Ringworld

This is my second reading of Ringworld, my first being in the late 1970's. At that time I was a avid reader of all the sci fi I could get my hands on. And what a time it was! Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, and of course, Niven were all very active filling the shelves of my local library. It was silver age of science fiction, and all I needed was a library card. Ringworld stood out as inventive, exciting and a natural page turner. Decades past and I found myself returning to my mission of reading sci fi with a renewed interest. After reading a number of new books I found myself skimming through titles of my old favorites from days gone by. Ringworld was my first choice with the full intention of reading the entire series. I was not disappointed. Once again I was swept away to deep space riding along with old, familiar friends. I quickly found myself immersed in the adventure with a appitite I hadn't felt for a long time. Ringworld is one of the most original stories I have ever read. A beautiful balance between fascinating characters and adventurous challenges. True story telling at it's best by one of the genre's greats. The story takes place sufficiently far enough in the future to allow anything to exist or happen. This includes technology, aliens, and lifestyles. We are introduced in the first chapters to our characters of the crew for this extraordinary journey. Next we travel in exotic spacecraft, several different ones in fact, to parts unknown. The third act takes place at the Ringworld itself. I highly recommend Ringworld to anyone that enjoys sci fi adventure. You won't be disappointed!

First time I’m reading something considered a true sci-fi classic, and I have mixed feelings. The story starts out in a magnificent fashion, outlining a backdrop of future life on Earth, aliens, interstellar wars, and such. Our MC is Louis Wu, a 200 year old man haunted by ennui. He meets an alien known as a Pierson’s Puppeteer, and is chosen to be part of a team of four traveling to a newly discovered space artifact: The Ringworld. The other two team members are Louis’s girlfriend, Teela, and a Kzin (another alien species looking like a big cat person). So far, so good. The story is rich in detail and quite fascinating. It’s easy to read, and it keeps you interested. However, a couple of things caught my eye early on; The author is way too fond of exclamation points, and the text is saturated with them up to the point where they lose their intended effect. Also, there are indents at the start of the chapters, which is very unusual, and it distracted me from the story. The story is great and keeps a good pace up until the ending, where it suddenly stalls. Then there’s too much talk, and it feels like the author is unconsciously delaying the ending. The whole sequence at the Police Station should’ve been deleted. It adds nothing to the story. However, after that it picks up again, and the ending is great. I can clearly see why the book is considered a classic, and it’s a good one, but a few things makes it a four instead of a five. For example, the author confuses meteor with meteorite, and spells millennia wrong. He sometimes mixes hyperspace with hyperdrive, and most people today are aware that quicksand and fossil fuel are myths.

This is a long time classic. I have owned a few copies of this book over 20 years. Someone always seems to walk off with this good read! So, as I am new to E-books and limited experience with audio books, I will review both. Ringworld is an entertaining Sci Fi novel, filled with high tech gadgets, space travel and interesting characters. Even though it was written as a stand alone novel, I highly recommend the sequels as they just seem to delve deeper into the world's Larry Niven has created. The audio book is fantastic! Expertly narrated, with great voice inflection for emotions as well as the different voices of different characters. If I had these 2 options separately, I would be content. However... since I bought the E-book and Audio Book as a bundle, I have the best of both worlds. I have them paired with the Kindle app (w/ Whispersync) on my android phone. Hello multitasking! I can now read along with the audio, walk away and listen for a bit, and jump right back to reading without skipping a beat. I am so very happy I got the combo. On another note, I was initially upset that this was unavailable on Google Play Books. The sequels and a shoddy comic are there, but not this classic original. Shame on Google for leaving out the first novel of this series. Well... I guess Google's loss is Amazon's gain. THANK YOU.

Ringworld is one of those novels that is highly regarded in science fiction circles and talked about quite a bit for its hard science and innovative concepts. After reading, though, I have to say that I felt pretty letdown by all the hubbub and felt pretty meh about the reading experience. A quick synopsis is that 200-year-old Louis Wu is bored during his birthday celebration, and happens to be approached and recruited by Nessus, a puppeteer who wants to enlist him and others on a mission two hundred light years away to explore a megastructure (Ringworld). As they make their approach, they are forced to crash land, and deal with their situation… Conceptionally, on paper, the idea of a Ringworld, while it is difficult to grasp, is quite a fascinating one. So, kudos to the author for producing that. However, there were just too many glaring issues with this book, rendering it only a mediocre experience. First, the characters are quite lackluster and flat, and are more caricatures than real characters. They felt more like pieces on a game board and are wooden and superficially developed, and this comes across in their stilted dialogue and their interactions. Louis is two hundred years old but, this is only identifiable because the reader is constantly reminded of that. Teela Brown only seems to serve to be a fancy for Louis, and Niven gives her little to no identifiable depth. The other two non-humans aboard the mission (Nessus and Speaker-to-Animals) come across as animated cartoon characters as well. This leads to the next problem: the scatterbrained style of writing. This book feels confusing to follow for good portions because it feels like stuff just happens and characters react and do things, but we are given almost zero frame of reference point or world building to give the reader some sort of context. So, it’s difficult to gauge motivations of characters and why they are doing what they are doing at a given time or situation, or a clearer explanation of the Ringworld. Finally, there are just too many distracting elements overall. There is this over fixation on the physical relationship between Louis and Teela for instance that is just so jarring and out of place. There are too many silly, distracting scenes about unimportant matters, and goofy names. It was hard to take anything too seriously. Because of all this, the really pivotal scenes like the first contact and exploration of the region felt very anticlimactic, without the wonder or power it could have had. So, based on my gripes I would have probably gone with two stars, but there are some interesting concepts explored in the novel, and in some instances, I wanted to see what would happen next, so I’ll go with 2.5 stars, rounded up. Overall, I’ll give the novel kudos conceptionally, but it felt like a lack of execution. I feel like this novel is kind of overrated.

