Ringworld

By: Larry Niven

Narrated by: Tom Parker

Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, Ringworld remains a favorite among science fiction readers and listeners.

The artifact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its center. Pierson’s puppeteers—strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens—discovered this “Ringworld” in a hitherto unexplored part of the galaxy. Curious about the immense structure, but frightened by the prospect of meeting the builders, they set about assembling a team to explore it:

Louis Wu, human—old and bored with having lived too fully for too many years, seeking an adventure, and all too capable of handling it.

Nessus, puppeteer—a trembling coward from a species with an inbuilt survival pattern of nonviolence. This particular puppeteer, however, is insane.

Speaker-to-Animals, kzin—large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. The kzin are one of the most savage life-forms known.

The party’s expedition, however, goes disastrously wrong when their ship crash-lands and its motley crew faces a daunting trek across thousands of miles of Ringworld territory.

©1970 Larry Niven (P)1996 Blackstone Audiobooks

A Generally Enjoyable Experience

This an enjoyable, if not frustrating, little book. If you like answers at the end of your stories, if you like things to be wrapped up nicely, then this is not the book for you. Some major mysteries of the book don't get resolved and the ending seemed abrupt and ill-conceived. This is especially true as this book was not originally intended to be part of a series. Later books attempt to resolve some of the mysteries left unresolved at the end.

That aside, Ringworld is an entertaining romp through some prevalent sci-fi themes such as genetic engineering, medically-induced longevity, faster-than-light space travel, and alien encounter. This is a book that was well ahead of its time.

The voice-acting is top notch.

A thought-provoking adventure

The novel is based around travelling to and investigating a mysterious artificial world. While the ring world would seem to be the focus of the book and was, in fact, quite interesting I found that it was the, more or less, related ideas that made the story sing.

There are three intelligent species in the novel. They are quite simplistic in nature in that the Puppeteers are excessively cautious and fearful but very intelligent, the Kzin are (or were) ultra-aggressive and the humans are in between. But there are interesting caveats to these such as the only ambassadors of the Puppeteers are those that are considered by their own race to be insane because only such a one would brave close contact with such unpredictable species. Or the much discussed evolution of the Kzin toward a more reasoned nature.

The most fascinating facet of the novel to me was the discussions regarding the nature of luck that suffuse the story throughout. Earth has a complex system of laws controlling reproduction wherein each human has the right to one child and more can be won through various means such as purchase, arena combat, exceptional genes, etc., but the salient of which is by lottery. The laws in themselves are intriguing but it gets really fascinating when one human crew member is chosen because her ancestors up to 5 generations back have been lottery winners and this woman has led a particularly lucky existence thus far. The Puppeteer believes she has been bred for psychic luck via the lottery while the other human argues it is simply the far end of a probability curve. Someone out of billions of people was bound to have ended up lucky in most things even if their odds were no better than anyone else and they won't have any better odds than anyone else in the future either. Either could be right and what starts as an interesting speculative argument becomes all the more entertaining and complex as the truth is revealed. I won't ruin the magic but it's quite brilliant.

The listener will also be treated to many more mysteries and audacious ideas such as the history of the ring world and its people, conspiracies of the man and Kzin wars, future tech, traveling planets, and exploding galaxies.

The narrator was mediocre. All of the voices sound pretty much the same with the only differentiation being more or less enthusiasm or gruffness but no truly different accents or anything. He did, however, do a good job relaying the character's emotions and only the narration (not the dialogue) was monotonic.

IN SUMMARY, this is a quirky and thought-provoking adventure in the same vein as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Dimension of Miracles that anyone who enjoys scifi should consider worth a listen.

Basic Scifi with Scientific Underpinnings

Niven weaves a tale about a motley collection of explorers, brought together by a weak but manipulative (VERY manipulative) leader, who explore a Ring World from (predictably) the human team member's perspective. The title almost gives the story away, and much of the story seems like it came from a Star Trek novella (yes, the human has sex with an alien).

Still, the interaction between the characters is good, and the descriptions of the physical aspects of the ringworld and its inhabitants make for a decent story reminiscent of Clark's Rama series. The influence on pop culture isn't missed either; the HALO series of video games leans heavily into Niven's uniquely constructed ring world, and the characters could be dropped neatly into any science fiction movie.

Overall, a worthwhile read, but not if you are looking for something profound.

Enjoyable

Sometimes I read older SciFi and laugh at the ridiculous science found in them, but many are enjoyable none-the-less. I didn't find much in this book that strained the suspension of disbelief. The story was tight and everything fell into place pretty effortlessly. No overused phrases, no ridiculous dialogue, good plot, a couple of minor twists, and a clear reason for the adventure made this novel an easy listen.

Science Stands the Test of Time...story does not

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Really interesting science fiction, but the story around the science fiction is atrocious and paper thin. The four companions on the journey are so 2 dimensional to almost be laughable with the dashing older Earthman and his completely incompetent barely legal Earthwoman, an overly cautious Vulcan-esque being with less personality and a Klingon-esque Catman who wants to fight fight fight. They are all set up in very contrived dialogue that enables the author to use them as mouthpieces for his thought experiments in sci-fi. All that said, the thought experiment is compelling and worthwhile. Just prepare yourself to read the material that Douglas Adams lampooned so brilliantly in Hitchiker's.

Would you ever listen to anything by Larry Niven again?

I might give it a shot, but not for a while

What three words best describe Tom Parker’s voice?

salesman, authoritative, disinterested

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

YES because they would have to update it out of necessity. The science fiction is still good, but the story could use a good going over.

Niven clearly need Pournelle.

My favorite book of all time, which I listen to at least twice a year, is "Footfall" but Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Also in my top five are "The Mote In God's Eye" and "The Gripping Hand", both by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. "Ringworld" is the first book I've ever read by Niven alone, and it is just not as good as I was hoping. The science is amazing, premise had huge promise, but the flow of the story is just lacking. And the dialog is less natural than I had come to hope for from Niven.

Good story, not a fan of the narrator

I love this story and enjoyed listening to it. However, I wasn't really happy with the narration. The audio quality sounded like it was recorded 30 years ago, not bad or hard to hear just kind of lo-fi. Less than what I've come to expect from audible books. The narrator had a slightly posh lilt to his voice that I didn't feel was well matched with the tone of the book, though his performance was good otherwise.

older book but still excellent, very enjoyable

This is the 2nd time I've listened to this book and I liked it even better this time. As an older book it's done so well that its still excellent, very enjoyable.

Great narration. Story was lacking to me

Great narration. Story was lacking to me. I felt like nothing really happened. Cool world though. I'll look for the next book.

Narrator well matched to material

Tom Parker's voice drips of mid-century masculine space adventurer bravado. His mastery of the science and the story make for an excellent audio replacement for the actual read. At times his voice reminds one of Zpp Brannigan of Futurama, which sells Larry Niven's male libido driven prose perfectly.