The Integral Trees

Rating:
Summary: Interesting World Building
Review: First let me say that this edition I'm reviewing is a two for one. You get both the Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring in one volume, which certainly makes it worth the price.

Secondly, The Smoke Ring was published four years after The Integral Trees. But reading The Smoke Ring, immediately after the Integral Trees, makes it a much more enjoyable and stronger book. I doubt I would have enjoyed it quite as much had I read it four years after reading The Integral Trees.

Both of these novels are concept novels in the hard science fiction genre., which is both a strength and a weakness. Niven sets up the world he creates in The Integral Trees, and there is character development but it is a bit thin. I found the novel hard to slog through at times and frankly had a hard time conceptualizing the environment Niven creates. The Smoke Ring is a lot more fun on two accounts. First, Niven goes about exploring a lot more of the world he created. And the characters a bit more developed.

Overall, both are worth reading. If you get through The Integral Trees and really liked it, I think you'd love The Smoke Ring. If you get through the Integral Trees and liked it, but just barely, The Smoke Ring is better. If you really hated The Integral Trees and didn't get it at all, skip The Smoke Ring.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting World Building
Review: First let me say that this edition I'm reviewing is a two for one. You get both the Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring in one volume, which certainly makes it worth the price.

Secondly, The Smoke Ring was published four years after The Integral Trees. But reading The Smoke Ring, immediately after the Integral Trees, makes it a much more enjoyable and stronger book. I doubt I would have enjoyed it quite as much had I read it four years after reading The Integral Trees.

Both of these novels are concept novels in the hard science fiction genre., which is both a strength and a weakness. Niven sets up the world he creates in The Integral Trees, and there is character development but it is a bit thin. I found the novel hard to slog through at times and frankly had a hard time conceptualizing the environment Niven creates. The Smoke Ring is a lot more fun on two accounts. First, Niven goes about exploring a lot more of the world he created. And the characters a bit more developed.

Overall, both are worth reading. If you get through The Integral Trees and really liked it, I think you'd love The Smoke Ring. If you get through the Integral Trees and liked it, but just barely, The Smoke Ring is better. If you really hated The Integral Trees and didn't get it at all, skip The Smoke Ring.

Rating:
Summary: A heart-breaking disappointment
Review: First, let's establish a baseline; if it says "Niven" on the cover, I read it. To my (somewhat limited) experience, there is no other sci-fi author except Frank Herbert who does as good a job at conjuring up utterely alien worlds that are both true to themselves and yet completely understandable to us poor Flatlanders (and Niven does it with a light touch and a sense of humor that just don't seem to be a big part of Herbert's universe).

Therein lies my beef with "The Integral Trees."

The setting of this story is so bizarre; the scenario so completely offbeat, that I had a very tough time getting into it (I'll be the first to admit that this may be a flaw in my own imagination!).The world postulated in the story is so far removed in time and space from any contact with "normal" human civilization, that the few technological and cultural artifacts that remain of that civilization have become like tribal myths to the characters.It's an interesting idea, but the almost total lack of "normal" references left me suspended in a gravityless void, just like the Trees of the story.

That may be exactly what this brilliant writer was going for - and in that case the book is a runaway success. But it just left me disoriented and bewildered.

Of course, this will in no way prevent me from continuing to read everything Larry Niven is associated with. And, with that segue, let me recommend his latest; "Destiny's Road."

Rating:
Summary: Excellent- moves in a new direction
Review: Having read many Sci-Fi books in my life, I can honestly say that none can come close in originality and concept to the books 'Integral Trees' and the sequel, 'The Smoke Ring' by Larry Niven. You will instantly love this book where technology takes a second-hand place to the dynamics of human development and interactivity, and the remnants of human advancements exist as strange, unknown objects, myths, and faded social traditions.

The book takes us into a free-fall environment, the remains of a gaseous planet orbiting a star in a binary system. Life has evolved there, free of the constrains of gravity. Ponds drift about as spheres of water, and multi-kilometer long trees are like small worlds containing lifeforms of numerous bizzare types. Humankind has reverted to tribal structures, the technology that brought them long forgotten. The old ways of Earth have all but dissapeared, existing only as ghosts in the speech patterns of the characters.

Niven has repeatedly written books that encourage us to think differently--to think big. If you liked the awesome strangeness of 'Ringworld,' then you will have an instant favorite in 'Integral Trees.'

Rating:
Summary: Too complicated
Review: I am a great fan of SF in general and Niven in particular. I love most of his other books, especially the Ringworld series, the Mote In God's Eye, World Out of Time, and all the Known Space short tales.

However, this book got me lost. I just couldn't get "into" it. Too alien, too complicated. I tried a few times to read it, but just couldn't. I got stuck after a few pages.