Larry Niven's 5 star, 1970 gem. A creative universe, interesting characters, Recommended. Great, classic science fiction. Some quotes to pique your interest: "Long ago, Louis Wu had stood at the void edge of Mount Lookitthat. The Long Fall River, on that world, ends in the tallest waterfall in known space. Louis's eyes had followed it down as far as they could penetrate the void mist. The featureless white of the void itself had grasped at his mind, and Louis Wu, half hypnotized, had sworn to live forever. How else could he see all there was to see? Now he reaffirmed that decision." "On a world built to ordered specification, there was no logical reason for such a mountain to exist. Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain." "Fear is the brother of hate." "Exercise is wonderful," said Louis. "I could sit and watch it all day." "Humans," said the puppeteer, "should not be allowed to run loose. You will surely harm yourselves." "Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile." "To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal." "Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with."

I liked this book, but I can't say that I loved it. It started a little slow, and Niven seemed stuck in a rut over how to move from introducing Louis Wu to actually having him engage in the intended story. In hard science fiction, I prefer the technology to be something that I can envision, even if only in the far off future, but I struggled with imagining how humanity could develop instantaneous point-to-point transportation on Earth only to need to spend weeks and months travelling between stars. And why would a civilization so advanced as to be capable of building a million-mile-wide ring around a star but be so incredibly stupid to build floating "castles" overtop urban centers. Still, it was entertaining enough, and I wanted to continue reading, so all is good there. The characters also set me off a little. The 200 year old man shacking up with the 20 year old girl...seemed to me more like Niven fantasizing on paper...but OK, I could get past that. Then the 20 year old girl disappearing and Louis not seeming to really care...thrn an alien humanoid coming along that he quickly has sex with...ooookay. The 8 foot 500 lb orange cat creature; OK, I could get past that. I could never get the image of a talking oven mitt out of my head whenever Nessus appeared on the page. I realize that evolution would create different creatures on different worlds best suited to their environments, but I could never imagine a 3-legged, 2-headed creature with prehensile lips for fingers not making it into the evolutionary failure bin. And to top it off they are the most advanced civilization currently in the galaxy (in this book) even though they are afraid to fly or go into space...but developed hyperdrive...? It doesn't make sense. People say this was not a comedy, and it is certainly not a comedy in the same sense that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy, but the cast of characters along with their interactions and reactions to one another indeed pushes this novel to the border of comedy at the very least. Just Niven's description of Nessus in various situations reeks of comedy. Some oif the arguments between characters are indeed humorous. Lastly, Niven was hit or miss with the technical details. In some areas he was very descriptive, in others he skipped a lot. I wanted to know more of Ringworld and what the characters were seeing, but instead I got a few superfluous sex scenes. And what happened to Nessus? Oh well. It is still a good book, and I do recommend it. Just know you are not getting Asimovian-styled hard science fiction.

