Ringworld

This was one of the first science fiction stories I remember reading on my own and it is one of the books I have reread most often.

It had everything to capture the imagination of a teenage mind. A story featuring two humans, a three-legged, two-headed alien, and a cat-warrior. Throw in a spaceship with an indestructible hull and the title structure and you have a great adventure story with minimal hard science. Even Mr. Niven got it wrong and had to correct it in later stories.

Ringworld might be a little dated after 50+ years, but it’s still entertaining and clever.

Ringworld is a giant wheel that rotates around a star with a habitable inner surface. When four travelers crash their ship on Ringworld’s surface, the adventures begin. This is hard science fiction that doesn’t go over your head with impossible-to-understand jargon. It’s a classic for a reason.

Another one of modern science fiction's keystone texts, written at the height of Niven's powers. The Ringworld turns everything up to eleven. It's a space habitat with as much room as a million Earths—not just a megastructure but a gigastructure. Traversing it on foot or by aircraft is daunting, and the team of shipwrecked explorers looking for a way off are constantly encountering new wonders. In my own work I try to keep the same sense that all the amazing things could really happen. To me that makes it more amazing.

I had already read World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven when I chanced upon a rack of paperbacks at a books and comics store on Bissonnet in Houston. Ringworld’s cover, with Niven’s name and art by Dean Ellis, caught my eye. Four individuals, two human and two of different non-human species, travel far and explore diverse lands and cultures: Louis Wu, an older, wearied man, Teela, youthful and pretty, Nessus, a 3-footed Pierson’s Puppeteer, and Kzin Speaker-to-Animals, resembling a bipedal orange tiger. Once I started to read, I found it impossible to put down, except when compelled to stop and… show more.

The aliens in Ringworld are amazing because they’re alien, not only in their physical appearance, but in how they act. Niven provides hints as to how each type of alien evolved to be the way they are. Fan favorites tend to be the sort-of-tigerish bipedal Kzinti, but my absolute favorite are the Puppeteers. They’re cowards. They have two heads, neither of which holds their brains. One of the most amazing moments in the book is when the human, Louis Wu, realizes just why Puppeteers turn away from danger. I won’t spoil that moment, but it’s terrific.

Ringworld tells a good… show more.

Larry Niven sees the universe through a scientific lens, but facts and data merely provide a jumping-off point for his fertile imagination. I admire how he populates totally alien worlds with a consistent and realistic diversity of beings, from tall natives of low-gravity planets to long-lived FlatLanders on Earth (where’s my AutoDoc?!) to ferocious man-cat warriors to mysteriously massive, dumber-than-rocks, genetically engineered beasts of burden. In Ringworld, perhaps Niven’s finest work, many of these bedazzling creatures visit or inhabit an engineered ‘world’ millions of times the surface area of the Earth. The perfect setting of the Ringworld can’t fail to… show more.

I've probably read this book fifteen times. It's world-building taken to the extreme: The ringworld is an artifact big enough to encircle its sun, with habitable area greater than a million Earths. A starship crew of two humans and two aliens set out to explore this vast habitat, encountering wonders and surprises every step of the way. The world-building is truly amazing, but what makes this book so re-readable is the character interaction. The alien Kzin approaches everything with belligerence; the alien Puppeteer approaches everything with cowardice, and the humans approach everything with curiosity and delight.