Rating:
Summary: Another excellent concept book from the sci-fi master
Review: I don't think anyone who has read Niven would argue that he is the master of what I like to call the "concept" novel. He invents a fantastic concept, throroughly develops the idea, then writes a story around it. The shortcoming of the method is that characters, and in particular the flow of the stories from beginning to end is compromised. The Integral Trees is no exception to this rule, though characters are developed marginally better than in many Niven novels. The concept is based around a society of people descended from a single space ship which was stranded near a neutron star. The neutron star sustains a unique ecosystem in the "smoke ring" of breathable gasses in orbit around it. The integral trees are giant trees, shaped like the calculus symbol for an integral. The people inhabit the trees, and this is where the story begins. This novel is a very quick read, and as I mentioned, the concept is fabulous. I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Another excellent concept book from the sci-fi master
Review: I don't think anyone who has read Niven would argue thathe is the master of what I like to call the "concept"novel. He invents a fantastic concept, throroughly develops the idea, then writes a story around it. The shortcoming of the method is that characters, and in particular the flow of the stories from beginning to end is compromised. The Integral Trees is no exception to this rule, though characters are developed marginally better than in many Niven novels. The concept is based around a society of people descended from a single space ship which was stranded near a neutron star. The neutron star sustains a unique ecosystem in the "smoke ring" of breathable gasses in orbit around it. The integral trees are giant trees, shaped like the calculus symbol for an integral. The people inhabit the trees, and this is where the story begins. This novel is a very quick read, and as I mentioned, the concept is fabulous. I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Great science fiction, bizarre new world
Review: I have read a number of Niven's books and this is one of his best. A quick read and very entertaining. Niven sets up a new world that defies description, and then creates characters and a plot line that make the new reality work. It may challenge you at first, but if you have the imagination, this is your book.

Rating:
Summary: Another version of a Ring World
Review: I met Larry Niven at a Sci-Fi convention back in April of 1983. This was back when Larry (Lawrence Van Colt) hated his known space series because he knew nothing he would ever write would be better than those fine stories. So, he spent a lot of time and energy on anything else but "Ringworld" and Known Space.

Larry was trying to make a new world based off the frame work established in "World out of Time". The plot is simple. People are sent into the universe with slower than light space ships. The world of the Intregal trees, of which the "Smoke Ring" is a far better name, shows how a white dwarf star circles a neutron star. The neutron star is pulling apart a Jupiter sized planet that circles in close orbit. The gases of the Jupiter sized planet supply the air for the "smoke ring". The Intregal Trees live in the Smoke Ring. The white dwarf heats the whole shebang. Got that? And you thought the Ring World was unstable!

The Characters of the plot are basic. To make a long story short, a tribe is on an Intregal tree that is slowly going out of orbit in the smoke ring. The tribe escapes the dying tree but is taken captive by another tribe that believes in slavery. Eventually, this tribe escapes from slavery and makes a new tribe on an unsettled tree.

Yep, this is fairly basic plot stuff. Indeed, when it was written the main characters were teenagers and we meet them again as middle aged adults in the "Smoke Ring", the follow up.

The Universe of the Intregal Trees and the World out of Time are depressing places. Imagine Hillary Clinton's "It takes a Village" type of thinking taking over Earth. There are "Checkers", government agents who live to make sure you comply with the many regulations that keeps society together. The spaceships are not fun like in known space. The science is late 1970s.

Larry could have done better. He avoided writing about "Known Space" for 10 years and only let people start using his universe on a franchise fee when the "Man-Kzin" war novels started. The best reason why Larry gave up on the Intregal Trees Universe and wrote "The Ring World Throne" because he remodeled his home in Tarzana, California and needed the cash from the advance on "Throne".

Larry could have made a semi-series of novels about the Ringworld. Instead he spent his time and energy making the Intregal tree universe.

It is a "C" grade. Nothing more.

Rating:
Summary: Another version of a Ring World
Review: I met Larry Niven at a Sci-Fi convention back in April of 1983. This was back when Larry (Lawrence Van Colt) hated his known space series because he knew nothing he would ever write would be better than those fine stories. So, he spent a lot of time and energy on anything else but "Ringworld" and Known Space.

Larry was trying to make a new world based off the frame work established in "World out of Time". The plot is simple. People are sent into the universe with slower than light space ships. The world of the Intregal trees, of which the "Smoke Ring" is a far better name, shows how a white dwarf star circles a neutron star. The neutron star is pulling apart a Jupiter sized planet that circles in close orbit. The gases of the Jupiter sized planet supply the air for the "smoke ring". The Intregal Trees live in the Smoke Ring. The white dwarf heats the whole shebang. Got that? And you thought the Ring World was unstable!

The Characters of the plot are basic. To make a long story short, a tribe is on an Intregal tree that is slowly going out of orbit in the smoke ring. The tribe escapes the dying tree but is taken captive by another tribe that believes in slavery. Eventually, this tribe escapes from slavery and makes a new tribe on an unsettled tree.

Yep, this is fairly basic plot stuff. Indeed, when it was written the main characters were teenagers and we meet them again as middle aged adults in the "Smoke Ring", the follow up.

The Universe of the Intregal Trees and the World out of Time are depressing places. Imagine Hillary Clinton's "It takes a Village" type of thinking taking over Earth. There are "Checkers", government agents who live to make sure you comply with the many regulations that keeps society together. The spaceships are not fun like in known space. The science is late 1970s.

Larry could have done better. He avoided writing about "Known Space" for 10 years and only let people start using his universe on a franchise fee when the "Man-Kzin" war novels started. The best reason why Larry gave up on the Intregal Trees Universe and wrote "The Ring World Throne" because he remodeled his home in Tarzana, California and needed the cash from the advance on "Throne".

Larry could have made a semi-series of novels about the Ringworld. Instead he spent his time and energy making the Intregal tree universe.

It is a "C" grade. Nothing more.