Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, RINGWORLD remains a favorite among science fiction readers.Louis Wu, accompanied by a young woman with genes for luck, and a captured kzin – a warlike species resembling 8-foot-tall cats — are taken on a space ship run by a brilliant 2-headed alien called Nessus. Their destination is the Ringworld, an artificially constructed ring with … ring with high walls that hold 3 million times the area of Earth. Its origins are shrouded in mystery.
The adventures of Louis and his companions on the Ringworld are unforgettable . . .
“Larry Niven’s RINGWORLD remains one of the all-time classic travelogues of science fiction — a new and amazing world and fantastic companions.”
– Greg Bear
“If there isn’t a Ringworld out there somewhere, we ought to build one someday. Until then we have Larry Niven’s. A rich and fantastic story.”
– Fred Saberhagen
“Our premier hard SF writer.”
– The Baltimore Sun
“The scope of Larry Niven’s work is so vast that only a writer of supreme talent could disguise the fact as well as he can.”
– Tom Clancy
“Niven is a true master.”
– Frederik Pohl
Born April 30, 1938 in Los Angeles, California. Attended California Institute of Technology; flunked out after discovering a book store jammed with used science fiction magazines. Graduated Washburn University, Kansas, June 1962: BA in Mathematics with a Minor in Psychology, and later received an honorary doctorate in Letters from Washburn. Interests: Science fiction conventions, role playing games, AAAS meetings and other gatherings of people at the cutting edges of science. Comics. Filk singing. Yoga and other approaches to longevity. Moving mankind into space by any means, but particularly by making space endeavors attractive to commercial interests. Several times we’ve hosted The Citizens Advisory Council for a National Space Policy. I grew up with dogs. I live with a cat, and borrow dogs to hike with. I have passing acquaintance with raccoons and ferrets. Associating with nonhumans has certainly gained me insight into alien intelligences.
In 2015, Larry Niven received the Grand Master Award, given by The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.
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A classic sci-fi story. It mixes a lot of moving pieces– history, a unique setting, and mysterious engineering.
A professional human adventurer goes to explore the largest world ever constructed, with a band of alien adventurers: A professional Coward, an herbivore who is brilliant, terrified and insane. An intelligent tiger, a Hero. And, most alien of all, a silver-eyed beautiful woman bred for luck. It’s some of the best adventure science-fiction ever written. And… the Ringworld is unstable.
Revisiting Niven’s known space this month. Highly recommended
Niven’s most famous book deserves all of the accolades.
Hands down, one of the best hard SF books ever written. EVER. I realize Niven has become problematic for some (though I’m not altogether certain why), but in Ringworld, he’s writing at the top of his game and showing all the world what a genius he is. Take a trip to Ringworld with Louis Wu and the Puppeteer once, and I guarantee you’ll take it again.
Niven at his best
One of the more important of LarryNiven’s Known Space novels, Ringworld is an epic adventure, with some mature themes.
The science is there to build the Ringworld. And that’s what blew my mind to the possibilities.
Just finished the sci-fi classic Ringworld, and I was seriously underwhelmed.
Let me start out by removing a few caveats.
I’ve read three of Larry Niven’s collaborations with Jerry Pournelle.
A Mote In God’s Eye, Footfall, and the absolutely magnificent Lucifer’s Hammer.
So it’s not a case of disliking the writing style from an earlier era, with more build up, more characterization, and less urgency. I’m a fan of those elements. The problem was, that the influence of Jerry Pournelle apparently gives the books a much better flow and the characters more depth. But that’s only half of the failing of this book, as the other, and arguably greater portion, is that Larry took the easy way out.
It’s like when a movie about a worldwide pandemic only focuses on one small and stationary group of people, and none of them manage to accomplish much.
Slight spoilers, but a crew arrives on an alien world, everything revolutionary has already occurred, the author fails to elaborate on any of the details, and all that’s left are primitives. The struggle to leave the Ringworld is essentially the whole book, and even then it ends abruptly
Dated, but interesting book
Wonderful sci-fi series
2 humans and an tiger-like alien are chosen by a 2-headed alien herbivore to explore a staggeringly huge structure circling a star, inhabited by trillions of humans who have been there long enough to evolve into many different species.
I read Ringworld, a Niven novel that I read about 13 years ago and it was every bit as good as it was then. In fact, I had forgotten so much that it was like reading it for the first time. I think I enjoyed it more this time. Of course, I had to then crack open the Ringworld Engineers again. It was also great. As a science fiction reader for 50 years, this series is one of my top five of all time.
Nobody writes hard science fiction better than Niven, unless MAYBE it’s Niven paired with Pournelle. Ringworld is a huge, audacious exercise in world-building, and the ride is fast and fun.
A sci-fi classic. Characters a little weak, but the vision, especially when I first read it 40+ years ago, was thrilling.
It’s Larry Niven’s fault that I am a science fiction writer! Having gotten hooked on his books, he just wasn’t writing them fast enough for me so I decided way back then to write my own. Ringworld is a classic in science fiction and I recommend it and all of Larry’s books! It’s the only book I’ve read more than once.
A masterpiece by a master of hard science fiction.