Larry NivenReviews

The popular wisdom is that this sequel, written two decades later, is quite inferior to the first book. In this case, the popular wisdom is right. This is just not as good as The Mote in God's Eye, but still I'm happy I read it, to see how the story ended.

The first part of the book takes place in the human CoDominium. I don't know how the authors got the impression that the CoDominium is as interesting as the Moties, but it is not. The Empire's politics, so old-fashioned and aristocratic, would seem to belong in the 19th century more than in the future. I know this is explained by the collapse of the first Empire and the related wars that put humanity's survival at risk, but still it's not as interesting as the Moties. The same goes for Bury and Renner's secret agent antics. I like what the authors do with Bury, though. When he was introduced in the first book it seemed he was going to be a one-dimensional villain, but he has turned out to be a much more complex and interesting character.

In the second part of the novel we finally get the Moties, which is what I wanted all the time. That part of the novel turns out to be a military thriller more than a first-contact chess game, but when the moties are around things are always interesting, even if most of the focus is on the action.

One could say that the solution the book offers to the Moties' little problem is a bit too easy, but let's not get into spoilers. At least we get an ending that's more conclusive than the one in the first book, even though I still would have liked to see some more. Unfortunately, the authors did not write any more sequels. There's a more recent book, however, an authorized sequel written by Pournelle's daughter.

Starts out as old-fashioned military SF, and then it quickly becomes a truly outstanding first contact story. The aliens are truly alien, as self-serving and prone to deception as humans, but not more evil than humans themselves. More intelligent in some ways, filled with potential and also unnerving. A big SF classic, still influential. Very entertaining, too.

F/SF

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Hardcover

Hardcover

A modern day retelling of Dante's 'Inferno'. Doesn't name names like the original but well worth reading. This is my second time reading the book.

What would happen if a comet was discovered coming close to the Earth? What if close to earth was wrong and chunks of the comet hit the earth? What could we expect in the aftermath? How screwed up can some people be? How would you prepare for the end of the world?

Welcome to the Stronghold. Welcome to the cannibal army. Welcome to the nuclear power plant. Welcome to Hammerlab above the Earth, and everything and everyone in-between.

I read this as a young adult. I reread it in the last month. I am just as impressed with this book now as when I first read it. It made both Nivens and Pournelle my favorite authors

Gah! This is like reading Larry Niven's notes for a novel instead of a novel itself. Technological things go unexplained. Dialogue is never more than a single sentence long. Settings are so sparsely described as to be almost nonexistent. And if you haven't read any of the previous stories featuring the main character (Hanville Svetz), most of this book will probably make zero sense to you.

At about 20% of the way through the book, I gave up on it.

This book made a big impression on me in high school, some mumbledy-mumble years ago. I wonder if it holds up.

Great science fiction and great murder mystery, at the same time. Really liked the description of different physics on the Moon, and the futuristic culture and legal issues that are brought up, both of which actually become relevant to the plot.

Jam packed with creative SF ideas and extrapolations. The sheer scale of the Ringworld and its artifacts was amazing. Liked the way alien races were presented. However the romantic subplots were kind of lame and the ending felt very abrupt.

I really enjoyed the further exploration of the Ringworld and its civilizations, and the hyper-engineering problem posed by the Ringworld's instability. I liked the use of technology and the back story of Known Space. The depiction of the protagonist weaning himself from current addiction was neat. I felt the relationships between the protagonist and various alien females was pretty shallow, especially compared to the better developed interaction with his Kzin and puppeteer semi-allies. The ending was a neat resolution of the engineering problem but I felt there wasn't enough of an emotional payoff.

Very similar to Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. However, Ringworld is not terribly worthwhile and probably not the 13th best science fiction book of all time. The ending is weak and relates little to the motivation for the conflict. In addition, the prose is rather dry.

This was fun to read, and had some interesting concepts, but I didn't find it particularly memorable. There is a lot of plodding over this particular world and loads of strange finds that ultimately lead to the answer of a kind of archeological/anthropological puzzle, but I can get a bit impatient with constantly having to picture a new environment.

I’ve been wanting to read a bit of sci-fi, something I haven’t done since Ms Bobo assigned Dune in 9th grade. I picked Ringworld based on a blog entry on wilwheaton.net. I was glad not to be disappointed. This reading was slow starting, which had more to do with my attention span and finding time, but as the story unraveled I found myself making time.

