Customer Reviews

Ringworld's Children

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Larry Niven reported that engineering students have determined that the Ringworld mathematically is a suspension bridge with no end points. I don't have the math skills to confirm the claim, but I can confirm that enjoyable as the Ringworld series has been, sometimes when reading this fourth Ringworld book I felt like more than one kind of end point was being suspended.

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.

250-year-old Louis Wu awakens as a young-man after an extensive stay in a nanotechnology healing chamber to find that the situation on Ringworld is not good. Although the new protector, Tunesmith, is doing what he can to repair the damage Ringworld has suffered, too many societies have recognized Ringworld for the technological treasure-trove that it is. The worst part is, Ringworld doesn't actually need to survive to be looted of its treasure. And anti-matter weapons can quickly punch holes in the Ringworld that Tunesmith would be powerless to stop.

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.

Excelleny condition,a little late but only a day or two so o k. The book is great but I expect no less from Larry Niven

After Ringworld Throne I had low expectations for this new Ringworld novel.

In preperation I re-read the first 3 books, and they were still fresh in my mind when I picked up Ringworld's Children.

I personally did not like Ringworld Throne anywhere near as much. I found the Ringworld natives generic and boring and hard to keep track of. Often I found myself not really caring what happened to them. Near the end of the book things started to pick up, and it does answer some important questions (while posing new ones). So even if just to learn what happens next it's worth it to fight your way through Ringworld Throne.

Ringworld's Children goes a long way to fixing those problems.

This time around the focus is back on Louis Wu, where it should be. As a result the book is far less schitzophrenic and a lot easier to understand (is it just me or was anyone else completely confused by Bram's origin story in Ringworld Throne?).

A big Known Space fan (I have read almost all the stories, with the exception of the new short story included in the Crashlander collection) I really appreciated all the nods to previous books.

Carlos Wu, the antimatter solar system, Nuetron Star, Protector and other stories are all tied together in this.

It really does feel like Niven is wrapping things up, and when you see what happens at the end you'll understand it's pretty hard to top in terms of sheer scale.

The book was a fun read. I thought the pacing was good. *Some* of the concepts introduced seemed somewhat forced, or not explored in enough detail. Like the extra convolutions to Teela's story. But they never really affected my enjoyment of the story.

However something that bother me is Niven's ongoing habit of adding new slang whenever he writes a new story in a series.

He did it in Engineers and in Throne, but it wasn't quite as intrusive as "LE" is. This whole "Legal Entity" thing came out of nowhere. No one said it in the other stories, even in Ringworld Throne which takes place the same year as Ringworld's Children.

Similarly the term the Fringe War has no basis. No one used that term in Ringworld Throne, yet even as he's stepping out of the autodoc, not having spoken to anyone since the end of Throne, Louis contemplates the "Fringe War".

For obvious reasons he needed to give a name to the growing conflict in the Ringworld solar system, but there are more elegant ways he could have introduced us to the term. Like how about Tunesmith uses it the first time he speaks with Louis after emerging from the autodoc and Louis asks him what it means.

But that small gripe is not enough to ruin the book for me. The only other problem I had is the length. The story is relatively short. I'm not sure how short because my copies of the other Ringworld stories are paperback, but it feels shorter than the others, and it's dissapointing because when it really gets moving you don't want it to end.

I might actually give it 3.5 stars if I had the choice, I'm not sure though. Somewhere in that range, 3.5-4 out of 5.

Some might want to wait for the paperback though. And you should re-read Ringworld Throne at the very least, but re-reading all 3 would be best.

I was disappointed with this book. I've been reading SF (and Mr. Niven) since the late 1970s and I loved his earlier Known Space works but I found it difficult to read this novel.

In a nutshell, this wasn't a book as much as it was an "outline of a book". I would have been SO much happier if Niven had filled his pages with more descriptions (much more description)... like, in every scene of the book! So many times I had to re-read a paragraph to "guess" what was going on or who was speaking. I realize there are a lot of characters in the story but that's no excuse.

I liked the ideas in the book but ideas, alone, don't make for a good read.

Sorry, Mr. Niven. I love your work but this one stunk.

