![]() ![]() (Later he'd turn the whole shebang into a franchise.) Ringworld is a good, but not great novel, that almost rises to its premise but runs rings around delivering full satisfaction. However, get past the Big Idea, and the actual story of Ringworld is a whisper-thin thing, a suprisingly low-key tale of extraterrestrial discovery in which not a whole heck of a lot really happens to grab you by the short and curlies, and with enough unanswered questions that Niven was essentially put in the position of having to write a sequel ten years later in order to settle them and stop his fans from grousing. ![]() For its influence and brilliance of ideas, Ringworld richly deserves its classic status. It may well be SF's most amazing concept period. The Ringworld itself, a colossal manufactured world circling a sun, containing enough room to solve any planet's overpopulation problem, is a conceptual gobsmacker. But a little perspective is called for, I think. ![]() This may well prove to be one of the more controversial reviews on this site, as Ringworld is a staple of every SF reader's basic diet. Book cover art by Donato Giancola (1st) Vincent di Fate (2nd) Sanda Zahirovic (3rd). ![]()
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