Scan barcode
ailsaod's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This book was the written version of the frogs in a pot of heating water 'experiment'. I have wanted to read it for some time since reading the free preview on goodreads and I finally bought a copy to celebrate my first ever paycheck (evidently mistakes were made!).
I thought this book was what I am looking for: a team goes to investigate a massive, mysterious celestial object and while exploring discover stuff (potentially with some added ominous occurrences to add extra spice). There are plenty of books that appear to fit this brief - even plenty that do but why are they always so horribly flawed? I am looking for exploration not a sermon about political systems or awfully uncomfortable flirting!
I had really high hopes for Ringworld and INITIALLY things were looking good. The (alien) characters were interesting as was Niven's vision of a future Earth with teleportation technology and inhabitants with massively extended lifespans. There were things that were a bit off when it came to the human characters but I thought it might be poor aging - like watching the original series of Star trek, which was apparently pretty woke at the time but now is a bit uncomfortable because we've come so far (Star trek is even only 4 years older than Ringworld). Although, despite believing it could have been woke once upon a time I was still struggling with both of the alien species Niven focuses on having nonsentient females that are treated like property. Like if it had just been one species that would have been fine - there are existing examples of life where one sex is just kind of a blob that exists and the other is a functioning animal (certain species of anglerfish for example) but its a bit much when it is 100% of the developed alien species.
It takes the whole first half of the book for the crew to arrive at the Ringworld (which doesn't leave a whole lot of wriggle room for a book under 300 pages!) Much of the book - and in particular the section where they are travelling to the ringworld is filled with a lot of discussion of concepts such as Dyson spheres and Klemperer rosettes which I have mixed feelings about because it is nice to see someone trying to create a world this crazy using pre-existing scientific ideas but it can also get a little dry. There is also a whole heap of evolution stuff mentioned (more on that later!) that was mostly fairly solid but at times Niven says some odd things - though at least some of the off parts likely seemed plausible at the time of writing and have since been disproven - so I imagine the physics stuff could contain similar weirdness for someone with a good understanding of that area.
Once they arrive on the Ringworld the frogs begin to simmer a little. Everything described feels like an old Star trek set: weird polystyrene boulders, improbable environments and everyone wearing some kind of weird jumpsuit with cut-outs or spangled leotard. It doesn't feel particularly real but this in itself was fine. What wasn't fine was the plot getting hijacked by the 'luck of teela brown' narrative that, as far as I'm concerned, can go jump in a lake. Basically (spoilers ahead from here on btw), Niven decided artificial selection of sentient species was an interesting plotline (which I agree with - he covers Speaker's horror at realising he is the product of generations of stealthy genetic manipulation pretty well) but then he decided to use the same situation again on Teela Brown - a human woman who only exists because all her ancestors going back 6 generations won the right to have an extra child in a lottery. This in itself is an interesting concept but Niven takes this as selection for luck in humans which is just bizarre. Does the man not realise that evolution already contains a decent amount of 'luck' - it is not always enough to be the most suited to an environment if say a forest fire or some other event occurs so you could argue that everyone in existence has already been selected for luck - if it wasn't a completely barmy idea! I do not have a great understanding of probability theory but I know enough to say with certainty that events occur differently just because a 'lucky' person is involved. Niven ends the book with the horrifying conclusion that everything that has happened is to ensure Teela ends up on the Ringworld so she can be safe from a big explosion thing that is going to sweep through the galaxy in thousands of years time with the added implication that she is going to be immortal. Which opens the can of worms of just how much of what happened occured was 'manipulated' by Teela's luck so Teela ends up on the Ringworld? Is it merely that she went on the expedition? Or does it include that she exists at all? Did it cause the Puppeteers to start their attempts at selective breeding? Did it cause the Ringworld to be built so there would be somewhere for her to be safe? Did it cause the universe to exist? Where am I supposed to draw the line when Niven writes that Teela surviving situations that should have killed her is expected and goes as far as saying that her very feelings are influenced by her luck - meaning she falls in and out of love with people at the right times to get her where she needs to be. Like I have witnessed far too many debates on free will and I did not want it in a book that I thought was going to be about exploration!
Oh, also a final thing that really ruined this book for me is Niven's opinions on women. Teela and Louis have disgusting amounts of sex in this book - thankfully most of which is not described but there are a couple that are a bit more explicit that made me uncomfy. Teela is a tenth of Louis' age which is so much of an age gap that my brain just kind of skipped over it. The thing that really gets me going is that Louis and Teela fall out of love nearly instantaneously fairly late on in the book (due to the 'intervention' of a certain someone's luck) and Teela promptly meets a Ringworld native and falls head over heals for her but he won't sleep with her until Louis SELLS her to him. This is treated in the narrative as a perfectly logical and reasonable course of action and I would like to ask if all men thought selling women into slavery was a fine thing to do in the 70s or is Niven an outlier?? It was at this point I realised I was a frog in boiling water but it was far too late to get out by then. Louis meets Prill fairly late in the book and she replaces Teela as his designated person to have sex with way too often. Prill was a ship's prostitute (what else would a woman be doing on a space ship Niven asks us confusedly) but is stranded on the Ringworld until Louis and Co show up. Nessus (the Puppeteer character) manipulates her using a device called a tasp which acitaves the brain's pleasure centres until she becomes addicted to it and there are several sex scenes with verrrry dubious consent. I don't know if the copious sex scenes are the author projecting or fanservice but either way someone somewhere seems to find the female characters with no/limited free will way too appealing and I find it rather yikes.
Tl:dr - this book starts with some great ideas but gets sidetracked by a stupid idea and becomes a massive disappointment.
