Ringworld
Larry Niven
Del Rey
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***
DESCRIPTION: In a future where interstellar travel is commonplace, alien ambassadors dine in Earth restaurants, and instantaneous transport booths have
obliterated cultural and national differences, Louis Wu celebrates his bicentennial birthday... and finds a most unusual, self-invited guest. Nessus is a puppeteer, a
two-headed, three-legged alien race thought to have mysteriously vanished some years ago. He claims Louis has been chosen as part of an elite alien team to explore a strange
and unnatural discovery in deep space. (The puppeteers, though technologically light-years beyond many sapient species, are also notorious cowards when it comes to
exploration and testing new technology - a trait humans notably lack.) Also chosen are Speaker-To-Animals, a muscular catlike kzin whose people have, until recently, been
bent on conquest, and Teela Brown, a naive young human woman with luck in her genes. What the discovery is, Nessus refuses to say, but the payment is a hyperdrive ship
- plus plans to make more - which may be the salvation of any species that gets hold of it.
Heading off to who-knows-where with a kzin warrior, an impossibly immature girl, and a possibly insane puppeteer who is clearly hiding something? Despite his better
judgment, Louis joins up, and finds himself facing an enigma beyond anything he has ever encountered in two centuries of life. An unimaginably advanced culture has
built an unimaginably vast, habitable ring about a star - a ring full not only of mysteries, but of danger.
REVIEW: This was another title in my long list of classic books I've meant to read but never got around to buying. I found this copy for a buck at Half Price
Books; for a dollar, I figured it would be worth a try. Niven crafts a technologically advanced future that - forty years after Ringworld's debut - still feels like the
far future. (No mean feat, considering the leaps and bounds science has made in the past few decades.) He also invents a true interstellar wonder in the Ringworld itself.
Most everything in the book, no matter how huge and improbable and mind-boggling, has scientific underpinnings, and the characters go out of their way to explain these
underpinnings to the reader. I, unfortunately, have little more than an American public high school education in science, and that was some years ago. Much of the technobabble
and plot-stopping explanations washed over my little head, unfortunately. Since the story is based on the "strangers visit wondrous place, have adventures, then leave"
framework, I could still enjoy the scenery, and the larger-than-life ideas were nice and shiny to look at, even if I didn't understand all the little wires and knobs attached
to them. The explorers bump along through several encounters, some more memorable than others, until they reach a surprisingly abrupt ending. I know there are more books in the
Ringworld universe, but I still thought that there could've been a page or two more of wrapping up. The plot has shades of dating, especially in the way the human Louis so often
solves alien problems, not to mention the presence of the often-inept space chick Teela. Niven eventually explains some of her stupidity, and once in a while she comes forward
with insights to add to the technobabble conversations, but I had tired of her long before then. For much of the book, her main contribution to the mission is providing Louis
with a bedmate. But, then, of five cultures (four species) presented here, Niven assigns their females the roles of subsentient objects (on two counts), idiots, slaves, and
whores. Granted, at least one - the kzin species - might be someone else's fault; I've read other kzin stories, so I don't know if Niven invented the species or if he just had
permission to play with them. Even then, it's a slap in the face, especially when the "idiots" and "slaves" are human and the "whore" is a technologically advanced
humanoid capable of human crossbreeding. (Especially insulting was how Louis, learning that a female was part of said advanced humanoids' spacecraft crew, correctly guesses that
there could be no other possible reason for a woman to be on board a ship save as a high-end prostitute.)
I doubt I'll read further in Niven's series. While I found the concept fascinating, I also found the science tedious, and I wasn't so attached to any of the characters
that I have to find out where they went after their adventure. This lack of engagement ultimately made me give Ringworld an Okay rating; even though some of the
ideas would've merited a Good, I just wasn't feeling it when I finished the book.
