Ringworld

Rating:
Summary: Ringworld is an Excellent example of riveting Sci Fi
Review: Ever since getting my hands on my first Larry Niven novel, Tales of Known Space, I have been hooked. Ringworld did not disappoint me. The plot keeps you interested and does not become too verbose.

The only item where I find it weak is in the scientific background. The fact that the Ringworld is built by the Pak, a race of warlike beings ancestral to humans, who live in three stages, child, breeder and Protector, is hard to beleive. The Pak are so warlike they should have become extinct before developing space flight. They certainly did not have the cooperative inclination to build a partial Dyson Sphere.

The rate of mutation in the ringworld is also somewhat far fetched, given the age of the construct and the time since protectors left the breeders to their own devices.

But this is only a problem with people with some degree of training in the natural sciences. For the majority of readers, this is no barrier to enjoying one of the most fascinating sci fi novels of the late 20th century!

Rating:
Summary: Classic among classics
Review: This is the outstanding classic of SF. Indeed there are things which might be improved, but I wouldn't know how. Indeed it does not manage to keep up the roaring pace it starts off with, but it carries on quite adequately. Of course it has been written some time ago, and people nowadays are spoiled by the fancy optic effects of contemporary SF movies, and by great story tellers like Orson Scott Card, but leaving such superficialities aside, I have never seen anything that can even touch Ringworld.

By the way, Orson Scott Card may be a terrific story teller, but, to say it gently, his work is out and out fantasy, never touching reality. He should have quit after "Ender's game" (the 1977 short story that is) and waited until he had a worthwhile story to tell.

Rating:
Summary: RINGWORLD: HARD CORE SI-FI WITH EASE AND ENJOYMENT
Review: THIS IS THE FIRST LARRY NIVEN BOOK I EVER READ. IT WAS GIVEN TO ME BY MY SISTER WHEN IT WAS NEW AND I WAS ONLY 16 YEARS OLD. THIS WAS ALSO MY FIRST SICENCE FICTION NOVEL. WHAT AN INTRODUCTION! VIVID PERSONEL AND AN EASY READ HOOKED ME FROM THE START, AND NIVEN HAS BEEN MY FAVORITE AUTHOR EVER SINCE. RINGWORLD IS A FOUNDATION BOOK IN WHICH THE READER BEGS FOR MORE. MORE OF THE FUTURE AND HISTORY OF THE STORY. NIVENS TALENT AFFORDS US THE LUXURY OF OTHER WORLDS AND OTHER TANGENTS OF THOUGHT. READ "THE MOTE IN GODS EYE" AND "LUCIFERS HAMMER" TO APPRECIATE THE GENIUS OF THIS HUGO AND NEBULA AWARD WINNER.

Rating:
Summary: Best Book
Review: This was an excellent book. Anyone that enjoys Sci-Fi at all should read this, and the rest of the trilogy. It's an entrancing story, one of the best books I've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic - Larry Niven at his best
Review: A mysterious (and mad) stranger offers a rich prize to an apparently mismatched crew, if they will undertake a dangerous mission to a strange land - the Ringworld.

Far from a typical adventure yarn, Ringworld is a landmark science fiction story. The worlds and cultures, the future human history, and the technology conceived for this book (and for other related Known Space stories) are a major achievement of imagination. Larry Niven has a gift for making them all fit and work together into a cohesive and enjoyable whole.

The exploration of the Ringworld, a massive artifact of mysterious origins, forms the backdrop for a further exploration of the history and the cultures in Larry Niven's Known Space series.

Ringworld provides insights and intriguing clues about the two principal alien species of the novel, the Kzin and the Puppeteers, and the history of their interactions with the human race. The creation of alien viewpoints and personalities is exceptionally well handled here. Nessus and Speaker-to-Animals are credible characters with unique viewpoints.

I was particularly pleased with the handling of the warrior culture of the Kzin. Speaker-to-Animals is aggressive and proud, but also intelligent, articulate and judicious. Contrast this with the one dimensional, noble but simple minded Klingons of Star Trek NG.

