Ringworld by Larry Niven

This novel is Niven’s most famous work, but I’ve never been as enthusiastic about it as friends have. Perhaps that’s why I picked it up for a second read. The pacing follows a typical detective-adventure tale’s pacing: it starts somewhere fairly normal, then keeps veering in unexpected directions so that the goals of the characters rapidly shift. I mean, I know they’re just trying to get off of the ringworld, but first they try finding locals, then finding a spaceport, then surviving a trap, then setting another trap, then surviving an ambush, then letting one of their members go, then climbing a mountain a couple of thousand miles high, then escaping out a giant hole. These quickly shifting goals keeps the exploration party and reader on their toes. And it works as well as it ever has, you know? Dumas could’ve written this book for all the structural experimentation done by Niven, but Niven pulls it off well.

“Exercise is wonderful," said Louis. "I could sit and watch it all day.”

One of Niven’s strengths is that when you stop reading to think about the events, cause and effect help these crazy shifts in goals and situations make sense.
—For instance, the wire they need to haul their half-dead spaceship up the mountain and off the ringworld was what they originally ran into to chop their spaceship up and cause themselves to crash in the first place. This mostly saves the ending from accusations of deus ex machina.
—Another example: the exploration party is composed of four characters, three of whom have been manipulated by the other, the one who picked them. So their tension and anger fits well within their context of being hand-chosen by Nessus—unknowingly before the book starts with the fertility lotteries and starseed lures, and knowingly with the actual mission to the ringworld.
—Or Prill, who initially comes out of nowhere, but actually fits well into the larger context of ramscoop ships and the failure of ringworld civilization.
—Niven doesn’t explicitly hammer these cause-and-effect tendencies of his writing down the reader’s throat, but he does mention them briefly.

Gradually he was learning the size, the scale of the Ringworld. It was unpleasant, like all learning processes.

It’s a book of brief mentions: Niven’s writing style forsakes interior monologue and narrative explanations. He trusts the readers to pick up what he is putting down, even when he uses just a single sentence to change the context throughout the rest of the book. Most authors would use a paragraph or two explaining and restating why everything would be different. Not Niven. Niven is more likely to say something like, “Louis laughed, and Teela burst into tears,” instead of explaining why Louis’ laughter caused Teela’s tears. It’s a book that goes beyond trusting the reader’s intelligence in a couple of different ways. First, with monumental shifts in interpersonal relationships and context taking place within a single sentence instead of a couple of paragraphs, Niven requires his reader’s undivided attention to every word. Second, his characters are rational as well. Hyper rational. And that seems to be a fault for this novel. In order to have the reader be able to extrapolate what they need to in order to understand the book, the characters have to be rigidly rational creatures acting rationally. Where Louis seems irrational, there is a contextual explanation for his rationale through the world that Niven builds. So, while in our world it is irrational to leave one’s own birthday party, here, Niven explains how the culture allows this to happen and makes it seem normal for Louis in that time. Anywhere Teela seems irrational, it’s her Luck taking over and driving her around as its pawn, which is shown through Louis’ detectiving out Teela’s story and explaining it to her/the reader. These unrealistically hyper-rational characters leaves their portrayals flat, and makes the book feel more contrived than it needs to. Humans are not always rigidly rational creatures. Except here they are.

“Humans," said the puppeteer, "should not be allowed to run loose. You will surely harm yourselves.”

Of course, when it comes to the ringworld itself, Niven’s sparse language opens up and he spends a ton of time talking about it. It’s an interesting mental exercise, the ringworld, and I think Niven’s enthusiasm is one of the reasons that this book still resonates with so many people. But despite the time spent discussing it, Niven’s sparse language means that the main, on-the-surface, applicable theme is not the ringworld itself. His theme is really about the other place where he spends the most words, where he breaks with the sparse language to explore a concept: luck and planning. It’s a detective novel with Speaker and Louis discovering the plans of Nessa and the nature of Teela. The ringworld itself plays as the setting, the science fictional theme that helps push the book along a path and provides a complex context for the interpersonal detective work. And Niven treats his theme fairly even-handedly. Initially, Niven gives the readers the positives of luck and planning; but as the book goes on, the negatives come to light and start to wrinkle the awe Louis and Speaker feel at Nessus’ planning and Teela’s luck. Both planning and luck are shown as a double edged sword. Teela’s luck keeps her alive, but drives her towards a future fit for her in ways that are uncomfortable to her and her companions. Nessus’ planning is solely focused on preservation of his species, Pierson’s Puppeteers. This focus helps the species survive, but also gives other species a casus belli against them. Some of the tensest parts of the book are when Louis and Speaker discover the Puppeteer acts that have altered their races in egotistical ways. Also, the planning of the ringworld’s builders has created this vast monument, but has also led to its downfall. Because Niven allows his wordcount to explore these concepts of luck and planning more than others in the novel, I believe that these are the main themes of the book.

