There's a word often bandied about when people discuss books, particularly fantasy and science fiction books, which often involve the creation of worlds unlike our own. That term is (perhaps unsurprisingly) worldbuilding. And if ever there were a paradigm case for worldbuilding, Ringworld would be it. The eponymous structure is not a planet but, for all intents and purposes, functions as one. With a simple concept and a little bit of physics, Larry Niven has a striking novum that's brand, setting, and mystery all in one. If only Ringworld lived up to that potential. . . .The first half of the book wasn't bad. Watching Nessus recruit Louis, Speaker To Animals, and Teela was a fascinating look at Niven's far future. I can't say I was able to visualize the puppeteers very well, but I got the idea of transfer booths, cat-like Kzinti, hyperdrive, etc. This is my first science fiction book by Larry Niven, and it instilled in me a good opinion of Niven's ability to balance carefully hard science fiction concepts (like an adherence to relativistic travel) with soft science fiction (an emphasis on the sociological effects of spaceflight and unexplained plot devices like hyperdrive). Specifically, I loved his sociological asides, such as Louis' speculations about how much Nessus and other Puppeteers have interfered with human and Kzinti development. Niven makes good use of the time it takes to reach and explore the Ringworld itself to show us his version of the future.Alas, once the action is restricted to the Ringworld and the new goal is to discover any remaining pockets of Ringworld Engineer civilization, the only thing remarkable about the story is the alacrity with which it becomes unremarkable. It's apparent that something happened to cause civilization to "fall" on the Ringworld. Louis' speculation about a microbe that ate away at complex compounds eventually proved correct (and very cool, I'll admit). That isn't enough to save the book from a mediocre trip from the crash site to an abandoned city, where they meet up with a surviving Engineer (who is more like a prostitute, posing as a god). Along the way, we had to endure torturous talk about how Teela was "bred for luck". As a result, she has almost zero free will, because nearly all her actions result from chance. I'm sceptical about accepting this whole "breeding for luck" idea, but suspension of disbelief compels me to shelve the matter and ignore Niven's incessant speculations. If only Niven hadn't similarly ignored the most interesting part of Ringworld itself: its inhabitants!I'm talking about the fallen descendants of Engineers, of course, not the original inhabitants. Louis himself, near the very end of the book, reflects on the fact that the Ringworld is so vast as to support a great diversity of cultures. And Nessus makes a valid point that, because it isn't a planet and the Engineers could just transmute matter from one form to another, the Ringworld has no metal ores to mine. The only way to make tools is to scavenge what's left from abandoned cities. It would have been interesting to see how those diverse cultures and see how they've adapted to the unique challenges of living on a ring (which they think is an arch). Aside from a few scenes where Louis and the others pose as gods and meeting Seeker, we don't get a lot of face time with the natives. Niven and his characters are more obsessed with what happened to the Ringworld Engineers and (understandably) getting off the Ringworld.It might seem strange that I didn't share their obsession. After all, I'm a technophile. The Ringworld is an awesome idea, and I was curious to discover who had built it. Nevertheless, I'm jaded enough that I was sure—especially after learning that civilization had fallen—that the answer wouldn't be very satisfactory. I was right.After shrouding it in so much mystery, Niven reveals that the demise of Ringworld civilization wasn't nearly so mysterious. Louis was right about the microbe. The Engineers are dead, mad, or integrated into the fallen societies scattered around the ring. Only Pril is left to tell her story. But because Louis and Nessus had already unravelled much of that story on their own, there wasn't much left to serve as a surprise or a twist.But it's the journey, not the destination, right? Aside from my complaints about not showing us more Ringworld culture, it's true that Niven gives us plenty of episodic events on the way toward the rim wall. We get killer sunflowers, a massive storm, and a floating castle with a holographic map. Ringworld would be an awesome place for a roleplaying game, just because it's such a wonderfully built world.So in case I haven't browbeaten you enough yet, I'll be explicit: Ringworld is great because of its worldbuilding and sucks because of its story. If you're one of those people who likes reading about intriguing hypothetical constructions like rings, Dyson spheres, etc., then you should probably read this book. However, one cannot draw much satisfaction from the mystery of the Ringworld or the characters who try to solve it. Unlike the Ringworld, they aren't built nearly so well.My Reviews of the Ringworld series:The Ringworld Engineers →
