete. Don't read it. It will sour your taste for better works of Larry. Personally, the short stories in "Neutron Star" and the (somewhat flawed) Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers are Larry's best accomplishments. So, if you read and don't like this novel then you may not read the other three. That would be a shame. <br /> <br />So, if you're not a Niven fan then this novel is a one star. If you're a Niven fan then this old book is three stars. The average is 2 stars; not great. <br /> <br />Enjoy.

Review by: Christopher Culver
Rating:
One of Niven's worst novels, an improbable tale of rebellion
A GIFT FROM EARTH, the second of Larry Niven's full-length novels set in the Known Space universe, is a tale of a rebellion on the colonized world Plateau. It's also one of Niven's weakest works.<p>Plateau is a Venus-like cauldron with only one habitable area, the giant mountain Mt. Lookitthat. When the slowboats sent by the UN reached it, the crew, who had worked hard for 30 years to bring the ship to Plateau, decided to set up a dictatorship over the colonists, who were frozen in statis during the journey. The Crew's power over the Colonists is their control of the Hospital and their ability to punish criminals by the death penalty and extract their organs to prolong the life of those loyal to the Crew. This story is set in the first half of Niven's Known Space universe (2000-2400), and shows the same obsession over the death penalty and organ transplantation as other works of that era, such as the Gil "the Arm" Hamilton stories collected in FLATLANDER.<p>Change comes to Plateau in the form of a UN ramrobot carrying blueprints for improved alloplasty (using gadgets instead of organs). Such a development threatens the existence of the status quo and the Crew scrambles to deal with the situation. The Sons of Earth, a Colonist rebel group, decide to seize the moment. Their new hero is Matt Keller, an unassuming young man with a physic power of invisibility through making others not notice him.<p>The novel is full of improbable developments, and Matt's power essentially makes him a superman, which means there's little intrigue or depth because Matt can get through anything. The characters seem like they came out of 1960's America, as the women are submissive and everybody has American names, plus nobody seems to use the metric system. This novel was published in 1968 and it's difficult to see why it is so immature, considering that at the same time Niven wrote a number of Known Space short stories that were really excellent. Perhaps A GIFT FROM EARTH was simply an early work that he couldn't get published until years later. In any event, it is so pulpish that it is difficult to read.<p>A GIFT FROM EARTH is one of the last books to read in the Known Space universe. I'd definitely recommend reading the Gil "the Arm" Hamilton stories collected in FLATLANDER, which gives a history of organ transplanting highly helpful to understand A GIFT FROM EARTH, and Niven's most acclaimed novel RINGWORLD.