I hadn't read this for many years, and was pleased to find that it still stands up as a classic of sci-fi. An ill assorted crew take a spaceship to investigate what turns out to be the greatest created artefact - a world, like a ribbon of baby blue, strung in a ring around a sun. But there's more, and there are riffs on probability and breeding for luck which take the story in unexpected directions... ( )

Ringworld is a cool idea. It is a cool story. But it is not an excellent story. Niven has a well-deserved reputation, but there is a shallowness to some of his writing that is impossible to ignore. ( )

Though this book was clearly written to describe the concept of the Ringworld (a manmade, doughnut-shaped planet surrounding a sun), the characters and plot are interesting in their own right. Two humans and two aliens journey to the Ringworld, each for his own reasons, and in the process learn the Truth about several matters among their races. I'm not surprised this is included in so many lists of the Best Science Fiction Books. I did get a little tired of the older man/younger woman cliche so common in SF (a 20-year-old girl and a 200-year-old man? Come on!) but all in all it's a reasonably believable story. One note to readers, however: no, you didn't miss anything. The author often glosses over stuff without describing it, I guess to enhance the mystery. I was halfway through the book before I figured out that no, I hadn't accidentally skipped over an important paragraph somewhere. It all gets explained eventually. I would definitely recommend this to SF fans. ( )

This is a great read that creates a world that the reader would most probably have never imagined could exist. The scope of the world presented by Larry Niven is baffling when you start to think of the engineering that would be necessary to pull this off. Highly recommended for science fiction lovers. ( )

This book was ooookkaaay. I really loved the first part of the story. Mr. Niven does a great job of introducing the reader to his future. I also loved the ginormous concepts. Instant travel, vast and old alien empires. And then there is the concept of Ringworld itself. But about 3/4 into the story I started to lose interest. By the end of the book, I was just ready for it to be over. I doubt that I'll pick up any of the sequels. ( )

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Very dated feel to it I thought. Nice imaginative ideas, but poorly scripted with a disappointing lack of follow through. Some bizarre choices of plot devices that do not read well, when compared to more modern sf. ( )

Being that this book is 39 years old--older than I am-- I expected it to seem dated. It was not dated at all. It could have been written yesterday. This is timeless science fiction and definitely worth a read if you are a fan of space opera. ( )

This book is one of the greatest books I’ve read, with such a range of interesting things, from the characters to the ideas, the alien species, the level of technology, the inventions, and Ringworld itself. This book presents ideas that allow for hours of thought, and I enjoyed reading it throughout. I am an avid reader of science fiction, and I always enjoy books of the sort, but I believe that Ringworld was a step above them all. The idea of Ringworld itself is something that is extraordinary to imagine. The sheer size of it is difficult to comprehend, and if you were to read the book, you may not understand the size of it at all. Millions of times the space of the earth, and sturdy enough to hold together for millennia. It took me most of the book to finally truly grasp the size of It, and I’m still not sure if I’ve truly understood it.
The characters are unique as well. The main character, Louis Wu, is the character that normal people can relate most to, though in honesty, none of the characters are easy to relate to. Louis is, simply, a normal human who has lived an extremely long life, almost more than twice that of any person alive today, thanks to a miracle drug that allows you to live for ages longer than normal. His experiences are many and varied, as seen throughout the book. He is the experienced one, the one who knows what he’s doing, the one who seems to lead the journey, despite two of the others constantly declaring themselves leader, and a third force actually being the leader. That idea in itself is complex, and unravels in unpredictable ways throughout the book, going from one hypothesis to the next.
The original supposed leader of the group, the ‘Mad’ puppeteer, Nessus, is also a rather complex character. The puppeteers themselves, who are very aptly named, and odd in the fact that they are supposedly cowards by instinct, are also an extraordinarily powerful race, who has attempted to govern the very lives of everyone and everything. And they did so with a great deal of success.
Speaker-To-Animals is a Kzinti, an alien species of warrior nature. Eight foot tall, orange furred, and, when furless, a rather comical sight. Speaker himself is always trying to take control of the mission, based on the fact that the near-constant dangers cause Nessus to panic and have speaker, the warrior, take over, whether or not Nessus is panicking.
Teela Brown is, at the beginning of the book, for all intents and purposes, normal. Beautiful and young, there isn’t anything that seems to be beneficial for the trip about her. Later on, her purpose is revealed, but, unfortunately for Nessus, the one who gathered the four together, her abilities don’t exactly help them in the way he expected.
While on Ringworld, the characters have to adjust to all of the new things. There isn’t really an east, west, north, or south, so they use ‘spinward’, ‘anti-spinward’, port, and starboard. The nights on Ringworld come on instantly, and the days just as fast.
Ringworld takes the mind to new, fantastic places, with fantastic ideas and a story that has bested most others I’ve read. ( )

Niven introduces a myriad of science fiction concepts. The biggest being, of course, Ringworld itself. With each of these concepts he works out, not just the theoretical physics of each concept, but also the sociological impact including how it would shape the personality of his characters.

