The Integral Trees

Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: I rate this as an airplane book- one I read when I have nothing else to do, but it was pretty good.

Rating:
Summary: Niven's Integral Trees is Amazing
Review: Integral Trees is an amazing book. Niven's use of a non-planet, natural zero g enviroment for this story is amazing. While reading this book, I was constantly amazed at the thought that went into each detail of his natural zero G enviroment. This book is for anyone who loves attention to detail.

Rating:
Summary: The Integral Trees: Integral Niven
Review: Larry Niven has a knack for creating unique worlds that are not planets. Ringworld was the first and in the Integral Trees, we are introduced to a world that is essentially a gas ring surrounding a star. It's a very clever concept and the humans (their ancestors came from Earth) who inhabit this world are truly interesting, it's fun to follow the adventures of this rag-tag tribe as their home is destroyed and they must quest to find a new one. Great book, easily Ringworld's equal.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant concept, above-average plot and characters
Review: Larry Niven isn't known for his thrilling plots, in-depth characterization, or purple prose. He's knows for his fantastically inventive settings, and The Integral Trees delivers on that count. It also delivers, surprisingly well considering what are thought to be Niven's weaknesses, an engaging plot and cast of characters.

The story (in case mine is the very first review you've ever read) is this: a spaceship sent by Earth to colonize other worlds stops to investigate a neutron star surrounded by a gas torus of the right climate to support life. The ship's human crew mutiny and flee, leaving the cyborg personality recorded in the ship's computer alone, unable to fulfill its ordained mission of planting colonies while keeping the colonists loyal to the State. Now, five hundred years later, some of the descendants of the mutineers, having adapted to life in the free-fall environment of the gas torus, find themselves on an unexpected adventure that tears their world apart and gives them an opportunity to return to the life their forefathers left behind.

The plot was suspenseful enough to keep me from putting the book down (except when I absolutely had to go to bed), but I was also pleasantly surprised by the interesting speculations on what the society of humans who regressed from technological civilization back into tribal culture might be like. I had always assumed that when Niven collaborated with Jerry Pournelle, it was always Pournelle, with his historical and military interests, who injected the politics and sociology into their stories, but Niven seems capable enough of extrapolating on such topics on his own.

The one thing I felt was missing was a good explanation of how directions and forces within the Smoke Ring work-I think I finally got "east" and "west", but I never did quite understand what causes the "tides" on the trees, nor why the winds blow in different directions "out" from "in." Niven would not have been wrong to include an appendix explaining these matters to those of us who are a little too dense to pick up on them from the descriptions within the story itself.

Given that the plot is more than absorbing enough that the book doesn't have to rely on the inventiveness of the setting to carry the reader's interest, The Integral Trees is worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant concept, above-average plot and characters
Review: Larry Niven isn't known for his thrilling plots, in-depth characterization, or purple prose. He's knows for his fantastically inventive settings, and The Integral Trees delivers on that count. It also delivers, surprisingly well considering what are thought to be Niven's weaknesses, an engaging plot and cast of characters.

The story (in case mine is the very first review you've ever read) is this: a spaceship sent by Earth to colonize other worlds stops to investigate a neutron star surrounded by a gas torus of the right climate to support life. The ship's human crew mutiny and flee, leaving the cyborg personality recorded in the ship's computer alone, unable to fulfill its ordained mission of planting colonies while keeping the colonists loyal to the State. Now, five hundred years later, some of the descendants of the mutineers, having adapted to life in the free-fall environment of the gas torus, find themselves on an unexpected adventure that tears their world apart and gives them an opportunity to return to the life their forefathers left behind.

The plot was suspenseful enough to keep me from putting the book down (except when I absolutely had to go to bed), but I was also pleasantly surprised by the interesting speculations on what the society of humans who regressed from technological civilization back into tribal culture might be like. I had always assumed that when Niven collaborated with Jerry Pournelle, it was always Pournelle, with his historical and military interests, who injected the politics and sociology into their stories, but Niven seems capable enough of extrapolating on such topics on his own.

The one thing I felt was missing was a good explanation of how directions and forces within the Smoke Ring work-I think I finally got "east" and "west", but I never did quite understand what causes the "tides" on the trees, nor why the winds blow in different directions "out" from "in." Niven would not have been wrong to include an appendix explaining these matters to those of us who are a little too dense to pick up on them from the descriptions within the story itself.

Given that the plot is more than absorbing enough that the book doesn't have to rely on the inventiveness of the setting to carry the reader's interest, The Integral Trees is worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: The painter of worlds.
Review: Larry Niven, the undisputed master of hard sci-fi, is an artistic painter of worlds. In "The Integral Trees", Niven's paint brush creates a world where there is no gravity or planet. There are only huge trees, hundreds of meters in diameter and thousands of meters long, that radially orbit a neutron star. The trees are inhabited by 9 foot tall, spindly humans who refer to 6 foot tall humans as "dwarves". Niven creates a scientifically possible world which stretches your mind and imagination. Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down!

Rating:
Summary: This book breaks off in a new direction! A great read!
Review: Niven weaves a miracle of technology, science and adventure with this one! It takes off in a entirely new direction from conventional SF! Probably the greatest book he has written since Ringworld. A must read for the true SF adventurer!

Rating:
Summary: "Hard" SciFi at its best. Great character development
Review: One of the great failings of science fiction is its tendency to subjugate character development to technology. Niven is one of the best writers of "hard" science fiction. In this oldie-but-goodie, all plot and environment is based on known scientific principals, extrapolated within Niven's fertile imagination. What happens to a group of space explorers stranded in a star system with unusual gravitational properties? What makes The Integral Trees special is that Niven has provided more than a crackling good adventure story. The characters are fully developed and have real "human" interactions. My wife, who can't stand scifi, was immediately drawn into the narrative. The painting of all flora, fauna and environmental factors is seamless. Along its sequal, The Smoke Ring, Integral Trees provides an enchanting portrayal of humans forced to cope in an alien system.

Rating:
Summary: If you loved Ringworld you will love this
Review: Set in the known space universe, the story describes a culture of people that evolved to live in the 0 gravity world of a gas ring. Leave it to Niven to make such a story not just fascinating for the novelty of such a unique world, and Novelty of the technology of the known space universe, but also have a great and intriguing plot within that universe that you just can't put down. This is a GREAT scifi book that is on the must-read list of any fan of Niven.

Rating:
Summary: A true escape from reality....
Review: Something weird happened and all of a sudden I have the incredible urge to re-read this book and it's sequel after 14+ years of time passing. I read my original so many times that I broke the back and started loosing pages. My searching has paid off as I couldn't even remember the author or the title. When I was reading Isaac Asimov's Robot and then the Foundation series I stumbled across this and found it to be a nice break.