What does a puppeteer, a kzin, and two humans have in common? They are going to Ringworld! You thought I was going to say 'Disney World', didn't you? This is the premise of Larry Niven's epic novel about an artificial ring, one million miles wide, encircling a sun-like star. I haven't read a space exploratory novel this good, since I read Arthur C. Clarke's 'Rendezvous With Rama'. Niven's book was so good it won the 1970 Hugo, 1971 Nebula and Locus Awards; the trifecta of the sci-fi world. To this reader, Mr. Niven's salient point is in his ability to use specialized jargon that the reader easily understands, while still inventing new ingenious technology, such as the quantum II hyperdrive spaceship that speeds along at one light year every one and a quarter minutes! And can Niven describe alien life forms? Damn straight! How about a Garfield the cat look alike ( known as a kzin ) that is eight foot tall and 500 pounds with a nasty disposition? What about a puppeteer that has a tripod body with two heads, more intelligence than man and when frightened rolls himself into a ball? I also think that 'Star Trek' may have preempted the transporter idea from Niven's transfer booth. These are a few of the amazing concepts and characters in this recommended novel. A galactic core's suns explode in far off space, the blast will wipe out Earth and known space in 20,000 years. The frightened puppeteers have already left, heading towards the Lesser Clouds of Magellan looking for a new home. Our protagonist, Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday ( he looks 20 ) party on earth. A large kzin, known as Speaker-to-Animals is there, sexy Teela Brown is there, and who pops out of a transfer booth? Nessus, a insane puppeteer who wants to talk deal with the preceding three party goers. Nessus wants Louis, Speaker, and Teela to join him on an exploratory mission 200 light years away. If they agree to go, their reward will be the quantum hyperdrive ship and the blueprints to make more. The puppeteer will not tell them where they are going until they are on the way. Louis wants to go because he is bored and ready for adventure, Teela wants to go because she is in love with Louis, and the Speaker wants to go because he wants to steal the ship for his people so they will have a spaceship advantage over the humans. The kzin have a long history of losing wars against the humans from Earth, and were anxious to get out of their submissive morbidity. So as they board spaceship Long Shot, Speaker makes a failed attempt to steal the ship, but the puppeteer has a secret weapon called a tasp, which is a device that induces a current in the pleasure center of the brain. Nessus, the two headed tripod says to the Speaker:"You understand that I will use the tasp every time you force me to. I will use it if you attempt to use violence too often, or if you startle me too much; you will soon become dependent upon the tasp; if you kill me, you will still be ignobly bound by the tasp itself." "Very astute," said Speaker. "Brilliantly unorthodox tactics. I will trouble you no more." Nessus, being a puppeteer, was inherently a coward, thus he needed every mental advantage to keep a vicious animal like Speaker from tearing him apart. After that, off they go to meet the puppeteer fleet in the Clouds of Magellan. This is where they find out what their mission is: Explore the mysterious ring to see if it will support life. After getting nebulous mission instructions ( relayed from the Hindmost, leader of the puppeteers ), the four board the Lying Bastard ( a smaller ship ) and head for the baffling ring. This is where Niven's story gets real astrological and unnerving. You know what this means, don't you? Well, I wet your whistle and now you have to grab a copy of this wondrous novel and find out what happens. I like Niven's mix of real science with his science and his use of neologistical words that seem like logical terms. He does a good job explaining Kemplerer rosette: a gravitational system of heavier and lighter bodies orbiting in a regular repeating pattern around a common barycenter. Got it? Starseeds seemed real, but it's not. They are space traveling creatures used by Outsiders to plant life on planets. Flying cycles and floating police stations are purely a figment of Mr. Niven's mind. What's to come on Ringworld is stated by Nessus to Louis:" This place is, is unsafe. Strange storms and badly programmed machinery and sunflower fields and unpredictable natives all threaten our lives." Really? Hang on to your seat belts and enjoy.

Larry Niven's Ringworld is considered by many to be one of the best hard science fiction novels ever written. The term "hard" in scifi refers to a work's tendency to focus on the science of the story, often at the expense of plot or character development. Such is the case with Ringworld. The defining quality of the story is the ringworld itself: a gigantic ring 93 million miles in diameter encircling a sun. On the ring is a completely livable habitat, complete with air, oceans, mountains, and plant life. The origins and nature of the ringworld are shrowded in mystery. Who built it? Do people live on it? How many? How old is the ring? Some of these questions are answered in this book, others in the sequel. But one thing is clear: it is the Ringworld itself which makes the novel. Niven spends a lot of time and effort describing the dimensions and motion of the ringworld in very scientific terms, as well as documenting space travel and star activity. So the science in the book is pretty sound. The characters and plot, however, are where some people critique the book. For me, the characters weren't really all that terrible. Admittedly, it did take about half the book for me to warm up to the main characters and actually care what happened to them, but that's true of many books. And really the plot wasn't all that bad: no real holes to speak of, although at times it seems the story is just used as a vehicle to explore the Ringworld. But I see nothing wrong with that. When you come up with a cool concept like the ringworld, it seems natural to focus on that, and think of the characters as secondary to the overall story. So sure, the plot and characters could use a little polish. But the book is still great, and should not be missed by any scifi fan. And to any Halo fans reading this, guess where the concept for that ringshaped structure came from.

Bland.

Si te gusta Halo y la ciencia ficción, este es obligatorio de leer. Creo que fue la primera novela basada en un hipotético anillo en un punto de Lagrange, y los "titerotes" son una especie interesante aunque con un natural sesgo histórico-cultural en el autor. Recomendable.

A must read for any SciFi afficionado. Aliens, mysterious space artifacts incredible science, but most of all four people on a fantastic adventure. Like any great story this one lives from their interactions, bravery, pain, emotions and to a non-trivial extent their luck.

Brilliant

Larry Niven is one of the five Greatest Ever sci-fi authors. His creations are so mind-stretching, without being fantasy, and his science is spot on- just the right balance of hard sci-fi and fun. His set of 'known space' books are excellent and should never be lost- I'm so glad they were released to Kindle format! As you are browsing this book, you are probably interested in Sci-Fi. Don't even bother to sample it, just order it! Tanj, you have a great treat in store that I wish I still had! Maybe I am biased, as this author introduced me to reading for recreation when I was an 18 year old tearaway, and Ringworld was the book that did it. Thanks for the gifts Mr Niven.