• Ringworld

  • By: Larry Niven
  • Narrated by: Tom Parker
  • Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (8,556 ratings)

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Ringworld  By  cover art

Ringworld

By: Larry Niven
Narrated by: Tom Parker
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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

What listeners say about Ringworld

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3,801
  • 4 Stars
    2,763
  • 3 Stars
    1,433
  • 2 Stars
    395
  • 1 Stars
    164
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3,462
  • 4 Stars
    2,095
  • 3 Stars
    808
  • 2 Stars
    176
  • 1 Stars
    68
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3,056
  • 4 Stars
    2,016
  • 3 Stars
    1,069
  • 2 Stars
    339
  • 1 Stars
    153

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Interesting Ideas, Clumsy Plot

Niven is a sci-fi concept type writer, in which he takes sci-fi concepts and ponder (such as how a Ringworld could be built, who would build one, etc) all the little details about it. In this the characters are more observers of these sci-fi concepts than anything else. He thinks of some very interesting ideas and in general they are theoretically interesting... although sometimes I felt like saying "I call BS on that." However the main problem I personally have is that the "story" is mostly a framework to explain these concepts and ideas - and half of the book involves one person explaining one of these concepts to another person like "Do you know/understand phenomenon/object X which is standing before us... it's really easy... imagine A, which has B ..." several pages later the other person is like "oh I see" or "whoa" in the Keanu Reeves/Matrix dazed sort of what as his mind is blown by the sheer magnitude of the sci-fi concept. and then they walk around until they reach another weird and interesting sci-fi concept and this is repeated again and again and again and I found myself wanting for more "meat" to the story despite this audiobook being like 12+ hours long. I would have like a little more plot and character development to balance out what I found to be noticeably clumsy plot/character manipulations Niven used to keep the story moving and to show yet another "mind-blowing" sci-concept. Now one could say the Douglas Adam's books are similarly lacking in cohesive plot as he strings his relatively shallow characters through humourous mis-adventures through the galaxy - however I find Adam's prose and writing much more entertaining and witty, whereas Nivens is a bit heavy, clumsy and sounds very much like he's just pumping his thoughts into your brain. I give the book 3 stars instead of 2 because I think part of my disappointment in it is due to my changing tastes as a reader.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

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.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Acceptable but frequently annoying

Although this reading was acceptable, the reading of the Teela, the one major female character, is very annoying, to the point of almost spoiling it. Yes, it is challengig for a reader to convey different voices for each character, particularly of a different genre, but this Teela sounded like a whiny little girl. Very annoying.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Mildly interesting and thoroughly unfulfilling

The high concepts were interesting but the author tried too hard to be unique. His efforts to be unlike any other story made it tedious. Overall the story was just a random assemblage of vaguely related stories that really went nowhere.

When this book was over I felt like it was not complete. This is definitely a first book, not a standalone. Now if only I cared enough to read another one.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Technobabble

I had a tough time staying interested through the extensive techobabble. The characters were interesting enough, but the too extensive descriptions of the ringworld was exhausting. I finally gave up to go to another book I was anxious to get started on.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Dreary Bilge

I think the review title says it all. Monotonous non-event after non-event made me give up after 6 hours of mind-numbing boredom. Perhaps the last 5 hours were a complete change, but I can't be bothered to find out.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

I didnt hate it, but thats the best i can say...

This book was mediocre through and through. I know the book was written a while back and that accounts for the writing style and dated dialog but it doesnt account for the plot. Ive enjoyed plenty of books written in the previous millennia just fine, but this book was just dull. Its a shame because it sounded so intriguing. An entire absurdly sized artificially created ring world waiting to be explored, secrets to be discovered, i was chomping at the bit to get started on this, regardless of all the lackluster reviews.. Alas i should've heeded my fellow listers warnings... The first major problem was the author did nothing to endear us to the characters. I didnt care one lick for any of them. Humans and aliens alike. That was another thing the whole relationship between humanity and aliens was vague at best. Theres no backstory or even quick summary of how Earth got to where it was at the time of this book from where we are now (or where we were then when this book was written). How did humans and aliens meet? Who are these puppeteers? What relation do they have to our species? Same goes for the transport system he was talking about in the start of the book and references throughout. Just a vague idea but no real substance. Then once we finally get to the ring world (a few hours in) theres no real story. Their kina wandering about haphazardly, run into a few living beings, not guna give spoilers but that part was a disappointing lack of imagination if ive ever seen one. Then when it gets towards the end he goes way to left field with the whole purpose behind the excursion and i just turned it off. Still got 45mins left in the book and i just cant make myself care enough to finish it. That should tell you all you need to know. No one could resist seeing what happens in the end of any good (or even just decent) book. But this one... i just dont care... sorry to say it but this ones a stinker...

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Niven Fan +

Well, I do have to say the read is better than the listen on this one.
I am a pretty forgiving man when it comes to reading, hey as a challenge I made it through ALL of "The Eye Of Argon" by Jim Theis and only lost 25 IQ points (and the power of speech for over an hour. Think biological auto-correct on steroids).
The match up between narrator and the story just didn't work out. I think it was more a tonal think, not to sure.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

It's ok

Ringworld is interesting. It's obvious why it was so influential, and is a sci-fi classic, but it has not aged well.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Kinda fun and interesting, but also bizarre

It had some interesting concepts and some fun moments, but overall bizarre, meandering, and too whimsical to take seriously. Also, the amount of sex and sexism was eye-rolling.

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