Ringworld has my recommendation. Other Larry Niven books worth reading include Neutron Star and Protector.

I don't recommend Ringworld Engineers, the sequel to this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic Series
Review: A true classic! Although it has some mature themes, it's a great book for young teens. Adventure, science, moral dillemas, seven foot tall sentient tigers... it's got it all. I read it first as a kid at camp, and at 31 I reread the whole series over and over.

Rating:
Summary: Classic, Powerful SF!
Review: We have just attained the technology to make this book into a movie. A movie notwithstanding, the images in this book will stay with you for a lifetime, and Niven's hard SF will ruin you for the weaker, newer writers.

Rating:
Summary: Not Worth Reading
Review: The concept of the "Ringworld" in this book is really awesome. It's really too bad that better characters and plot couldn't be added to make this book good. The characters are difficult to distinguish despite their species, and I was rather shocked that there were no strong female characters in this; all women in this book are shallow and lifeless. The plot greatly resembles a comic book series; random event after random event, that never really tie together. All in all, this book is a waste of time, despite the concept of the ringworld.

Rating:
Summary: Profound and breathtaking
Review: This is a story set around a thousand years in the future, in which Nessus, a member of the cowardly race known as Pierson's Puppeteers approachs Louis Wu, a human who is in the midst of celebrating his 200th birthday, Teela Brown, a young woman who is the daughter of 5 generations of winning gamblers, and Speaker to Animals, a member of the ferocious, carnivorous Kzinti race of aliens, and persuades them to join him on an exploration mission to the Ringworld - an enormous artificial world in the shape of a spinning ring, about the size of the Earth's orbit, with a sun at the centre. (The Ringworld is, as Niven gives due credit, a variation on Freeman Dyson's idea of worlds in the form of complete hollow spheres surrounding suns).

The one thing that I find annoying about this book is Niven's irritating lack of respect for religion and indiginous cultures. At one point he describes his Ringworld as a world that is filled with "nothing but savagery". All of the indiginous inhabitants of the Ringworld are drowned in superstition and naivity. (It should be pointed out here that Niven apparently realised this sin, because he makes up for it by reversing the trend in the next two Ringworld books - in particular Ringworld Throne).

Even his idea of depicting technologically advanced alien species such as the Puppeteers and the Kzinti as races whose entire culture is based on their herbivorous/carnivourous nature I find crude and naive. Still, as implausible as Niven's aliens may be, there is a considerable amount of amusement which one can derive from reading about them, and so Niven has actually done a good job.

In fact, this is indeed one of the very best science fiction novels I have ever read. Niven's characters are vivid, and his vision of the Ringworld is profound and breathtaking. Could the Ringworld ever be built? Probably not. Aside from the gargantuan scope of the project, there are aspects of the Ringworld which make it a near, if not complete physical impossibility. As its mass is only that of the planet Jupiter, its collosal width and breadth would mean it would have to be extraordinarilly thin. So to withstand the stresses of the phenomenal spin (which would be heterogeneous, due to the presence of the two Great Oceans) required to emulate gravity on the inner side, the tensile strength of the foundation material would have to be millions of times that of any known material.

(Note that I am not an engineer, so if my reasoning is wrong, please let me know).

Rating:
Summary: One extra star for the brilliant concept..
Review: but it goes nowhere. The characters are flat and emotionless. The events and descriptions are written in the most dull, lifeless manner possible. Events come and go with no purpose and no significence. Everyone makes the most farfetched logical deductions based on nothing at all. The ending isn't really an ending; it's more like the story is just cut off out of nowhere. Nothing is resolved or explained. And the basic premise of Teela's purpose in the story is simply ludicrous: someone bred for luck, as if luck is an actual consistent quality? However, it's no more ludicrous than the rest of the book. Buy this if you want hard science (and even that I'm doubtful about), but don't expect a story out of it.