It is this attention to the human (and alien) face of his characters that separates this book from many other science fiction works.

Of course, Niven's characteristic "hard" science fiction is still there, and his familiar Known Space aliens populate this tale as well. But ultimately, this is a work of sociological-fiction that uses sci-fi as a backdrop. ( )

One of those books where it's so hard to visualise the scale on which it takes place. Very intriguing - but the ending was a bit disappointing and anticlimactic. I want to know more about how the Ringworld was made and look forward to reading the next books. ( )

I forget when I last read Ringworld. I seem to recall reading it several times during my early teens, but I've avoided it since. I'm not sure why - perhaps I was afraid it would disappoint. I've learnt to my cost that "nostalgia ain't what it used to be". Few books I loved as a teenager have survived a reread now that I'm just over halfway through my three score years and ten.

Ringworld won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1971. It's also No 60 in the SF Masterworks series. So it's safe to say it's highly regarded by sf fans. But I'm not convinced sf novels stand the test of time as well as most fans would have us believe, and Ringworld is now 39 years old.

Read the rest of the review at: http://justhastobeplausible.blogspot.... ( )

In an effort to read all dual winners of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, I recently tackled 1971 winner Ringworld by Larry Niven. I was soon turned off by the appearance of what I can only describe as “silly” aliens. I was reminded of the bar scene of Star Wars, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Spaceballs.

The story revolves around a quartet of explorers, gathered by an alien named a Pierson’s Puppet, a truly bizarre creature. The quartet consists of two humans (a 200 year old man and a 20 year old woman), a cat-like alien named a kzin and the Pierson’s Puppet. The group is formed to investigate a recently discovered phenomenon, the Ringworld.

Ringworld is a fantastic premise, very reminiscent of Arthur Clarke’s Rama (Ringworld actually precedes the publication of Rama) though on a tremendously larger scale. The premise is rich with possibilities, many of which are well developed by Niven. However, the clichéd aliens along with annoying verbal idiosyncrasies (the ridiculous term “tanj”, an abbreviation of “there ain’t no justice” is so overused as to detract from the novel) ruin what could have been a much better book, in my opinion.

Another problem with the novel is the difficulty in visualizing some of the author’s descriptions. We’re talking about a one million mile wide band around a sun, spinning at a rate of 770 miles/second. There are other bands of sun blocking rectangles, whose orbits are inside that of Ringworld. In trying to describe aspects of Ringworld, and surrounding objects, the author goes to great descriptive lengths which I many times found hard to picture. Were it not for the cover drawing, I would have really been lost. References to width, breadth, top, bottom, side, parallels and perpendiculars to orbits or other spatial phenomenon were confusing at best. At some points, drawings would have been very helpful.

This novel contains many outstanding examples of hard science fiction, mainly concerning power sources, weaponry and inter-stellar travel. Unfortunately, the promise of the premise and the strengths of the concepts were unable to overcome mediocre writing and the weaknesses described above. Three and a half stars. ( )

A great concept but in the end the writing made this more of a tiresome chore than a good read. Heinlein style sci-fi that loses it's freshness quickly. Check the date on this one. ( )

First and foremost, Ringworld is a concept novel. To that end, it succeeds admirably. The Ringworld itself is fascinating and Niven has clearly thought it out in great detail. The alien species are inventive in the abstract, but the characters themselves fall a little flat. I felt as though women were depicted in a slightly sexist manner. One woman is child-like and in need of protecting by the main character during the first half of the novel (granted, this is important to the plot, but it's still a bit insulting to portray an adult female this way). The other woman is a half-mad prostitute who is a late addition to the story and barely used. Both female characters have sex with our main character, readily and frequently, while another character belongs to a species with "nonsentient females." I've read much more offensive sci-fi, but I was a little disappointed with how poorly women were incorporated into this book. The plot is also a little thin. The few interesting plot points occur in the first half of the book while the last half coasts to the finish. I was not surprised in the least by the final revelation. Overall, I find Ringworld to be an average book worth reading for its concepts more than its plot or characters. ( )

Decent to good science fiction novel that reminds me in many ways of Heinlein's greater works -- sexual freedom, exploration, libertarianism, hard science. I enjoyed the book but had greater expectations for it. On the plus side, the ideas of human expansion, population control, interspecies harmony and the concept of the ringworld were very interesting. On the negative side, I found the characters to be one-dimensional. I would recommend this book to a fan of science fiction. ( )

