By: Larry Niven Publisher: Del Rey Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Del Rey Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 352 Publication Date: September 12, 1985 Release Date: September 12, 1985
Product Description: A new place is being built, a world of huge dimensions, encompassing millions of miles, stronger than any planet before it. There is gravity, and with high walls and its proximity to the sun, a livable new planet that is three million times the area of the Earth can be formed. We can start again!
One of the Ten Quadrillion Wonders of the Universe! There is a reason why the Pierson's Puppeteers are very interested in this strange "ring" around a distant sun, over the very horizon of "known space" (known to humans).
A mystery that is not normally of interest to the more commerce and not at all adventurous Puppeteers who are more interested in trade and perpetual compounding of wealth.
The mystery is what is happening at the core of the galaxy, and the Puppeteers immediate response to something that would take almost 30,000 years to affect them, or us on 30th century Earth and known space.
None the less, the ring is explored by the motley crew, including a Kzin, two humans, one Luis Wu who is 200 years old, and Teela Brown, a 20 year old who is product of the birth right lotteries centuries long little genetic expiriment instigated by the Puppeers, a 500,000 year old species with an interstellar trade empire older than Earth's Bronze Age.
What is found is a remarkable artifact built an untold number of centuries earlier, and either abandoned by the people who created it, or whose civilization just collapse leaving a population in a relative Dark Age totally oblivious to the origins of the world they live on.
Pockets of technology continue, but are scattered through out a world with an endless horizon. Cities in the sky supported by repulser beams from the serface. A 12 o'clock high perpetual noon day sun that is eclipsed by "shadow squares". A hugh 1000 mile high mountain called "Fist of God".
One of the lighter, more fun aspects of the journey may have been the custom of "Rishathra" between the diverging humanoid species of the large, open world.
Dull dull and dull I did not choose to read this book; a client is reading it, and I need to keep pace. I figured it won a Hugo so how bad could it be? I would never have guessed. Other posts have really said it all: the characters are cardboard and so is the dialogue. Often I could not tell (even after re-reading) who was speaking, but - honestly - it did not make the slightest difference. As for the plot - there was none. A "puppeteer" - a creature with two heads not seen by human in many years - chooses two humans and a semi-savage cat-like creature (by far the most interesting character, partly because of its schizoid presentation - sometimes chasing rabbits to guzzle them down leaving blood all over its face, sometimes perfectly reasonable.) The two humans are a 200 year old man of uncertain occupation and a 20 year old very beautiful (of course) girl. Their goal - to reach the Ringworld - an artificial star-circling construction millions of miles in diameter which the puppeteers have stumbled upon. They want more knowledge of it because it stands in the track of their inter-galactic migration to escape the effects of a sort of smaller Big Bang which will come their way (and Earth's) in 20,000 years. However, by nature puppeteers are extremely fearful, even though they have been completely manipulating both the human and kzin (cat-like) races for centuries. So to deal with this extremely important matter they rely on one of their species whom they regard as on the edge of madness, two humans - one bored out of his skull (Louis) and the other with the depth of a pot-hole (Teela - she has been chosen because she is "lucky" (no -really) butshe only comes along because she is in love with Louis although they have about as much in common as Queen Elizabeth and I) - and Speaker (the cat-like creature) who would half the time be ready to tear the throats out of his companions. (And I don't blame him; if I had to live with such boring creatures who do little but prattle about things that they understand (if at all) badly, I'd want to off them, too.) Anyway, they zoom off in a super spaceship that will be the reward provided by the puppeteer if the mission is successful (though at what is never quite clear.) At about page 250 or so, it occurs to Louis that their is a reason that the puppeteers are thus named - they are master manipulators. This was a question I asked myself on page 3, as would any normal person. Anyway, after a long and boring voyage, they more or less crash into Ringworld, and they have to find someone or something to help them get their ship moving again. (Heard this plot before?) So they travel hundreds of thousands of miles in little ships, at one point idiotically deciding to go straight through the most gigantic possible storm rather than going around it. They discover the inhabitants of Ringworld are humans - rather unlikely as they evolved thousands of light years from earth. They have regressed from being highly civilized and technologically advanced because (our foursome theorizes)some self-generating space neo-bacteria (which does not trouble the voyagers) made them sick, and their flying cities (no kidding - right out of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe) faw down and go boom, destroying the cities below them. Some of the civilized people who were away return much later, but all but one of them either become idiots (no kidding) or more or less die of boredom. The one who remains - a sort of cosmic super-whore (no kidding) named Prill - lives in a flying city/police station that was luckily self powered, pretends to be a god to the natives who provide her with food. The ships of our intrepid four out of all the millions of square miles available manage to fly into the police station's equivalent of a drunk drivers holding tank - their ships immobilized within an enormous space. Thus, they have accidentally found (presumably) the only civilized being left, Prill, who eventually allows the three of them (Teela has disappeared though her ship is still there, most likely dead - but we know better) into her city, just