You might also enjoy:
The Remnants series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Five centuries after a meteor devastated life on Earth, the survivors, aboard a retrofitted space shuttle, wake to find themselves in an impossible world)
Star Dragon (Mike Brotherton, Fiction - A starship sets out to investigate and capture an alien creature living in the cosmic maelstrom of an unstable binary star system)
The Ender series (Orson Scott Card, YA? Fiction - Humans fight off alien invaders, then begin their own spread across the stars)
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson, Fiction - The epic tale of humanity's colonization of the red planet)
Old Man's War (John Scalzi, Fiction - Retired men and women are recruited to defend Earth's interstellar colonies)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne, Fiction - Three men find themselves guests and captives aboard a mad genius's submarine)
A Journey to the Center of the Earth (Jules Verne, Fiction - A professor and his assistant explore a lost world under the Earth's crust)
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Dream Park
Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
Ace
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***
DESCRIPTION: In the year 2051, theme parks have evolved considerably. The best of them all is Dream Park, a place wild enough to satisfy anyone's craving for adventure.
Though the rides and themed hotels are what most people come for, there is another, more lucrative industry at Dream Park: the Gaming Areas. Within these arenas, part movie set
and part holographic projection, members of the International Fantasy Gaming Association can role-play in a completely realistic environment. Gamers come from all over the world
to play. Game Masters, in the control rooms, create and manipulate the arena, pitting their wits and wills against professional Lore Masters who lead the gaming parties.
Of course, more than just pride is at stake; a good game can bring Masters and park executives alike millions in book and movie rights, not to mention the fees paid by players
who come to replay popular games in following months.
Alex Griffin is head of Dream Park security, a man whose work has become his life. He takes the illusions for granted, and never thought he'd enter one of the gaming areas
himself... until a security guard is found murdered, and all evidence points to one of the seemingly-harmless Gamers. Reality and fantasy are about to collide, as Griffin finds
himself in the middle of Dream Park's wildest game yet, a blood feud between the world's top Game Master and Lore Master, and a race against the clock to catch the killer before
the game is over.
REVIEW: First of all, I must say that there should be some sort of law about the image on a cover having to bear some resemblance to events actually in the book - at least, events that take longer than a sentence of incidental narrative to describe. Secondly, this was originally printed in 1981, so the simulated ride into the horrors of California's great, coastline-altering killer earthquake of 1985 was almost laughable. (It's not just that the ride itself is overblown, but that the authors gave themselves so little breathing room between publication and major national disaster. At least, if I'd written it, I would've pushed the earthquake a few years further away. But I digress, as usual...) Other futuristic elements held up remarkably well, though. The massive holographic gaming rooms, able to generate real-time 3D graphics (thought not without a few glitches and rendering issues), seem almost possible in a decade, given the rate at which computer technology's evolved. My biggest problem with this book was the awkward cuts between game time and "outside" time, and the way reality kept trampling on the game. The gamers themselves kept breaking character, despite many of them stating at some point that they hate it when fellow gamers break character during game time. There was also a lot of technobabble, especially in the "outside" sequences, and an overload of characters and descriptions. The ending was annoying, as was the identity of the real killer. I liked the idea of Dream Park and the Gaming Areas, but that alone wasn't enough to raise the book past its problems, or past an Okay rating.
You might also enjoy:
God Game (Andrew M. Greeley, Fiction - A man testing a friend's new computer game seems to have become the god of another world)
Demons Don't Dream (Piers Anthony, Fiction - A computer game connects players to the magical land of Xanth)
Bruce Coville's Chamber of Horrors: Spirits and Spells (Bruce Coville, YA Fiction - Teens playing a new RPG game in an abandoned house find it coming to life around them)
Caverns of Socrates (Dennis L. McKiernan, Fiction - The AI system hosting a virtual reality role-playing game takes on a dangerous mind of its own)
The Dragon Box (Katie W. Stewart, YA Fiction - A game pulls a boy into an imperiled magical land)
The Otherland quartet (Tad Williams, Fiction - The futuristic Net hides a massive VR secret, which is starting to harm young websurfers)
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