I read a lot of books (1 - 2 a week!), and the Ring World Series draws you into itself in such a way....well, at one point I was reading outside and without thinking looked at the horizon and for about a second I was almost dismayed(!), because I didn't see the Arch (of the ringworld) stretching before me, then (of course) my logic caught my instincts and I laughed at myself.

But just the fact that my instincts were fooled into thinking I'd see the Arch instead of the horizon of the Earth!

Definetly an AWSOME book. I hope Larry is working on the next in the Ring World Series! (Also I hope he is getting royalties from HALO.)

P.S. - Ringworld has a cult following of scientists, intellectuals, and rich-men. Don't be suprised if in 10-15 years we see an "Arch" being built in space nearby.

The six hundred miles long and a million yards across ribbon-shaped Ringworld is home to fifty trillion hominids as well as many other species and most amazing of all it is man made. All of the sentient species want to learn the technology that went into making Ringworld but the protectors want to keep such people out. The Protector used to shoot down any ship that got too close but the new protector Tunesmoth is holding fire so as not to irritate the participants of the Fringe War, which is getting too close to Ringworld.

The ARM, the military leg of the United Nations, is using anti-matter engines near Ringworld, something that could destroy the planet if an accident occurs. When a ship falls and puts a hole in the top layer of Ringworld the Protector must fix it or the place will cease to exist. As ARMs soldiers try to ferret out the secrets of the Ringworld, are, a group of RINGWORLD'S CHILDREN work to repair the damage. One of the original engineering experts, together with Tunesmith try to figure out a way to move Ringworld away from sentient warmongers.

People who have never read the Ringworld books will find the latest entry as a strong stand-alone book that gives enough information about other novels in the series so that new readers will want to buy and read them too. It is a fascinating place to visit, an engineering marvel so advanced that even in the year 2893, the technology is too sophisticated to duplicate. Larry Niven, one of the grandmasters of science fiction, has brought a classic to a new generation of readers.

Harriet Klausner

Ringworld's Children is half a book. The first half was the previous "Ringworld Throne." Unfortunately, Niven didn't combine them, toss out the filler in "Throne", and write the book that would have been the worthy successor to "Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers." But he didn't, and the two half books don't make a whole one.

What we have instead is (like "Throne") the outline of a great novel, a few sketches of characters (and not even that for some: Chmee's son whatsisname), and Louis Wu solving a few puzzles with clues we never see.

Larry Niven once said that the Ringworld offered so many opportunities for sequels that it would make Edgar Rice Burroughs look like a case of "writer's block." Sadly, having created such a mental playground, Niven is unable to capitalize on it.

3 stars because it's Ringworld. But only just.

Ringworld's Children is the fourth novel in the Ringworld series, following The Ringworld Throne. In Ringworld, Louis Wu had encountered a very large patch of sunflowers, but except for a minor incident that left Speaker to Animals hairless and charred, his party managed to hide from their reflected sunbeams during the day. In The Ringworld Engineers, Louis had boiled a sea, providing enough time for the locals to weed out the mirrored plants, but also left a legacy of clouds that remained in the region.

In The Ringworld Throne, these clouds allowed the Shadow Nest vampires to greatly increase their hunting range and thus their food supply, resulting into a local population explosion of these predators. When Valavirgillin and the Farsight Trading company arrived in the region, they soon found themselves under attack by the vampires and the Machine People joined forces with various local hominids to attack the vampire lair. They gained access to the floating city and turned on the bottomside lighting system, thus driving the vampires out of their sheltered enclave and forcing them to scatter throughout the region.

Elsewhere in The Ringworld Throne, Louis, Acolyte and the Hindmost were captured by a vampire protector, whom Louis named Bram. He and his mate Anne have gained control of the Meteor Defense room and now Bram has started using the meteor defense system to destroy ships from the various known space species. Louis lured the Ghoul Tunesmith into the tree-of-life garden, where he underwent the change to protector. Then Louis and his associates cooperated with these vampire protectors while they fought other vampire protectors for control of the rimwall. Anne was killed by the rimwall protectors and Bram was injured. When Bran returned from the rimwall, Tunesmith ambushed him and, with a timely diversion by Acolyte, overcame him.

