Slashdot Mirror
Ringworld's Children
The Ringworld is like a small slice of a Dyson Sphere, a massive ring with radius slightly larger than 1 AU, spun to simulate gravity on the inside with thousand mile-high side walls to hold atmosphere. In the second Ringworld novel, The Ringworld Engineers, it was revealed that the Ringworld was probably created by Pak protectors, a species cousin to humans with three phases in their life cycle: juvenile, breeders, and protectors. Protectors are extremely territorial, competitive, and intelligent, and will go to any lengths they can to protect and provide competitive advantage for their descendants, as identified by a keen sense of smell. While protectors normally cull out any significant genetic divergence from normal (picked up by changes in smell), a failure in the food supply caused all protectors in the Earth Pak colony to die. Breeders evolved sapience and became homo sapiens.
Something similar has somehow happened on Ringworld and, in the third book, after decades exploring the Ringworld, our hero, Louis Wu, decides to replace the current insane master of the Ringworld, Bram, a protector created from a vampirical species also evolved from the original Pak breeders. Even insane, Bram is still many times smarter, stronger, faster, and tougher than any human, so Louis and his cohorts don't have much of a chance taking him on. Humans and all Pak-descended Ringworld species can still turn into (misshapen/modified) protectors if exposed to tree-of-life root, but Louis is too old to make the transition to protector himself (besides, he likes breeding). He carefully creates another protector, Tunesmith, and, with the help of others, they manage to kill Bram.
Ringworld's Children picks up a few months after the end of the Ringworld Throne. Louis comes out of the autodoc that has been repairing the severe damage he suffered in the fight against Bram. He's also young again, thanks to Carlos Wu's one-of-a-kind nanotech autodoc, after tinkering by the hyper-intelligent Tunesmith. Tunesmith has been busy soaking up all Known Space knowledge, including advanced Puppeteer knowledge from the completely intimidated Hindmost, the former leader of the Puppeteer race and Louis' erstwhile employer. He's also been working on cleaning up some of the mess left by Bram (tens of centuries or more of overdue Ringworld repairs - Bram was a lousy housekeeper, too). More urgent however is the Fringe War, a cold war in the remote asteroid belt at the far edges of the Ringworld system (similar to our Oort Belt). Most of the major species of Known Space have at least a few ships there. The ARM (the UN's police/military forces) and the Kzin have substantial war fleets. All the factions want to learn the Ringworld's secrets. Those fleets have antimatter weapons that could destroy the Ringworld as collateral damage and, for perhaps decades, they've been in a Mexican standoff, but deployments and movement patterns indicate all antimatter hell could break loose in the near future.
Louis' puppet strings are now held by Tunesmith, and since Tunesmith takes some pretty big calculated risks without explaining their rationale, Louis likes it maybe even less than when those strings were held by the Hindmost. Even if they get past the immediate emergency, Tunesmith's likely long-term plans for Louis are far from appealing. He has to figure out how to permanently escape from Tunesmith and the Ringworld without getting blown up by the Fringe War or triggering an apocalyptic attack on the Ringworld. His only chance at escape from Tunesmith's vastly superior intelligence is that Tunesmith is heavily distracted planning on how to deal with the Fringe War.
In earlier ringworld novels, when Louis and his co-explorers made first contact with native Ringworld population groups, they would play the "God Game," first getting their story straight and consistent before conning the natives to obtain knowledge or food. That dialogue technique is used here again, including when Louis uses it by himself to figure out scenarios he can use against Tunesmith. Part of my mind was a little distracted, thinking "Is this how Niven works out the plot outline of novels, before fleshing out individual scenes or chapters?" But the rest of my (virus-addled) brain was racing along trying to figure all the possibilities where Niven or his characters might be going. Even so, Niven still managed to completely surprise me once near the end, because I'd let myself get distracted and miss a couple of the better hidden clues.
