Ringworld's Children [Mass Market Paperback]

This is the story of how Louis Wu's hand-picked successor to the Ringworld "throne" preserves the Ringworld from the threat of annihilation by human cops, kzinti warcats and other folk we thought we had learned to like. The ARM agents here, for example, aren't upset when their antimatter tools blast a Manhattan-sized hole in the floor of the Ringworld, jeopardizing the lives of the Ringworld's 30 trillion inhabitants. The ARMs we meet note they can still learn a lot studying the deserted, desiccated shell if that happens. It doesn't, of course, but Larry, you've sure come a long ways in your attitude towards cops since the days of Gil the Arm.

Like Robert Heinlein in his last half dozen books, Niven has also taken to recycling old ideas from earlier books, even ideas his characters rejected then, and using them in "Children":

- Ship-eating monsters in hyperspace, rejected as a possibility in "Borderland of Sol," may turn out to be real. (Beowulf Schaeffer was right and Carlos Wu was wrong? Who'd have thought it?) So Puppeteers are right to fear hyperspace.

- Teela Brown's fabulous luck, discredited in "Ringworld Engineers," may be a matter of lucky genes after all.

- The anti-matter solar system in "Neutron Star" turns out to still be around.

- The "Longshot," the experimental advanced ship from "Neutron Star" and "Ringworld" turns out to still be around.

- Schizophrenic cops, an idea from the one original story in "Crashlander," appear again. (Larry, what is it about you and cops?)

- Carlos Wu's fabulous autodoc, also from "Crashlander" or maybe from "Ringworld Engineers," continues to play a starring role.

There are half a dozen other references from earlier works that I saw, and likely a lot more that I missed.

Niven's strong suit has always been ideas and the extrapolation of ideas, combined with good plotting. He's never been a strong character author, and he has the annoying habit of paying more attention to the scenery than to character development. That's an ongoing problem with this short novel, too. And an unusually large number of characters are abandoned by the author, having served there immediate function to the plot. (Larry, what was the purpose of having Louis Wu and his motely crew meet the Giraffe People? And that's Larry's pun, not mine.)

And spare me any more rishathra jokes. Please.

Niven continues to do one thing consistently well: Protectors, the folk who probably built the Ringworld, are mostly superintelligent, in addition to having some other skills. How can a writer of normal intelligence, writing to a reader of normal intelligence, portray believably a superintelligent being? It takes more than one technique. Niven uses several effectively, perhaps more effectively than he has done in the last two Ringworld books. It's the best and most effective aspect of this novel.

The motivation of Protectors is less well, or at least less consistently, developed. You knew - come one, admit it - that the Ringworld would have a surviving original Pak Protector. But how is that Proserpina is still alive? And why did Bram - the former occupant of the Ringworld "throne," killed at the end of that book, let the Ringworld deteriorate to its present sad condition?

Still and all, this is an entertaining yarn. Niven ends it ambiguously, with the Ringworld safer, if not safe, and enough satisfying new ideas to give a reader something to chew on. There's enough trickiness, plots-within-plots and general scheming to keep a reader guessing. And only Louis Wu and Nessus have the means to return to the Ringworld.

I'd expected this to be the story where Louis Wu meets Carlos Wu, who is almost certainly his father (see: "Crashlander") but that didn't happen. Stay tuned.

Is this a classic Niven story? Nope. But it's something of a return to form after disappointments likes "The Burning City." Strongly recommended for "Ringworld" fans. This is not the book for newcomers to Niven's universe; start with "Ringworld" the novel. If you're not a science fiction fan, you should probably skip this one.

Louis involves himself in Tunesmith's secret plan, testing a space drive, checking on the status of Tunesmith's comet-hole repair system, and falling in love with an Earth-human whose fighter craft has penetrated Ringworld through a hole in its surface. He gets the chance to see even more of the mysteries of Ringworld, but he can see no way out of the war that is coming.

Author Larry Niven's Ringworld is a fascinating construction. A ribbon of super-strong material around a sun, Ringworld sports the surface area of a million earths--and is inhabited by a hugely diverging group of semi-humans along with a few aliens. Protectors, the final stage in 'human' development, work to benefit their decendents, but armed with limited information, have done too little to prevent war.

Fans of the Ringworld series will want to read this story, see the further adventures of Louis Wu, and see how Niven has dealt with the criticisms of his great creation, adding devices and details that make it more technologically possible. The world-building that went into Ringworld is first-class and the original Ringworld novel is a true classic of SF. Ringworld's Children is a far smaller book than the original masterpiece. The characters are not really fleshed out or motivated, and I found myself uninvolved with the story.

Fans of Ringworld will want to read this one for the latest on this fascinating more-than-world. If you aren't already a Ringworld fan, though, you'll definitely want to start with the original.