Long after the people of Earth have become citizens of the universe, a rogue explorer stumbled across an ancient engineering marvel unmatched in all of known space: Ringworld.
Constructed in an age long past by an unknown species (deemed the "Ringworld Engineers"), the Ringworld is essentially an immense hoop roughly the size of Earth's orbit constructed around a medium-sized star. Awe-inspiring in its sheer scope, Ringworld has enticed all of the governments of the known universe to explore and exploit its wealth of resources and knowledge.
Constructed in an age long past by an unknown species (deemed the "Ringworld Engineers"), the Ringworld is essentially an immense hoop roughly the size of Earth's orbit constructed around a medium-sized star. Awe-inspiring in its sheer scope, Ringworld has enticed all of the governments of the known universe to explore and exploit its wealth of resources and knowledge.
In this latest edition of the Ringworld chronicles, the renegade explorer and serendipity magnet Louis Wu is reincarnated to play the focal role in an interplanetary battleground. With the impending threat of rival profiteers descending into war over the wealth of Ringworld, Louis inexplicably joins forces with the planet's protector, the child of Kzinti royalty, a banished Ringworld engineer, and other diverse characters to prevent the inadvertent destruction of the Ringworld from indiscriminate usage of weaponry by the encroaching entities.
Faithful to the Science Fiction paradigm, Niven includes all of the necessities of the genre: Inharmonious interactions between species of deeply different motivations and talents, incredible technological feats, deviant sex practices,. His talent for creating and detailing cultures of species who are so patently alien lends depth and authenticity to his imaginative tales.
Faithful to the Science Fiction paradigm, Niven includes all of the necessities of the genre: Inharmonious interactions between species of deeply different motivations and talents, incredible technological feats, deviant sex practices,. His talent for creating and detailing cultures of species who are so patently alien lends depth and authenticity to his imaginative tales.
Niven's perfect balance of real science and imaginative theory over the past 35 years has become a scale by which science fiction is judged. More than an interesting premise for fiction, the Ringworld has become a fascinating theoretical engineering plaything for dreamers and pragmatics alike.