Radio waves move at the speed of light. This is not particularly noticeable on Earth, but if you were at the sun, it would take eight and a half minutes for a signal to reach you, which would make a phonecall rather awkward. It would be even worse at the next closest star, Proxima Centauri, where messages take four years. Thus, the speed of light is the rate at which information moves, at which change change can propagate.But most people don't think, when watching Star Trek, that Captain Picard shouldn't be able to have a quick chat with someone back on Earth. For those who do think that, there is Hard Sci Fi. It's a subgenre where the author actually knows something about scientific theory and tries to use that knowledge to make his world seem more reasonable to other people who know something about science.It can be delightful to hear someone tell Commander Shepard that such communication is possible due to 'Quantum Entanglement', especially if you already know what that means (even if Shepard doesn't know, meaning you are now playing a character dumber than you). Thus, Hard Sci Fi is made up of a series of technological thought experiments, which can be very interesting, or very dull.For instance, you can play a fun game with the author and second-guess their ideas, which OCD aspies seem to get off on. I decided to play around a bit myself and test his repeated assertion that it would take a lot of time to populate the Ringworld, thoroughly solving overpopulation problems for a species like humans.Human beings on Earth double their population every fifty years, which is a geometric progression (x2, x4, x8, x16, x32), so that the growth gets faster and faster. The current population density of humans on the Earth is 45.3 people per square kilometer of land. Take the 6.8 billion humans on earth and move them to the ringworld (1.6×10 to the 15th square kilometers, but half of that's water), and you get eight and a half people for every million square kilometers of land. That is a lot of room to spare. But that's before we start doubling and redoubling. Since the Ringworld's land area is 1.5 million times the land area of Earth, we'd need i.5 million times as many people to reach the same population density. We would reach a population of 1.5 million times 6.8 billion between doublings 20 and 21, which--at 50 years per doubling--is just over a thousand years; not really that long a respite, in galactic terms.And that doesn't even get into the migration rates, since, to get from one side of the ring to the other in a thousand years would require traveling 16 thousand miles per day, so you're probably starting to see both how fun and how tedious Hard Sci Fi can be.But Niven's isn't that bad, and he rarely gets into the numbers. A lot of readers might not even consider him to be real 'Hard Sci Fi' today, he's got faster-than-light travel, after all, and without a complex explanation or anything. But if a writer wants to make an engaging adventure story, they can't let themselves get too bogged down in the Science of it all. And Niven doesn't, it's just a treat for the reader who knows what to look for--some of it's even informative.His characters are fairly straight-forward. We have a smart, introspective, science-minded guy who doesn't have a whole lot of personality. We've got distant, unusual logic alien, giant noble warrior alien, and a naive girl. It's not a bad exploration of these now-familiar tropes, even after all the intervening time.The woman I found rather annoying, in part because she reminded me of the type of girl I usually avoided at parties: someone who had been pretty and well-off her entire life and hence, never had the need to develop a personality. I much prefer people who started our weird and awkward and only became attractive later in life.But, at least Niven actually tries to explore this aspect of her character, instead of merely taking it for granted that this is how women are. I won't say his portrayal of women is ideal, she and the only other woman in the book are defined by their femininity and derive all of their power from sex. They do it somewhat knowingly, but it hardly makes for very complex characters or a challenging worldview, nor is it very 'alien'.The plot itself is passable, much more sober and well-constructed than Riverworld, but also less whimsical. It moves along at a quick pace, uncovering a few intergalactic political mysteries on the way, but we don't get a very solid conclusion at the end, so I must assume it's more of a lead-in to the next book in the series. We do get some closure, but I would have appreciated a stronger and more definitive arc.Altogether an enjoyable, unpretentious read, and it's not hard to see why it became influential in the genre. It's not going to feel revolutionary to sci fi readers, even compared to earlier works like Star Trek and the Golden-age authors, but it's a solid, well-executed piece.Comments below contain spoilers.
What do You think about Ringworld (2005)?
I have a lot of faith in science fiction but this one dented it - it's a daft cartoon of a novel in which there's this really big, you know, I mean giant big big enormous, like, world, and these aliens go there, and they droop and mumble about in it, and it's really big, and one of them looks like a carpet and the other looks like a diplodocus, and the other like an old chinaman cause you got to have an old chinaman in your far future novels, yeah. It was showered with awards but i would have showered it with something else.
—Paul Bryant
This book is good when it comes to the science of science fiction. The Ringworld is interesting and well described, but the book really falls short in explaining the how and why questions that are constantly coming up. The characters are shallow and pretty boring in general and are merely weak vehicles in a vague and more or less unexplained plot for exploring the mysterious Ringworld.Overall this book is ok. It has its fun moments when reading about the mechanisms and design of the Ringworld or the grand scale of everything that the characters see, but I can't help but wishing the book would hurry up every time Niven talks about the character's lame feelings and sexual exploits.
—Stephen
After re-reading Niven's most famous novel, one that I truly adored as a kid, I'm forced to drop one (one and a half, if I could) from my initial rating.I still love SF books about Big Dumb Objects. There are some great stories about BDOs out there. Ringworld is still a good STORY with lots of great concepts. It's not a great book, though. The single female character is a dunce. The other characters aren't much more three-dimensional. The setup seems to take forever. I don't care how many nerds tromped the halls at Worldcon chanting "THE RINGWORLD IS UNSTABLE". (I guess this was a big deal at the time.) I suppose you can't go back again.
—Michael
