Ringworld
The Ringworld eries, Book 1
Larry Niven
Del Rey
Fiction, Sci-Fi
Themes: Aliens, Classics, Space Stories
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Description
In a future where interstellar travel is commonplace, alien ambassadors dine in Earth restaurants, and instantaneous transport booths have
obliterated cultural and national differences, Louis Wu celebrates his bicentennial birthday... and finds a most unusual, self-invited guest.
Nessus is a puppeteer, a two-headed, three-legged alien race thought to have mysteriously vanished some years ago. He claims Louis has been
chosen as part of an elite team to explore a strange and unnatural discovery in deep space. (The puppeteers, though technologically light-years
beyond many sapient species, are also notorious cowards when it comes to exploration and testing new technology - a trait humans notably lack.)
Also chosen are Speaker-To-Animals, a muscular catlike kzin whose people have, until recently, been bent on conquest, and Teela Brown, a
naïve young human woman with luck in her genes. What the discovery is, Nessus refuses to say, but the payment is a hyperdrive ship - plus
plans to make more - which may be the salvation of any species that gets hold of it.
Heading off to who-knows-where with a kzin warrior, an impossibly immature girl, and a possibly insane puppeteer who is clearly hiding something?
Despite his better judgment, Louis joins up, and finds himself facing an enigma beyond anything he has ever encountered in two centuries of life.
An unimaginably advanced culture has built an unimaginably vast, habitable ring about a star - a ring full not only of mysteries, but of danger.
Review
This was another title in my long list of classic books I've meant to read but never got around to buying. I found this copy for a buck at Half
Price Books; for a dollar, I figured it would be worth a try. Niven crafts a technologically advanced future that - forty years after Ringworld's
debut - still feels like the far future... at least, on the tech front. (No mean feat, considering the leaps and bounds science has made in the past
few decades.) He also invents a true interstellar wonder in the Ringworld itself. Most everything in the book, no matter how huge and improbable and
mind-boggling, has scientific underpinnings, and the characters go out of their way to explain these underpinnings to the reader. I, unfortunately, have
little more than an American public high school education in science, and that was some years ago. Much of the technobabble and plot-stopping explanations
washed over my little head, unfortunately. Since the story is based on the "strangers visit wondrous place, have adventures, then leave" framework, I
could still enjoy the scenery, and the larger-than-life ideas were nice and shiny to look at, even if I didn't understand all the little wires and knobs
attached to them. The explorers bump along through several encounters, some more memorable than others, until they reach a surprisingly abrupt ending. I
know there are more books in the Ringworld universe, but I still thought that there could've been a page or two more of wrapping up. While the tech and
sense of wonder still feel futuristic, though, the plot has shades of dating, especially in the way the human male Louis so often solves alien problems,
not to mention the presence of the often-inept space chick Teela. Niven eventually explains some of her stupidity, and once in a while she comes forward
with insights to add to the technobabble conversations, but I had tired of her long before then. For much of the book, her main contribution to the mission
is providing Louis with a bedmate. But, then, of five cultures (four species) presented here, Niven assigns their females the roles of subsentient objects
(on two counts), idiots, slaves, and whores. Granted, at least one - the kzin species - might be someone else's fault; I've read other kzin stories, so I
don't know if Niven invented the species or if he just had permission to play with them. Even then, it's a slap in the face, especially when the "idiots"
and "slaves" are human and the "whore" is a technologically advanced humanoid capable of human crossbreeding. (Especially insulting was how Louis, learning
that a female was part of said advanced humanoids' spacecraft crew, correctly guesses that there could be no other possible reason for a woman to be on board
a ship save as a high-end prostitute. To be honest, if sex was a requirement for an exploration ship crew's health and women were considered of no use beyond
a rutting tool, wouldn't it make more sense to send a bisexual or homosexual crew, and not waste space or supplies on an otherwise-useless female? But,
then, if they did that, who or what would they reduce to mere object status? But, I digress...)
I doubt I'll read further in Niven's series. While I found the concept fascinating, I also found the science tedious, and I wasn't so attached to any of the
characters that I have to find out where they went after their adventure. This lack of engagement ultimately made me give Ringworld an Okay rating;
even though some of the ideas would've merited a Good, I just wasn't feeling it when I finished the book.