It is way in the future and Louis Wu is a 200-something human that looks 30-something. Having seen and done many things in his old age, he is automatically intrigued by a proposition made by a member of an alien race, the puppeteers: travel with him to 200 light years away in search of a new hospital environment to escape to when their own galaxy will be swallowed by cosmic implosion 20,000 years into the future. Along with another human Teela Brown (Louis’ lover) and Speaker-to-Animals (a kzin, a different kind of alien species), the foursome travel and meet adventure and search for a way back home. I got really clingy to the story, when it was revealed that the breeding experiments of the puppeteers had drastic results on both humans and kzin, and specifically to each of our heroes and heroines.

I think I'm gettin old... and stuff. It's tiresome to read true hardcore sci-fi where action is mere mote in the eye of the world. So much descriptions, so many explanations, tons of details, endless right and wrong guesses... And much of it ending been just a time filler between some twisting points of story.

Even if it's very good and stylish book, I can only admit that it's not my kind of thing.

The science is a bit outdated, and the gender issues in this book are cringeworthy at times, but for classic disaster porn this one's not bad.

I'm giving Ringworld a 3, but this is a conditional rating. I think Ringworld is both a book with a terrific story and convincing world-building, but it is unfortunately told through the eyes of flat, uninteresting characters utilizing dated, often chauvinistic dialogue. A lot of "golden age" sci-fi falls into this trap, having been written by middle-aged white men in an era when this sort of behaviour and attitude was left unchecked. I understand that, and can usually appreciate the work as a piece from its place and time. It feels jarring though when the only female character behaves ignorantly, acts clumsy, and is hyper sexualized by the writer - and the male characters around her treat her critically because of these things. However, if you can look past this (and there were a few moments where I really struggled) the concept of the Ringworld itself is good fun, especially when Niven manages to blow your mind with the scale of it. I do feel like I'm kind of done with the saga though and as interesting as the Ringworld is, I don't feel compelled enough to read the other four books in the series.

I'd heard this was a classic of the post-apocalyptic genre, so was pleased to finally nab a copy second hand.

The book starts with the discovery of a comet and revolves around the humdrum lives of a bunch of LA locals, tending toward the wealthy socialite class. At first predicted to narrowly miss earth, the comet's odds of hitting escalate steadily the closer it gets to Earth.

The build up to Hammerfall is suitably suspenseful and the impact itself seems to be handled realistically from a scientific point of view. Now our intertwined point-of-view characters must escape the collapse of society, floods and tsunamis to find safety in a world in which the thin veneer of civilisation has been suddenly torn away.

Personally I'm not sure that the immediate reversion of society to violence, rape and cannibalism in the wake of Hammerfall is realistic. When real-life disasters hit people seem to band together for a short time at least. On the other hand, the formation of the cannibal cult coalition seem to parallel the formation of ISIS in a land that has lost all semblance of power structure remarkably well.

My criticisms are similar to other reviewers. The approach to race and gender is ham-fisted. Hammerfall wipes out women's lib (as one character gleefully observes) and women are simply trophies who seek out the strongest male to protect them, and sex appears to be the only tool available to them. Outside the relative civilisation of our protagonists' valley a life of rape or sex-slavery awaits. There's a range of characters who are given point of view in this book but only two are women and neither are the unlucky sort, say for example the girl scouts who have been turned into sex slaves. I guess that while this book is a darker take on the apocalypse, the authors didn't want to go quite that dark.

And that is one point of difference in this book. It's a dark take on the apocalypse that includes that part that most post-apocolyptic works conveniently skip: the End, with all its death and horror and messiness. The characters face some hard moral choices: do they sentence people who do not conform to their new society (teetering on the brink of collapse) to death, do they use horrid chemical weapons against the attacking cannibal army, do they re-introduce slavery?

Unfortunately, all to often they seem to lean on the side of ruthlessness. On one hand, it demonstrates the harshness of the new world, but on the other it feels too much like the authors have an unsavoury agenda to push.

My favourite character was the diabetic scientist who decided in the face of the apocalypse to save books and knowledge for the survivors.

A worthwhile take on the end of the world with its scientific believability and dark themes, but marred by outdated ideas and strange authorial agendas.

The book feels a little dated now but was still worth the read. One of those books that I have been meaning to read for years.

I enjoyed it but there were a few parts that went a little long and a few parts which are riddled with clichés about human behavior. Don't regret reading it but would probably have been a much more enjoyable book if I had read it as a kid.