Ringworld (Ringworld, volume 1) by Larry Niven

[james_davis_nicoll]

Ringworld (Ringworld, volume 1) by Larry Niven

Comments

[james_davis_nicoll]

In retrospect I wonder how much of Ringworld Engineers was Niven going to back to "fix" having inadvertently made a woman the centre of the universe.

It's interesting that Niven seems to have evolved from people posting that he should retire from writing (which was a thing 20 years ago) to his books appearing without making a ripple. Still, someone must be buying his stuff or it would not get published.

[(Anonymous)]

There are a whopping two women in this book and the sequel fridges both of them.

I spent reading time I now wish I had back on the last Heorot novel and it appears Niven has spent his career honing to a fine point his skills at pandering to a generation[1] that is now dying off.

[1] Actually, just the pale patriarchal penis possessing portion of said generation.

[dewline]

I have that book. Bought it second-hand, and now I need to be done with having it.

[bolindbergh]

Instead of the sequels, Niven should have joined forces with Frank Herbert and written the obvious Known Space / Dune crossover, Ringworm.

[philrm]

+1000

[ba_munronoe]

Rereading this a few years ago, it struck me that Halrloprillala's people didn't seem advanced enough to be convincing as builders of the Ringworld. Now I wonder if Niven had plans for a sequel from the start, or it's just me back-projecting as a result of my knowledge of the sequel? (And then there's the possibility that Niven just couldn't manage to convincingly write a civilization both advanced enough to build a Ringworld and incompetent enough to collapse as thoroughly as the plot required.)

[eagle]

I remember buying the premise when I first read it, in part because decadent societies that have forgotten their technology were such a common trope in the SF that I was reading at the time that it was easy to nod along with the premise without thinking about it very much.

Now, many years later, it's somewhat obvious to me that this trope is absurdly more common than any evidence of this effect in human history (yes, yes, ancient Greece, but still). Most writers have now shifted to some sort of apocalyptic explanation for their downfalls of civilization, but haven't abandoned the idea (I'm sure for the understandable reason that rediscovery of ancient technology is a fantastic story hook that I still haven't gotten tired of, despite its implausibility).

[jreynolds197]

The Ringworld is almost certainly an artifact¹

¹ Citation NOT needed.

[carbonel]

Niven was the person I originally invented the concept of the brain-eater for (this may have been parallel invention, of course). He was one of my very favorite authors in the mid-1970s. And then, bleh. The only books I liked after 1980 were a few of the Niven-Pournelle collaborations, and those are mostly guilty pleasures.

[(Anonymous)]

On the whole, I think Teela is smarter than Louis.

Teela looks at the image of the Ringworld - she interprets it as a huge spacecraft, which is wrong but not a bad conclusion.

Teela does the math in her head to estimate the thickness of the Ring.

Teela recognizes what the radiator fins are.

After the ship is blasted, Teela is able to tell Louis how long the ship was in stasis, when he couldn't figure it out immediately.

[ironyoxide]

>Ringworld (Ringworld Volume 1)

This already makes me slightly annoyed at Niven, and at publishing generally. Let's see what the actual review does.

[rpresser]

In an essay somewhere or other, Niven comments on the extremely probable explanation that the Ringworld was built by Pak Protectors, and that he already had too many spinning plot dishes in play to work that in, so he settled for Louis Wu getting the wrong answer.

[davidgoldfarb]

I agree with you. Quite honestly, I'd lump Ringworld in with the post- brain eater stuff: as a kid I read all the Known Space short stories and loved them, and then I got to Ringworld, which had won the Hugo and Nebula to boot, and it...dragged.

[austin_dern]

Are there stories where the vast artificial object gets sensibly explored by remote probes? I guess it's a part of Charles Stross's Missile Gap, so far as the remote sensing of the time would make possible.

[yamamanama]

I read this in 8th grade and thought the luck breeding was silly even then.

[(Anonymous)]

The expedition in The Ringworld Engineers brings a few probes, which turn out to have a few interesting uses (particularly since they have fgrccvat qvfpf built into them).

Va fbzrguvat bs n ergpba, GER nyfb erirnyf gung gur Chccrgrref hfrq ceborf gb rkcyber gur Evatjbeyq n srj praghevrf ntb (jvgu SGY? Ubj, va Xabja Fcnpr'f ehyrf?) - naq gb vagebqhpr gur fhcrepbaqhpgbe rngvat onpgrevn gung oebhtug qbja vgf pvivyvmngvbaf.

