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 consistant over the course of millenia.