In this novel, in 2893 AD, Louis Wu awakes under a coffin lid in the nanotech superdoc; he has been in the 'doc for 84 days and hasn't felt this good in two centuries. However, Tunesmith has been very busy while Louis was undergoing treatment. He has negotiated an agreement with the Spill Mountain protectors. He also has moved Hot Needle of Inquiry back under Olympus Mons, sliced it open, and removed various components. The superdoc is spread out on the cavern floor, as is the repaired hyperdrive (maybe Louis can go home afterall).

However, the Fringe War has heated up again. Warships from the ARM, Kzinti, Trinocs and other, unknown aliens abound within the system; even the Puppeteers and Outsiders have sent observers. Tunesmith has made plans to hijack the Long Shot, which is being used as a courier for the Kzinti. He has also made Hanging People protectors and is using them to pilot probes against his opponents. He sends Probe One out to agitate the Patriarchy command ship Diplomat, which is trying to link with the Long Shot. The probe thwarts the rendezvous, but is destroyed by an anti-matter bullet.

Tunesmith has made some changes to the hyperdrives and can use them in near space. First he fires Probe Two out of the linear accelerator launcher and then sends Hot Needle of Inquiry immediately after it. Probe Two acts both as a decoy and a test vehicle for the new hyperdrive. It jinks and curves and then disappears ... but returns a quarter million miles ahead. Then the ARM and Patriarchy notice the Needle and soon beams and missiles begin to converge on them. The Needle goes into hyperdrive and gains a quarter million miles on the targeting systems.

The Needle avoids the warships as it travels out to the periphery of the system, where it takes a hyperspace jump back to the other side only ten light-minutes from the Long Shot. Approaching the rendezvous point, a pulse of the hyperdrive bypasses two guard ships and the Needle dives on the Long Shot as it attaches to the Diplomat. It touches sides with the Long Shot and a "glue" stuff causes the Needle to adhere to the other ship; the Needle then accelerates at ten gravities, tearing the Long Shot away from the Diplomat. Tunesmith, Acolyte and Louis storm aboard the Long Shot, but the fight is over before Louis can reach the other cabin.

In this story, Tunesmith discovers something new about hyperspace: it is populated with living creatures, including ship-eating predators. Thus, hyperspace can be used within a gravity well as long as the ship returns to normalspace quickly. He now plans to learn even more about the quantized velocity of hyperspace using the Long Shot. Meanwhile, the Needle aerobrakes through the sun and returns to Ringworld, where it dives through an eye storm into the sea, out one meteor hole, and into another, and then hides beneath the sea.

Two ARM craft follow the Needle in the eye storm, but lose it under the sea. They are attacked by two other ships and an ARM craft disappears within an anti-matter explosion. The blast blows a wide hole in the sea, sucking out the remains of the eye storm into space. Tunesmith deploys his experimental meteor patch to the new hole and sends Louis to observe.

The other ARM craft lands on the ring and Louis joins them while pretending to be "Luis", a young Ringworld resident. The Hanging People protector who piloted Probe Two, Hanuman, pretends to be Luis' pet and also accompanies the ARM party. Later, Wembleth, a native of indeterminate species, travels with the group, as does Proserphina, one of the oldest protectors on Ringworld, who has been exiled to the Isolation Zone for millennia while her descendants have been running free on the Map of Earth.

This story is too short and abrupt -- it is less than 300 pages long -- and there is plenty of space for clarification and follow throughs, but it still provides some interesting new concepts and scenery. All the protectors seem to have consented to follow Tunesmith as the Master Protector. Of course, Tunesmith doesn't give many clues as to his plans, but you can take for granted that they are BIG; everything on the Ringworld is oversized, after all, and only BIG plans have any chance of saving the ring from the careless hands of the anti-matter wielders.

Recommended for Niven fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of strange sentients in an even stranger environment.

-Arthur W. Jordin

This trip to Ringworld was a disappointment. The character and the plot development was weak and shallow. Niven had the material to flesh out the story, but, for some reason failed to use it. When I reached the end of the book I wondered where the rest of the story was. This is definitely not his best effort. (...)