before they die of hunger and thirst. (Louis's main complaint since the crash of their ship is that he can't get any coffee. Deep, man.) Anyway, they continue to blather and prattle about how to get their ship going again. Louis figures out a way, though he does not explain it to anyone. It involves getting some wire that had been used by the civilized ringworlders to hold in place vast black plates far, far above the ringworld to provide day and night - a good thing since killer sunflowers that function like gigantic ray-guns (I do not joke) have evolved and overrun millions of square miles over which the four must fly, but only at night when the sunflowers don't see them. The wire was broken when the spaceship had flown into it, millions of miles of wire falling to the ground. So, to ground our party must go. Teela shows up with one of the uncivilized ringworlders, a muscle-bound hero with a large sword (get it?) He is called Seeker because he is on a quest to reach the giant arc - a kind of visual illusion. Teela who now loves Seeker, despite the fact that he is somewhat of a moron, does not disenchant him. She no longer has any feelings for Louis. Snap, just like that. Anyway, getting the wire involves a battle with the local groundling natives who attack them en masse because - because they do. The puppeteer loses one of his heads, but Teela makes a tourniquet and he is brought back to the flying police station, where his medical kit automatically takes over and keeps him alive until he can get back to the ship where he has a supply of other heads. (Cool. I liked the same idea in one of the OZ books I read when I was eight.) Teela and Seeker elect to return to the ground and stay on Ringworld - the author implies heavily that they will regenerate the civilization. Anyway, after a longish and tedious journey, they find the crashed ship. Louis uses the flying police station, one of the small individual ships held by it and the wire to drag their spaceship up to the top of an enormous, thousands of miles high mountain called the Fist of God (for no particular reason.) Louis has correctly surmised that it is a kind of vent into space, too high for the Ringworld to lose its atmosphere, and our heroes tumble out into space pulling the ship to which they will return with them. Anyway, the story just stops. Puppeteer will apparently go home and be allowed to mate with his leader, Prill and Louis have "the start of a beautiful friendship" and Speaker realizes that he does not want to bring his civilization either the truth about the puppeteer manipulation of their evolution or the plans for the supership because it will just cause his kind to become enraged and attack the puppeteers and be destroyed. What the puppeteers will do is unclear because the material out of which Ringworld is made is impervious to the radiations that are on the way. Humans will use the new supership to develop a mass migration to another part of space or they won't. Speaker will have to do some fast talking one would guess. Nothing is resolved. Anyway, many of the other reviews have spoken of the author's bad writing getting in the way of his interesting ideas. As far as I'm concerned, the ideas are even lamer than the writing. What I have not told you is that (I swear) it is Teela's "luck" that controls all that happens. You see, for five generations her ancestors have won the Earth lottery that allows people to have extra children. Thus, (I hate to tell you) she is genetically lucky, luck said to be a kind of power than an individual has or does not have. This makes about as much sense mathematically or in common sense as George Bush's foreign policy, well maybe a little bit more. The book is filled with "Big Ideas" that are "beyond"/in contradiction to anything we now know about physics, math, psychology or most anything else. It is filled with what Woody Allen once called "heaviosity." Anyway, most of science fiction has always been about a certain kind of wish fulfillment for power. Just think: you could have luck and control everything. Most of the good or great science fiction tamps down on this tendency or at least manages to write about it in exciting, vivid ways. Neither is true here. This is the bad stuff, popular but bad. Badly written, ill-conceived and just downright dull. (As Mr. Monk would say, "Of course I could be wrong, but I don't think so.")
What's the point? I listened to this book on audio book and was thoroughly bored. The story and plot were a thin covering on an overindulgence in trying to create future science that is completely unlike anything else. It's like the author was so interested in trying to ensure that every facet of life was so unique in his world that he completely neglected the story and character.
To echo what some others said the crude sexual bits only detracted more from the story.
The actual ring world is an interesting construct and an original idea, but the rest is just eh.
I'd heard for years how great a book this was, now I just wonder if I read the same book everyone else read.
Good concepts, bad execution While the ideas and concepts of the Ringworld are pretty good, the book overall is BORING. Niven comes up with a creative setting, but then you read page after agonizingly dull page waiting for just something to happen. And when things of interest finally happen, they're rushed. The societies and people the main characters encounter are poorly developed and feel like they were just thrown in. Ultimately, it's ok, but definitely nothing fantastic.
4 gold rings This is one of the masterpieces of hard-science fiction novels, though that is one of its problems. Its power lies in working out the dazzling scientific premise -- what would an artificial world built on an immense scale be like? The novel has two big flaws, however. Once the characters double back on their path and Niven has no more novelties to present, he seems to lose interest in the story. More importantly, the novel exhibits dated 60s attitudes about condescending to and exploiting "natives". (By the time he started writing the sequels Niven was clearly aware of this, and had his hero treat the Ringworlders as equals and with respect from then on. But the original novel couldn't be rewritten).
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