Book Review: Ringworld
Larry Niven’s sci-fi classic. Not what I was expecting, a little disappointing, and quite outdated.
Ringworld is one of those classic sci-fi books that curiously seems to fall into the same kind of subgenre as Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama—that of people exploring an awe-inspiring alien megastructure no-one’s ever seen before. I enjoyed that book a lot, and so I knew I had to give Ringworld a go, especially having heard good things about Larry Niven’s work generally. So this was my first delve into his Known Space universe, but the experience left me torn.
Blurb
The artefact is a circular ribbon of matter six hundred million miles long and ninety million miles in radius. Pierson’s puppeteers, the aliens who discovered it, are understandably wary of encountering the builders of such an immense structure and have assembled a team of two humans, a mad puppeteer, and a kzin, a huge cat-like alien, to explore it. But a crash landing on the vast edifice forces the crew on a desperate and dangerous trek across the Ringworld…
Review
On the face of it, the concept of a Ringworld is fascinating. I love the idea. It speaks of a level of technological advancement far beyond the ability to traverse the stars. Space megastructures really are unfathomably huge, and the level of engineering prowess and sheer amount of raw material they would take to construct is staggering beyond belief. For a Ringworld, that would be more than a couple of solar systems’ worth of matter. The scale of such a project is incredible, to the point that it would hardly seem a worthwhile endeavour. It should, therefore, be a compelling setting for a science fiction story, but after reading Ringworld, it kind of fell a bit short of my expectations. For having a similar premise to Rendezvous with Rama, the titular Ringworld seemed decidedly less mysterious and alien than most of the crew.
In terms of plot, I thought it was well put together—an expedition financed by the Piersons Puppeteers, to explore this giant space artefact they’d discovered while on their way out of the galaxy but were too risk-averse to undertake themselves. The stakes are well set, and the benefit of going on such an expedition is made very clear to both human and kzin alike. I think Niven does a great job of presenting the sheer scale of the world, and introducing conceits (such as supersonic air-bikes) which actually allow our characters to get around. I didn’t find any points in the story that dragged or felt slow, so the pacing was good. The ending wasn’t very satisfying, however. It seemed to finish by leaving the inevitable conclusion to the imagination. I kind of understand this, since we were told exactly what would happen should the expedition meet with success, so I guess Niven felt that he didn’t need to then show it. There are also some great twists to do with the motivations of the characters, which I didn’t anticipate.
The characters themselves, however, are a bit of a mixed bag. I really enjoyed the mad Puppeteer, Nessus. I thought both the description and characterisation were fascinating, and it felt truly alien. Speaker-to-Animals was somewhat interesting, although characters from warlike species of his ilk have been done so many times since that he felt more like a caricature than a well rounded character. I do like the nods to the language barriers and the differences in body language from humans—such as a kzin smile being a sign of anger, or a dangerous and blazing argument sounding like a polite disagreement in the Interworld standard language, because the fury present in the Hero’s Tongue (native kzinti language) is lost. The humans, Louis Wu and Teela, however were really rubbish, which is a major failing considering Louis is the only viewpoint character. I didn’t like the book’s clear attempt to make everything tongue-in-cheek, and Louis himself was really underdeveloped for a 200 year old human. Plus there’s plenty of racism and sexism present in the book—mostly coming from his perspective. But if Louis was underdeveloped, my word, Teela was done dirty. Her backstory is somewhat interesting, being the expedition’s good luck charm. But I wasn’t convinced by the “breeding for luck” thing and the explanations for her extreme naivete felt like a poor excuse to make a ditzy and dependent woman whose only stated purpose was to empty Louis’s balls enough to keep him from sexually assaulting one of the other crewmembers. I’m not exaggerating with that, Louis literally says it, probably as a joke. But I cannot stress enough how that is not a joke. And that’s another thing: there’s a bizarre amount of sex here, given its premise. With the amount of womanising going on, Louis seemed a lot more like a caricature of Star Trek’s James Kirk by the end of the book. It did feel rather out of place, and when most of their agency in the story encompasses initiating coitus with Louis, it certainly didn’t add much of anything positive to the female characters (yes, there’s shockingly more than one, and yes, they both have it off with Louis, and no, they don’t talk to each other).
Am I looking at this through a modern lens? Of course I am.
There’s also a lot of curiously unscientific concepts present in Ringworld for what is considered a classic of “hard” science fiction. Things such as ESP and telepathy in humans, and genetic predisposition to being extraordinarily lucky (as in the case with Teela). Going back to the Ringworld itself, there are problems with the physics of the ring which apparently caused consternation among fans at the time this was written, which Niven then addressed in his sequels. But I have a distinct problem with just how recognisably human everything was. Coming from something like Rendezvous with Rama, in which everything was so totally alien as to be unclear in its purpose and motivations, the stuff that’s present on the ring feels like a contrivance. There were some really cool aspects of the setting though, such as the big eye storm which is flipped on its side—that was definitely impressive. Overall, though, I think the best thing which came out of the book was the explanation of the famous Kzinti Lesson, a trope which has been highly influential across all of sci-fi for good reason.
Overall, I’m glad I read Ringworld as a part of the history of classic science fiction, but I won’t be delving any more into the Known Space series. I don’t think it really holds up all that well nowadays, and I would absolutely recommend Rama over this. It’s a concept done much better.