Danger doesn't exist for Teela Brown.

Subtextually, questions of technology are prevalent throughout the novel.
—For example, these four explorers who can travel anywhere on their worlds in an instant, and who can travel faster than light—something as short as “we were using the wrong theories before we bought the right ones from galactic Outsiders” being the explanation given for FTL travel—are suddenly stuck on a huge ringworld moving at what is a snail’s pace to them. They are forced back to our time in terms of travel speeds. Niven never lays out clear conclusions to this thread, but he examines its effects on the characters through plot point after plot point.
—Another example is that Louis uses sabbaticals to reconnect with boredom. Being 200 years old when the novel starts, he represents a bit of an anachronism in his culture. Is his method of relaxation Niven commenting on technology having a dislocating effect on humans? Niven doesn’t say, but that could certainly be read into the novel.
—The most obvious example is that the ringworld itself is a failed technological marvel. As an artificial thing it offers positives and negatives—this is perhaps his most Heideggerian example about technology within the book. On the one hand, more space allows more people to dwell there—which solves the problems of overpopulating planets. On the other, resources are vastly limited and too fragile because of the artificiality of the world—the solution to overpopulation creates its own problems. In other words, to borrow from Heiddeger, technology will never solve technology’s problem: the ringworld solves certain problems of planets, but creates new problems of its own by being solely focused on solving those planetary problems.
—These questions concerning technology keep popping up in the novel, but Niven doesn’t explain them. As much as I want to hold this up as the best science fictional novel dealing with Heidegger’s great book Questions Concerning Technology, Niven doesn’t spend enough time extrapolating for the reader to make this connection obvious. He does not discuss conclusions, just lays out the situation. These questions are a prominent undercurrent to the whole book, but not the main focus of it.

Heat is produced as a waste product of civilization.

Louis has sex with every human-like female in the book. This is clearly anachronistic to the science fiction of today. Teela is the best sex Louis can imagine, before he meets Prill. This one-note portrayal of human relations bores me. It’s unrealistic and smacks of Captain Kirk syndrome—sex everything. Louis even sells Teela to a local wandering hero with a big sword at one point. It’s too typical of older science fiction to have strong male characters and complex relationships between males, while featuring weak female characters and one-note relationships between males and females. Louis sexing both of the women in the novel comes off like wish fulfillment, and not like a discussion about sexual relationships between lovers.
—While Teela and Prill are sexualized, the relationships between Louis, Speaker, and Nessus are given space to grow and gain complexity. A friendship develops between Speaker and Louis that is touching. Their relationships with Nessus go through distinct phases throughout the novel, and affects their budding friendship deeply. It’s not the strongest friendship in fiction, not the most well developed, but it’s certainly above average and better than Louis and the two women.

The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.

As to Niven’s ability to write aliens here, they speak like humans, and are just as hyper rational as Louis. Speaker and Nessus both feature different premises than Louis, premises from which to build their rationality. But these premises are not divergent enough for their alienness to be believable—all out warrior-hunter and calculating coward are both easily understood as extremes of certain human traits. This is a weakness in the novel, a novel with such prominent aliens.

The puppeteer unrolled completely. "Did I hear you call me cute?"

Niven prioritizes showing over telling. I understand that Louis is moderately compassionate and vastly curious through his actions alone. I understand Speaker is a natural warrior-hunter when he bounds off to hunt a ringworld rabbit, or when he steals the weapon from Louis. I understand that Teela’s luck is her driving force through the way she burns her feet, or questions Louis concerning pain. And I think Niven portrays both the positives and negatives of “show don’t tell”. I appreciate the cause-and-effect of the story, but some more interior monologue about technology could’ve really made this novel something spectacular.

The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.

So, in closing, Niven writes characters and human relations poorly, but tells an engaging story well. Cause and effect helps his story make sense, but it requires the reader to extrapolate from sparse hints spread throughout the book. He focuses his words on an interesting mental exercise, the ringworld itself, and really shines when his worldbuilding is doled out to the reader slowly throughout the book. He does a good job, but it’s a book that I still don’t like as much as some of my friends. For a book about exploration, he certainly doesn’t allow his writing to explore enough of the interesting concepts and questions the exploratory party of characters uncovers. I see it as a worthy successor to Asimov, a science fiction author whose short fiction is often great, but whose longer works don’t speak to me because he often just drops ideas in the reader’s lap without exploring them much himself. I like this book better than any Asimov book I’ve written, but they are similar writers and I still don’t really enjoy the hyper-rational characters, the female sexualization, and the lack of believable aliens. Good book. I’ll read more Niven for sure. Not great though.