This is one of Larry Niven's older books. Back when he was still good. I love the guy, but his latest stuff is getting weak. "A World Out of Time" follows a formula similar to "Ringworld". If you like "Ringworld" you should like this book, too.
Our hero was dying of cancer back in the 1970's so he had himself frozen until a cure could be found. Of course, freezing yourself causes crystals to form in your cells and cause massive amounts of damage. Even after they had a cure for cancer they still didn't have a cure for tissue damage in frozen people. Eventually they became able to transfer one person's mind into another. But the world was overpopulated and didn't have room for extra people.
Finally, the world government decides to start seeding remote planets in a terraforming effort. Our hero's mind is dumped into the body of a criminal. He's tested for the proper personality traits, trained to work the ship, and fired off into space. He'd get back to Earth another 300 years later Earth time, but will have only aged a couple of decades due to the relativistic effects of near light speeds.
Our hero doesn't like this plan. He takes the ship and heads for the galactic core. But the personality of the person who trained him is transmitted into the ship's computer. Together they see the galactic core and return to Earth millions of years later as a very old man.
The sun is redder, Mercury is scarred, Venus's atmosphere is thinner, Mars looks like something hit it, Earth is orbiting Jupiter, one of Jupiter's moons is missing, and Uranus is in a really wild orbit.
Here's where it gets Ringworld-like. They explore the new Earth trying to figure out how the Solar System was rearranged, why Earth is so hot that only Antarctica is habitable, how civilization changed and fell, and search for immortality.
I really liked this book.
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