Ringworld

Larry Niven is one of the first sci-fi writers I ever read. He is one of my dad's favorites, and my dad gave me all of the Man-Kzin Wars books when I was twelve or thirteen. My memory of them is very vague, but I remember really loving klingon tigers. Since that time, I haven't really gone back to Niven's works until now, and I've never read any of the Ringworld saga.

I started out enjoying the book a lot. Niven has a great sense of humor and the dialogue never ceased to entertain me. I love his aliens, especially klingon tigers. The cautiously coward puppeteers are also a unique species, and one I had fun envisioning. I got a little bit lost in the science, which is not unusual for me, but for the most part, I enjoyed the journey, which seems to me the main purpose of the book.

The idea of breeding for luck was an intriguing one although I found it similar to time-travel or clairvoyance as far as the confusion factor went. It's not something I believe would ever be possible, but it gives a kind of fantasy element to a science fiction book which I don't necessarily dislike. Niven seems to treat the 60s/70s attitude toward mind-altering psychic powers as a possible fact, which isn't all that believable, but it makes for a neat plot device. I had to think through events and their implications for Teela as often as Nessus or Louis did. It hurt my head in a good way.

That said, reading this as a modern adult left several things irking at me. Aside from the dated science ideas (tapes, anyone?) which are excusable, Niven falls right into the female character trap. There are only two women in this book, both of them are defined by their sexuality, and one of them needs a good slap upside the head.

Teela is thoroughly unlikable. She takes all the fun out of the hereditary luck hypothesis in that I spent most of the book wishing for her luck to run out. Niven seems to try and make her a human by excusing her behavior and attitude with the luck hypothesis and regularly stating how smart she is, but he never actually gives her an opportunity to demonstrate her intelligence besides finding a tourniquet. Louis Wu, age 200, falling for this 20 year old vacant trophy girl is also straining my disbelief. Luck may affect circumstance, but how could it affect another person's emotions? All the probability goes out of the theory at that point. Also, he more or less admits he only wants her to come along for sex. Did I mention he's 200 years old? I can't get past these things even in far future where age is really just a number.

Then Teela gets separated, which would be a great time for her to develop a character, but instead she finds a handsome barbarian (whom I kept envisioning as Kevin Sorbo... sorry) to take care of her and he's the love of her life because that's how lucky she is. Oh and it's fine if Louis Wu sells her to him. She has no problem with that at all if it makes life easier. It was such a let-down. I love the premise of Teela being a girl who can't be hurt, so she needs to learn what being hurt is like, but she never really does. She just watches other people get hurt, and it doesn't seem to affect her on an emotional level at all.The other female character, Halrloprillalar, is a similar problem. Immediately, we find out she's a space-whore. And ... that's pretty much it. She has a flying castle, but we don't get much in the way of character development. But she'll join us in the end because earthlings need to learn to have better sex.

Let's not even get into the non-sentient sexes. The aliens presented are uniformly presented as “he's,” so these non-sentient sexes are presumably female. I can't imagine an evolutionary advantage to this arrangement, and Niven never provides one, so it's just there to irritate me through the whole book.

I'm one who usually gives books some leeway based on their publication date, but things like this suck a little enjoyment out of the book for me. It doesn't overshadow any of the great fantastic-journey style adventures of the book, but it does diminish them a bit. I read somewhere that Niven is a “big idea” man and story/character are secondary to his writing. That's certainly true of Ringworld. The ideas are all there, but the lack of character made it harder to enjoy the ride. Might continue with the series someday, but not immediately.