Ringworld by Larry Niven Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Ringworld
Book Review: What's the point?
Summary: 2 Stars
I listened to this book on audio book and was thoroughly bored. The story and plot were a thin covering on an overindulgence in trying to create future science that is completely unlike anything else. It's like the author was so interested in trying to ensure that every facet of life was so unique in his world that he completely neglected the story and character.
To echo what some others said the crude sexual bits only detracted more from the story.
The actual ring world is an interesting construct and an original idea, but the rest is just eh.
I'd heard for years how great a book this was, now I just wonder if I read the same book everyone else read.
Book Review: Wonderful Imagination Tripped Up By Odd Writing Style
Summary: 3 Stars
I first read this book back in the mid-70s when people still thought there'd be colonies on the moon and manned expeditions to Mars by the year 2000 (there, I've dated myself). I remember loving this book at the time. We were all giddy with dreams of star-trekking through the cosmos and of a benign humankind ruling a farflung galactic empire. That all seems so painfully quaint now. The truth is, we'll be lucky to feed ourselves, keep our planet from overheating and preventing a new round of wars of religion, much less ever get off this planet in any meaningful way.
Which brings me to the book. I happened to pick it up used and decided to reread it, after 30 years. The idea of an artificially created Ringworld explored by two humans and two aliens fit in nicely with our late 60s early 70s naivete. Niven does a great job setting up the story, introducing the characters, and injecting secondary story-lines that hold our attention. We wait in anticipation of the landing on the Ringworld. But we have to wait until halfway through the book for this to happen. And then when it does, we find that except for its huge size and amazing engineering, it is hardly an alien world at all. It's like a million earths stretched out on the inside of a spinning hula-hoop. It's more of a fairy tale realm than a functioning ecosystem. The story really flounders after touchdown and Niven gropes for a way out and off.
And then there is Niven's peculiar writing style. It's technically proficient and he does keep things moving by the use of short sentences and short paragraphs, but there are times (too many to count) when something significant happens and he roars through it and you find yourself going back half a page to figure out what just happened. It's good to let the reader fill in blanks -- it makes us feel smart -- but you get the feeling Niven isn't doing it for our benefit, but because he's in a hurry and can't be bothered with small things like internal consistency, real human emotion, or a crisis that actually reveals anything about the characters. And, dare I say it, Niven takes a paternalistic approach to women. Teela Brown is a dated stereotype: young, sexy, a little obtuse, a step behind everyone else, always ready for sex no matter how traumatized, but boy, is she the good luck rabbit's foot!
But, this is Sci-Fi. I know most of us don't read it to be enlightened. We want to be entertained. We'll allow for almost any degree of sloppiness, just like we do with our action movies and TV series. But, in the end, who can argue with success? The Hugo Award. Niven is now a demi-god.
It just goes to show that it isn't about the writing ability, it's about the story. And if the reader makes it through the first 50 pages, you've got him.
Book Review: Wonderful, massive ideas, but Teela's a problem
Summary: 4 Stars
Louis Wu is 200 years old and bored of life. Not tired of life--he's definitely not self-destructive, but there's just nothing new in his world. Louis misses the differences between Earth cities, the actual unique cultures that existed before transfer booth technology melted all of Earth society into an oatmeal-bland sameness. Louis is ripe for a big adventure, and Nessus shows up at just the right time to offer him one. Nessus is a Pierson's puppeteer, a very strange alien life form, and he wants Louis to help him on a mysterious exploration mission. There's almost no room on the ship they'll be taking, so Nessus recruits only two other crew members: Speaker-To-Animals, a kzin (basically a warlike, intelligent tiger), and Teela Brown, an earth woman whose only skill is a supernatural amount of luck.
Reading this book reminds me of why I love science fiction. It's full of ideas, some fantastic, and some nearly plausible, and it's just so fun to explore the possibilities of different wild scenarios. My favorite SF stories drop the reader right into the middle of a new world and leave them to figure it out without a lot of exposition. Ringworld is one of these stories, and it's nice to read something that presupposes that you'll find your bearings quickly. I'm not really fond of any of the main characters, but this is a plot novel, not a character novel. It's all about surprises, discoveries and Really Big Stuff, like the Ringworld itself, an inhabitable structure equal to three million times the area of the Earth.
The aliens in this fictional place called the Known Space universe are very interesting. Socially, the Kzin are a bit like Klingons, honor-obsessed warriors who like to eat their meat very, very fresh. The historic Man-Kzin wars sounded so interesting, I hoped the author had written a book about them, and it turns out that he has. Six books, in fact, and innumerable short stories. Not sure if I'm up to reading them, but apparently, his fans adore them. Nessus the Pierson's puppeteer was also an intriguing alien. The puppeteers are very keen on their own safety, and are fleeing from the heat death of the universe, even though it's 20,000 years away. They have a fleet of mobile worlds, but they can't stop their migration to check out the Ringworld anomaly, which is why they need Louis, Nessus, and the others to spy it out.
The big downside to this novel is the attitude towards women. It's okay that Teela's the least experienced and most naïve member of the crew because somebody's got to be the rookie. But Teela's lacking in more than knowledge; she reacts to most events with either childlike delight or total boredom, her expressions throughout the novel are usually described as "puzzled" or "uncomprehending," and I lost track of how many times she giggles. One unintelligent female character does not make a book misogynistic, but when she's the only female representative on the mission and she's less of a crew member and more of a Space Babe conveniently around for the protagonist's benefit, it looks bad. And this whole girls-aren't-capable attitude is not limited to human women: Kzin females are said to be non-sentient, and the puppeteer equivalent of females are also non-sentient. At this point, I start to see a pattern, and I don't like the pattern.
Ringworld is a brilliantly creative book that introduces some really cool ideas. It's definitely earned all the SF awards it's won, but the way female characters are presented makes me reluctant to pick up the rest of the series.
Book Review: Worst book I've ever read
Summary: 1 Stars
This book is very predictable, with bad charactor development, a low pace and no redeming fetures. It s the first book I have read by this author and I will not read another.Book Review: Worth reading for the Ringworld itself
Summary: 3 Stars
As a piece of technology, the Ringworld is one of the most fantastic ideas I've ever heard. Truly a stroke of genius. As a story, Ringworld is lacking. I greatly dislike the main character, Louis Wu. I find his depth of experience and near expertise in almost all things to be irritating and preposterous, regardless of his age. The other characters are much more tolerable. Ringworld is very uneventful and shallow as far as the characters are concerned. In fact, I'm almost inclined to say that Niven first came up with the idea of the Ringworld itself, and then just tossed a story around it so he could get the concept out in the open. Despite all this, however, Ringworld does have its moments. There are several exchanges between characters and situations which are funny and entertaining. In conclusion, definitely buy this book and read it just for the Ringworld itself, but don't expect to get an award-winning story out of it.