Ringworld - BoundCovers

mass market paperback, 342 pages

English language

Published December 1983 by Del Rey.

ISBN:: 978-0-345-31675-2
ISFDB ID:: 1298

(2 reviews)

"I myself have dreamed up an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius one Earth orbit which would make it 600 million miles long. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a million miles wide. we get a thickness of about a thousand meters. The Ringworld would thus be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere.

"There are other advantages. We can spin it for gravity. A rotation on its axis of 770 miles second would give the Ringworld one gravity outward. We wouldn't even have to roof it over Put walls a thousand miles high at each rim. aimed at the sun, and very little of the air will leak over the edges.

"The thing is roomy enough: three million times the area of the Earth. It will be some time before anyone complains …

"I myself have dreamed up an intermediate step between Dyson Spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius one Earth orbit which would make it 600 million miles long. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a million miles wide. we get a thickness of about a thousand meters. The Ringworld would thus be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere.

"There are other advantages. We can spin it for gravity. A rotation on its axis of 770 miles second would give the Ringworld one gravity outward. We wouldn't even have to roof it over Put walls a thousand miles high at each rim. aimed at the sun, and very little of the air will leak over the edges.

"The thing is roomy enough: three million times the area of the Earth. It will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding."

LARRY NIVEN

40 editions

Richard M. reviewed Ringworld by Larry Niven (Ringworld (1))

Ages poorly, like its peers.

3 stars

I really wish there was a filter for old media that could remove some of the elements that make interesting stories so mired in their time, and really drags the suspension of disbelief to a halt.

"Wow! Massive world in a ring around a sun! That's incredible! Ladies manipulate us with sex, and they're just too stupid to understand science. A crew of 30 people on a ship and only 3 women? You can bet they weren't engineers. Wink wink."

Larry Niven's Ringworld is a bit of a slog.

The rating of three is in "teenage me in the 80s" stars. When adjusted for today's stars, this likely should be lower, as I surely wouldn't have patience for this from a contemporary author.

phildini, while reading

rated it

Sept. 25, 2008

Subjects

Science Fiction - General
Fiction - Science Fiction

Lists

Hugo Award for Best Novel