I thought this book was what I am looking for: a team goes to investigate a massive, mysterious celestial object and while exploring discover stuff (potentially with some added ominous occurrences to add extra spice). There are plenty of books that appear to fit this brief - even plenty that do but why are they always so horribly flawed? I am looking for exploration not a sermon about political systems or awfully uncomfortable flirting!
I had really high hopes for Ringworld and INITIALLY things were looking good. The (alien) characters were interesting as was Niven's vision of a future Earth with teleportation technology and inhabitants with massively extended lifespans. There were things that were a bit off when it came to the human characters but I thought it might be poor aging - like watching the original series of Star trek, which was apparently pretty woke at the time but now is a bit uncomfortable because we've come so far (Star trek is even only 4 years older than Ringworld). Although, despite believing it could have been woke once upon a time I was still struggling with both of the alien species Niven focuses on having nonsentient females that are treated like property. Like if it had just been one species that would have been fine - there are existing examples of life where one sex is just kind of a blob that exists and the other is a functioning animal (certain species of anglerfish for example) but its a bit much when it is 100% of the developed alien species.
It takes the whole first half of the book for the crew to arrive at the Ringworld (which doesn't leave a whole lot of wriggle room for a book under 300 pages!) Much of the book - and in particular the section where they are travelling to the ringworld is filled with a lot of discussion of concepts such as Dyson spheres and Klemperer rosettes which I have mixed feelings about because it is nice to see someone trying to create a world this crazy using pre-existing scientific ideas but it can also get a little dry. There is also a whole heap of evolution stuff mentioned (more on that later!) that was mostly fairly solid but at times Niven says some odd things - though at least some of the off parts likely seemed plausible at the time of writing and have since been disproven - so I imagine the physics stuff could contain similar weirdness for someone with a good understanding of that area.
Once they arrive on the Ringworld the frogs begin to simmer a little. Everything described feels like an old Star trek set: weird polystyrene boulders, improbable environments and everyone wearing some kind of weird jumpsuit with cut-outs or spangled leotard. It doesn't feel particularly real but this in itself was fine. What wasn't fine was the plot getting hijacked by the 'luck of teela brown' narrative that, as far as I'm concerned, can go jump in a lake. Basically (spoilers ahead from here on btw), Niven decided artificial selection of sentient species was an interesting plotline (which I agree with - he covers Speaker's horror at realising he is the product of generations of stealthy genetic manipulation pretty well) but then he decided to use the same situation again on Teela Brown - a human woman who only exists because all her ancestors going back 6 generations won the right to have an extra child in a lottery. This in itself is an interesting concept but Niven takes this as selection for luck in humans which is just bizarre. Does the man not realise that evolution already contains a decent amount of 'luck' - it is not always enough to be the most suited to an environment if say a forest fire or some other event occurs so you could argue that everyone in existence has already been selected for luck - if it wasn't a completely barmy idea! I do not have a great understanding of probability theory but I know enough to say with certainty that events occur differently just because a 'lucky' person is involved. Niven ends the book with the horrifying conclusion that everything that has happened is to ensure Teela ends up on the Ringworld so she can be safe from a big explosion thing that is going to sweep through the galaxy in thousands of years time with the added implication that she is going to be immortal. Which opens the can of worms of just how much of what happened occured was 'manipulated' by Teela's luck so Teela ends up on the Ringworld? Is it merely that she went on the expedition? Or does it include that she exists at all? Did it cause the Puppeteers to start their attempts at selective breeding? Did it cause the Ringworld to be built so there would be somewhere for her to be safe? Did it cause the universe to exist? Where am I supposed to draw the line when Niven writes that Teela surviving situations that should have killed her is expected and goes as far as saying that her very feelings are influenced by her luck - meaning she falls in and out of love with people at the right times to get her where she needs to be. Like I have witnessed far too many debates on free will and I did not want it in a book that I thought was going to be about exploration!
Oh, also a final thing that really ruined this book for me is Niven's opinions on women. Teela and Louis have disgusting amounts of sex in this book - thankfully most of which is not described but there are a couple that are a bit more explicit that made me uncomfy. Teela is a tenth of Louis' age which is so much of an age gap that my brain just kind of skipped over it. The thing that really gets me going is that Louis and Teela fall out of love nearly instantaneously fairly late on in the book (due to the 'intervention' of a certain someone's luck) and Teela promptly meets a Ringworld native and falls head over heals for her but he won't sleep with her until Louis SELLS her to him. This is treated in the narrative as a perfectly logical and reasonable course of action and I would like to ask if all men thought selling women into slavery was a fine thing to do in the 70s or is Niven an outlier?? It was at this point I realised I was a frog in boiling water but it was far too late to get out by then. Louis meets Prill fairly late in the book and she replaces Teela as his designated person to have sex with way too often. Prill was a ship's prostitute (what else would a woman be doing on a space ship Niven asks us confusedly) but is stranded on the Ringworld until Louis and Co show up. Nessus (the Puppeteer character) manipulates her using a device called a tasp which acitaves the brain's pleasure centres until she becomes addicted to it and there are several sex scenes with verrrry dubious consent. I don't know if the copious sex scenes are the author projecting or fanservice but either way someone somewhere seems to find the female characters with no/limited free will way too appealing and I find it rather yikes.
Tl:dr - this book starts with some great ideas but gets sidetracked by a stupid idea and becomes a massive disappointment.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Misogyny, Slavery, Sexual content, Sexism, and Gore
Minor: Addiction and Cultural appropriation
Not sure if it counts for the cultural appropriation but there are some weird remarks about Asian people at the beginning and the main character uses cosmetics so look like he is a 'cartoon' Asian person which was probably fine back in the 70s but now not so much!
More...