Physics, genetics, earth and social sciences in spades in this book. I think I learned more about natural selection and the consequences of population bottlenecks from the Man-Kzin wars than from any biology class ever. Slaver sunflowers and failing ecologies, Fabulously described meteorology on a world with no Coriolis effect, and of course, the mechanics of the Puppeteer worlds and the ringworld. Being a lousy physicist, I'm disappointed to find that according to Wiki, Klemperer rosettes are not stable after all. But I'm glad to have the concept of ringworlds and Dyson spheres in my brain thanks to Niven. For me, it's also the book that brought humor to the genre for the first time. Speaker and Nessus are brilliantly comic in their dogmatic species-centric repartee. There is no problem with Teela being a flat character. Of course she is. That's the whole point. If anything, Niven expounds the concept of the luck of Teela Brown and her lack of "true humanity" rather too heavily.

One of my favourites. It's brilliant as a stand alone book, without having to read further, and find out where the luck of Teela Brown takes her.

Oh, and 28 years later, the subject matter of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel came as no surprise at all. I really felt that I'd heard it all before thanks to Larry Niven. How can a barbarous society (re) develop civilisation without resources? ( )

Not really my cup of tea. I was interested in the characters, but didn't particularly feel for any of them. The descriptions of Ringworld are quite interesting. But the story didn't move fast enough for me. I think I felt that I was reading a story, rather than being drawn into it. I'm not a big Sci-Fi fan, but wanted to read this one since it's a classic. ( )

After being kidnapped from his 200th birthday party, Louis finds his curiosity aroused and agrees to participate in an expedition being developed by the Puppeteer Nessus. (The Puppeteers were believed to have left the galaxy before Louis was born.) Next, Nessus insults a Kzinti, the most violent and anxious to fight of all known species, into joining the quest. The final member has been sought for an unusual characteristic, the genetically trait of luck. After such inauspicious beginnings, the band heads for the Ringworld which has a surface area three million times that of Earth. The Ringworld will be able to survive the galactic core’s nova. While exploring the species and geography of the Ringworld, Niven delves into many thought provoking areas including breeding sentient beings, the effects of beings on their environment, and the ethics of being gods. Niven’s background in the hard sciences of physics, astronomy, and mathematics come through in his writing, but do not slow down the action or storyline. Interesting secondary characters help keep the plot moving and the reader entertained.

http://home.comcast.net/~ktoonen/summ... ( )

Fun Sci-fi read along the lines of Heinlein or Haldeman. Enjoyed it. ( )

The idea of an inhabitable space a million times the size of the Earth is kind of mind-bending (as well as unlikely for the next few millenia)

My main beef with this book is that the aliens behave a lot like humans. ( )

Excellent, one of my favourite books. Niven's description of the world around a neurton star with its bizarre inhabitants and strange plants is phenomenal! ( )

It wasn’t bad, but by the end I was ready for it to be over. So this book earns a solid 3. I still don’t think I’m quite in the groove with traditional Science Fiction yet. They seem to feel more like a travel book dedicated to pointing out cool technology or some such. Guess I’ve been spoiled by stories with complex plots, with twists and the like.

Ringworld is the tale of a motley crew of four, two humans and a couple aliens, setting out on an exploration of the Ringworld (a manufactured world in the shape of a ring, go figure). I’ll give Niven credit, the descriptions of this future universe, the aliens, cultures, and eventually the Ringworld are all very cool. The Dyson sphere lite concept of the ring is really neat and well thought out. The luck concept was a little much to stomach though, as it acted as a plot hole device. I’ve seen magic used the same way in some fantasy stories. If you’re lacking a real plot motivation or have no real explanation why something should happen a certain way… bam! magic… or in this case luck.

Like I said, not a bad book at all, but I’m ready to move onto something else.

http://flipside.kintiko.net/2008/02/0... ( )

I came to Ringworld after reading its sequel and also after having read Rendezvous with Rama, so it never made the same impression on me that it did on most people. The archetypal "Big Dumb Object", the Ringworld of the title is a million miles wide and 600 million miles across with a star in the middle and atmosphere trapped inside by rotation. Throw in some aliens and a girl who is always lucky and you have the story. The book was delightfully spoofed by Terry Pratchett in Strata (an early non-Discworld book). ( )

A Puppeteer recruits a group to travel to the Ringworld, a large, artificial construct that is a very large band around a sun.

This group includes Louis Wu, a 200 year old bored junkie, your average warrior Kzin type, but for his people, he is remarkable tolerant, and a woman named Teela Brown. She is included for her presumable genetic dispensation towards luck being the result of so many winning birth lotteries.

What the Puppeteer really wants they have yet to find out.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/01/ringworld-larry-niven.html ( )