[USMA:37448] Lary Niven's naivete

[Remek Kocz]

Larry Niven is the author of the famous sci-fi book, Ringworld.  It's a modification of the Dyson sphere concept, where instead of a sphere, a gigantic ring surrounds the sun.  Ringworld was written in 1970, so the profuse use of USC to convey practically all of the technical specs of the massive ring can be forgiven.  However, the following quote points to an incredible naivete of the author in his portrayal of the future:

"The Ringworld is nearly a million UN miles across."

The UN is assumed to be the governing body of all humanity in Ringworld. 

Thankfully, sci-fi authors decided to go metric sometime in the late 1970's, so nowadays such narrow-minded thinking as world governments standardizing around Imperial measurements doesn't appear anymore.  I haven't read anything else by Mr. Niven, but I hope he went metric at some point as well.

Remek