Kith (Poul Anderson)

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The Kith are a starfaring culture featured in a number of stories by Poul Anderson:

• "Ghetto" (1954)
• "The Horn of Time the Hunter" (also known as "Homo Aquaticus", 1963)
• The novel Starfarers (1998)

The Kith develop out of early interstellar explorers in the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. Because of the effects of time dilation associated with travel at near-light speeds, the Kith maintain separate settlements ("Kithtowns") in which care was taken to keep their language and culture consistent over the course of millennia.

Although the Kith are instrumental in maintaining the network of trade that makes human interstellar civilization possible, over time they become the object of derision, suspicion and ultimately persecution. As set forth in Starfarers and "Ghetto", the Kithtowns become ultimately become ghettos, and pogroms are launched against the Kith. "The Horn of Time the Hunter" suggests that the Kith are ultimately forced to flee human space altogether, and chronicles the return of one group of Kith to human space after hundreds of thousands of years' relativistic travel to the Galactic core.