[jbwoodford]

I think Roger MacBride Allen did as much remote surveying of the BDO as was feasible in _The Shattered Sphere_, and Alastair Reynolds did likewise in _Pushing Ice_.

[ba_munronoe]

I've continued to occasionally dip into Niven over the years, with my last try being his 2012 collaboration with Benford, "Bowl of Heaven" (sufficiently meh that I didn't look for the sequels), but the last full-length work of his I found memorable was 1985's Pournelle collaboration, "Footfall." (Memorable isn't the same as _good_: thankfully, I've managed to expunge most my memories of "Fallen Angels.")

[mindstalk]

An excuse to link my old essay! https://mindstalk.net/tnuctipak.html

[mindstalk]

ceborf: erynlf? rvgure n Chccrgrre va enqvb enatr ohg gur beovg bs Cyhgb, be bar cebor tbrf va naq frrf juvyr nabgure erprvirf ercbegf naq ergheaf gb Ubzrjbeyq.

[mindstalk]

"the universe conspires to get her to the one nearby location that will survive the radiation that will arrive in 20,000 years"

I forget, did she become a Protector in this novel? Because otherwise she wouldn't be having to worry about 20,000 years anyway... or was human boosterspice already at "live that long" levels? Or would the luck be concerned about her bloodline?

Hmm. I guess a gene for luck might 'care' most about the survival of the *gene*. Explosion of retroviruses and Tasmanian-devil-style infectious cancers?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it quite counts as 'collaboration' when the two authors aren't on the same page wrt little details like, oh, whether Earth still exists or not.

And I suspect if I tried to read Fallen Angels, I would hurl. Bad enough that I know one of the characters and used to look up to them...

[(Anonymous)]

Cory Doctorow could write a story where the civilization lost its technology due to copyright maximalism. Laws like the DMCA, but moreso. Not super plausible, but could make for some good satire.

[connactic]

The "volume 1" thing came much later. It looks like "Ringword" came out in 1970 and the sequel in 1979- Niven wasn't intending to make a series, and it wasn't marketed in that way, either.

Of course, when I bought the books in the early 1980's, I had no way of knowing this, and I think I assumed that the two books were written as a pair.

[chrysostom]

Eh, not really plausible, but I thought it was a fun "hey, what if?" idea.

[roseembolism]

As someone a long time pointed out, dying is really unlucky.

Which is why the only sense I can make of Ringworld Engineers is aFhpprffshy fhvpvqr nggrzcg.

[autopope]

+1.

On the other hand, if Niven did not exist I would not be able to use him as a worked example of how not to develop my own writing career.

[beamjockey]

This sentence is pure gold.

This sort of detail turns up in many SF novels of this time; American SF authors had been bred for generations to find eugenic explanations persuasive.

[(Anonymous)]

I still suspect step 1* remains viable, but it has become no easier to implement.

* "Be born rich."

[(Anonymous)]

Worse, one that's motivated by the 'fact' that Cebgrpgbef ner vapncnoyr bs vzcyrzragvat n cyna gung xvyyf 5% bs gurve punetrf ohg vf gur bayl jnl gung gur bgure 95% pna or fnirq - which is then ergpbaarq njnl va bar bs gur vapernfvatyl yrff arprffnel frdhryf juvpu fgngrf gung N Zvenpyr Unccraf Urer naq gur 5% qba'g qvr naljnl (be znlor whfg irel srj bs gurz qb, gubfr oenva pryyf nccrne gb unir fnpevsvprq gurzfryirf gb cebgrpg gur erfg bs zr).

[beamjockey]

Not a megastructure story, but I wish to put in a good word for Hal Clement's Iceworld. Much of the story involves devising ways to explore the hostile environment of a planet with remotely-controlled spacecraft and instruments. An unusual amount of thought goes into this scenario, by the standards of 1951 SF.

In those days, spacemen usually just landed on a new planet, with or without space suits, and walked around.

[(Anonymous)]

It definitely gave no impression of being the start of a series when I read it.
(paperback, mid 70s)

I still find the core idea cool. Shame about basically everything else. Probably could have made a good short story 8-)

Riderius

[rpresser]

I remember from The Ringworld Engineers intro that he had no intention of writing a sequel at first, but "The Ringworld Is Unstable" finally convinced him? (Not 100% sure of this memory.)

Then he had no intention of writing another sequel until someone talked on Niven-L about Teela having a child. (This memory is firmer in my brain)