Ringworld by Larry Niven

After work I wait for the bus with one of the organizers of Madison's sci-fi/fantasy conventions, Oddcon, and he never fails to be amazed at how ignorant I am of sci-fi literature. I've only read one Neil Gaiman book and have never read any Peter David or Gene Wolfe. However, he was pleased recently to see me reading Larry Niven's Ringworld, a classic of the genre. I think it won every sci-fi award there was back in 1971 including the Hugo and Nebula.

The novels main protagonist is Louis Wu who is celebrating his 200th birthday by teleporting from time zone to time zone in an attempt to A) prolong his birthday and B) not have to spend too much time with anyone. It is the 29th century and Wu is 200 years young owing to boosterspice, a drug which increases longevity. A hop to Seville turns out not to be and Wu is instead in a room with an alien named Nessus of the species called Pierson's Puppeteers. Nessus enlists Wu to accompany him on a secret mission as well as to recruit another two candidates. The only hint as to the nature of the mission is a blurry photograph of a sun with some kind of ring around it. The crew is filled out by Speaker-to-Animals, a Kzin, and Teela Brown, a young woman who is 20. The Kzin are a vicious species who have as of late been engaged in wars with humanity. Teela, it turns out, is incredibly lucky and it is hoped that her presence with be propitious for the mission.

It is revealed that our heroes are to pilot a super-advanced Puppeteer ship and investigate the Ringworld. You see, many stars at galactic center have gone supernova and the radiation is due to wipe out this part of the galaxy in 20,000 years time. The Puppeteers are thinking ahead and looking for alternative homes with the Ringworld as a candidate. Of course, the Earthlings and Kzin will also be forced to flee. In exchange for helping the Puppeteers reconnoiter, they will receive the technology needed for them to flee the galaxy.

As it happens, their ship crash lands on Ringworld after a wing is sheared off somehow. The place is enormous. The ring has a radius of 93 million miles and a circumference of some 600 million miles. It is nearly a million miles wide and has walls at the rim which are 1,000 miles high. This place is really big. Mind-bogglingly big. It has oceans, mountains, etc. – a very Earth-like geography. A separate ring composed of plates improbably connected by a filament of extraordinary tensile strength. This one rotates at a different speed than the main ring and provides a day/night cycle.

All in all an engineering marvel.

As I said, their ship crash lands and they decide to make for the rim where there are docks for spacecraft. They travel on these ultra-speedy land cruiser bike thingies which are like mini-RVs with food supplies and semi-comfortable seats to accommodate the driver/pilot. Along the way it is discovered that there is a native population that had survived some catastrophe. There had been floating castles which were home to the Ringworldian aristocracy who lorded over the villeins below. Power had evidently been cut as most of these castles had crashed to the ground.

Ringworld is a lot of fun when our explorers are exploring. What is this world? Who are its inhabitants? How did disaster befall the place? I enjoyed reading it as the pieces to the puzzle were put into place. Unfortunately things get sidetracked when Niven takes on tangential issues. For instance, The Easy Rider-like trek comes to a halt when Nessus reveals that the Puppeteers had manipulated the Human and Kzinti gene pools for their own purposes which leads to a lot of enmity towards him. The ill-will is understandable but it only leads to Nessus becoming an outcast, as opposed to, say, lending much thematic heft to the story. Wu has to meet with Nessus surreptitiously instead of simply chatting him up on the intercom.

Another annoyance is Wu's love for and sexual relationship with Teela. While it's nice to see a 200 year-old guy getting a 20 year-old piece of ass, the whole thing just comes across as a leftover of 1960s hippie-dippie free love BS. For the most part, Teela's character is developed as simply the embodiment of naivety which the old and wizened Louis Wu can comment upon. And the comments aren't all that interesting.

Also not super-interesting is the Ringworld itself. Yeah, it's big and mysterious but it's mostly flyover country for our heroes speeding along on their craft. And it's inhabited by just some vaguely primitive people living in a rather Edenic post-lapsarian scenario. Contrasting them with Wu, Teela, Nessus, and Speaker doesn't really give the reader much to care about. They are essentially cardboard cut-outs which provide obstacles for our heroes and their pursuit to get off of Ringworld and return home.

As I said above, the parts of the book where Ringworld is being investigated are a lot of fun. For his part, Niven writes well with a good balance of character development/plot and explanation of the science. . I just didn't feel there was a payoff in the end.