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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
The 1970 scifi misogyny is keeping this from being 5 stars. It’s absolutely egregious and almost knocks two whole stars off. If you can ignore that, though, it’s just really really good classic scifi with a really cool premise that presents a very real-feeling future. I think scifi that’s ultimately about the question of free will is just something I love
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
TW: Graphic blood, misogyny, sexual content, xenophobia. Moderate death, fire injury, homophobia, sexism, violence. Minor colonialism cursing (invented words substituted), slavery, war. There are two adults in a relationship with 180 year age difference. Spicy bits can be skipped with no loss to the story.
TLDR: Trying to read this in the early 1980’s caused me to turn to DrangonRiders of Pern.
Clarke tech: To much to type but for starters; transfer booths, ftl travel, tasps, stabis fields, General Product hulls, artificial gravity, sonic folds, food replicators, floating buildings, auto docs, the material for the ringworld, inherited psi.
Normally a 1 star book would be a DNF for me, I made an exception for this since it won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, has a 3.94 star rating on Goodreads and a .3.52 on StoryGraph. Also it is only 313 pages.
Firstly let’s talk about the book itself. Written in the third person the narrator knows the thoughts of one of the main characters. People technology, and places are not well described, the flora and fauna of the ringworld is described as “earth like”. The main characters seem to meander through the story without much idea of what they are doing or why. They also have little to no backstory and are not very interesting. The book ends on a cliffhanger. All in all, frustraing.
Next the science. Ringworld is still praised for the audacity of it’s science, but when you look at his shiny tech it is mostly borrowed from Star Trek. Which is hardly a surprise since Mr Niven did write for the show and the Kzin did appear in one episode, that I remember vaguely. of the animated series. Of the non-Star Trek tech the flycycles are cool, but their sonic fields, food replicators, and auto docs are basicaly magic dressed up in techno words. Floating buildings make absolutely no sense in a world with that much land. And of course the ringwood itself as written is unstable.
Lastly the elephant in the book. The problem of Teela. Of four crew members there is one female. When she expresses her feelings of inadequacy and failure to the crew member who is her partner he says,
“I’ll grant you blew that one. As a good luck charm, you’re fired. Come on, smile. We need you. We need you to keep me happy, so I don’t rape Nessus.…”
Basically Teela exists so we can get mild sex scenes. And a strange subplot about luck.
Finally at page 260 we get another female with a speaking part. This is the conversation that two of the male crew mates have about her after one character’s first conversation with her.
“Did you think to ask about the ratio of sexes abroad ship? How many of the thirty-six were women?”
“She told me that. Three.”
You might as well forget about her profession.”
A few pages later we get a scene that leaves no doubt as to what her profession was on her former ship.
To top it off the other two alien species female’s are non-sentient and for breeding purposes only. A quick check on the interwebs tells me that Mr Niven was husband to an wife who was an MIT graduate and active in many science fiction clubs as well as being a writer herself. I would love to know what her thoughts regarding Teela’s role in the Ringworld novel was. Unfortunately in my quick troll around I found nothing.
There must be something worthwhile in this novel for it to win the accolades it did. I just never found it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexual content, Xenophobia, Blood
Moderate: Death, Homophobia, Sexism, Violence, Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Cursing, Slavery, Colonisation, War
Invented words are substituted for American curse words but the meaning is clear. Spicy bits can be skipped with no loss to the story.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
It's a classic, and I'm glad I read it! And that's the best I can say about Ringworld.
I liked the hard-ness of the sci-fi; in some ways, the intercivilization game theory and intricate alien worldbuilding reminded me of The Dark Forest (Three Body Problem), or to a lesser extent The Expanse. It was short and digestible, unlike some modern novels (cough Sanderson), which I guess is compensated for by the huge number of accompanying Known Space short stories.
That being said, it had some drawbacks:
* Very dated (older than 1970, I would think) views on race, sex, and gender roles. Apparently, all women in every species exist just for breeding.
* Poor pacing; the last 15% of the book has 50% of the action and revelations, and has huge jumps in time. It's like he ran out of pages and was like "well, gotta wrap this up"
* No real resolution of plotlines, which is odd as the author didn't originally intend a sequel
* Flat characters, no development whatsoever
*
Also - it's not the fault of this book, but it seems like you were supposed to read some of the other short stories first for background. While I don't think I'll be continuing in the series, that's something I would've done differently.
I liked the hard-ness of the sci-fi; in some ways, the intercivilization game theory and intricate alien worldbuilding reminded me of The Dark Forest (Three Body Problem), or to a lesser extent The Expanse. It was short and digestible, unlike some modern novels (cough Sanderson), which I guess is compensated for by the huge number of accompanying Known Space short stories.
That being said, it had some drawbacks:
* Very dated (older than 1970, I would think) views on race, sex, and gender roles. Apparently, all women in every species exist just for breeding.
* Poor pacing; the last 15% of the book has 50% of the action and revelations, and has huge jumps in time. It's like he ran out of pages and was like "well, gotta wrap this up"
* No real resolution of plotlines, which is odd as the author didn't originally intend a sequel
* Flat characters, no development whatsoever
*
Spoiler
None of the characters are concerned with the superconductor-eating mold?! As soon as this was mentioned, I was expecting there to be a reckoning where they had to decide whether they would self-exile on the Ringworld to avoid bringing it back to their own worlds and dooming them, but it's never even mentioned.Also - it's not the fault of this book, but it seems like you were supposed to read some of the other short stories first for background. While I don't think I'll be continuing in the series, that's something I would've done differently.
adventurous
funny
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
people go to Halo and then someone is really effin' lucky and that messes or not messes things up depending on how you look at it
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes