Ringworld

By: Larry Niven

Narrated by: Tom Parker

Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

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 truly incredible tale

i love this book, I've never had a chance to read it but it is a magnificent story.

weird reading

The reader has a good choice but takes weird pauses all the time. I don't know why they weren't edited out

Almost 4 stars but for Teela

First, I love Tom Parker/Grover Gardner reading anything! He brings such life into anything he reads. His different voices for the characters, is distinguishable, but not oddly so. I find some narrators try to make the voices so different that it is distracting or seems like they are trying too hard. Especially when attempting different genders. Parker/Gardner lulls me into the story like no other.

Despite my 3 stars I actually liked the story of Ringworld. Audible should break down rating into “story” and “characters”. The story I enjoyed. A little adventure in space… What could be better?

I should always consider the publication year when I read books (or never consider anything by B V Larson). Sometimes, not frequently, I run into what I like to call the “Madmen” phenomena: Stories set, or written in a time where women who are just there to be pretty and have “relations” with the men. This story was a bit like that.

Spoilers ahead:

Poor pitiful Teela too unadventurous to have ever left her world, falls in “love” , and like a puppy, follows a man across the universe. Then her naiveté puts her in danger constantly (you know, because she is a silly women) and her over-dramatic behavior has her crying all the time (SUCK IT UP), and her feeling are hurt constantly. What this!.... she falls in “love” again in a mere week! Silly women and their unformed brains, unable to be in anyway alone or independent! We should use them as chattel! At the end did she grow as a person?...NOPE! She again decides to follow a random man on his adventure. I would have just as soon left her out.

Everyone else I liked… Louis was a little “madmen” for having a 20 year old girl-friend. Plus I would have thought he would have better taste than the insipid, whinny little Teela. Nessus and Speaker where interesting counterpoints to each other. I enjoyed their argument quite a lot.

All in all, not a bad read.

Classic Mediocre

Humorous at some points and awe inspiring, the story contains multiple points and classic tropes which detract from its potential. In my eyes it did not live up to the hype.

A fun read

Lots of cool hard sci-fi technology, weird aliens, and mystery with a fantasy feel to it. Civilization has collapsed on the ring world and what is left is a world where most survivors live in ruins with medieval technology. There was MUCH more sex than I expected with some clear inspiration from the Bene Gesserit in Dune.

A product of its time

Top notch 1960s speculative physics combined with average 1960’s viewpoints including misogyny, simplistic motivations, and wooden dialog. I’d like to see a TV series updated with modern attitudes and concepts. Hardly surprising that the core science concept was borrowed for a video game.

Misogynistic nonsense

The audio quality and whatnot are fine. The plot has interesting ideas but Niven’s not subtle misogynistic writing makes the whole thing completely unreadable.

Adding quite well.

I first read this in the 1970s and greatly enjoyed the story. Nearly 50 years later it turns out Larry had some things wrong and hopelessly failed to predict things like storage technology. But the story is still good. The reader is pretty good, very few odd pronunciations. But he is an older man and despite our hero's true age he appears to be young. So not the best choice for this book. He only occasionally slipped in intonation, immediately before the story commented on is lack. He was not a distraction, and if listen to him again.

Like Ender's Game? Download this.

This is another enjoyably creative perspective on the future of humanity. I think those who like the Enderverse books should enjoy this novel as well. It is different, mind you, but in the same spirit.

Satisfying scifi

I never read Ringworld before now because I feared it would be too much "hard science" and not enough character development. It was a fine combination of both. I enjoyed the book. The characters were a little outdated due to the year the book was written (published 1970). Men are strong and smart and fight and wield weapons and women are pretty and curvy and dumb and good at sex. This is tedious but something I accept in older scifi. My only real complaint is that the characters, who bumble around most of the time, occasionally come up with plot-advancing insights, out of the blue and not based on any facts we the reader knew about. To me that always feels like the heavy hand of the author trying to hurry things along or write his way out of a corner.