Along the way, Niven ties up a lot of loose ends and answers a lot of questions, about the Ringworld and about some other phenomena in the Known Space universe. The plot has few slow points, and almost none in the second half of the book, hiding fairly well Niven's slightly-less-than-usual weakness at character development. This novel should earn Niven another Hugo nomination
If you're a recent SF reader and can't handle the lack of ubiquitous computers or the ESP/Psionics that dates some of Niven's more famous and popular 60's and 70's era stories (when the Amazing Randi hadn't yet debunked Uri Geller and most others of his ilk), you may find his Ringworld stories more palatable. Pak don't need or want computers on the ringworld, and there's passing mention of psionics only because of the conventions established in other Known Space series. If you like older 60's or 70's-vintage Niven stories because of the imaginative aliens, environments, or inventions, you'll almost certainly enjoy reading this book. Finally, if you've liked any of the other stories in the Ringworld or Known Space series and were left wanting more, you need to read this book.
You can purchase Ringworld's Children from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I still re-read Beowulf Shaefer stories every now and again. I almost have them memorized, but still think they are some of the best SF ever - in an `old friend` kind of way.
Ringworld was really great at the time. But the sequels fell into the Asimov trap of trying to tie everything in Known Space together after they were written with obvious discrepencies.
And, alas, I just can't stand to read fantasy. Whenever there is a plot problem, BOOM! magic happens. Niven's hereditary luck fell into this fantasy trap and it hurt his work.
Here's hoping Niven's back to the good stuff!
one of those series of books I think should be made into movies
Wish nothing of the sort! I can only imagine Hollywood's greasy hands on Niven. They'd shread it to the point that besides the minimal plot line there would be nothing left. And that's even being optimistic... Most screenwriters think that putting their own spin on a story makes it better. These people normally think wrong.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Once Nivens wordiness is removed Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers would make GREAT sfx movies.
Halo gives a hint of how good the concept is visually.
On the literary front I think Niven suffered horrendously from his collaborations with Pournelle. The books make good intro sci-fi but read like childrens fiction now. I also think that Gentry Lee diluted ACC's work to a childlike level.
Any way imho Iain M Banks writes THE best modern Sci-Fi.
"goatse? What's that? Anyone have a link?" - AC
The Mote in God's Eye!
;)
Niven and Pournelle at their finest!
Education is the silver bullet.
Ringworm's Children
Good books usually make lousy movies. And sometimes poor books make good moives. The two media do things very differently.
(OTOH, I stopped watching the Tolkien Trilogy after the second movie. If you found that tampering with the plot acceptable, then disregard the previous paragraph.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Erm, nope.
However, in any good book / movie / story / date on a friday, there is one important element:
Suspension of disbelief
Without that, you got nothing!
I have a hard time believing in a 'lucky' gene.
The last fucking thing you want is my undivided attention...
This review is a serious pain in the ass. It's not really a review: it's a plot summary, loaded with spoilers. We get the general drift that the reader enjoyed the book, but that's it.
My third grade teacher used to grade very poorly for book reports that were nothing but plot summaries, and so should Slashdot.
-Lep
I am allowed to criticize you: you are not allowed to criticize me. Sorry, that's just how things are.
The purpose of moderation is to make the reading of the comments as enjoyable as possible. You're not being punished, it's not a race.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
Yes, it would be a great film, but it will never happen. The film makes a strong point, and one the film people don't want made: when you get right down to it, most people really aren't going to behave themselves if they think they can get away with it.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Stephen King did that, and any movie he's made where he was personally in control of the screenplay kinda sucked (at least in my opinion.) The Shining, The Running Man, The Shawshank Redemption, all directed by other people were big Hollywood hits. The movies where he was more involved (in order to be more true to his books,) such as The Langoliers and The Stand, just weren't as gripping as far as movies go. I mean I liked them, just not as well as the ones that had another person's vision putting them on the screen.
An author obviously has his or her ideas for screenplays as far as the story goes, and what a vision of it may be, but that doesn't necessarily mean that authors have the "eye" required to make a great movie.
Not that we could, but I'd really like to see a Phillip K. Dick movie made by his own hand. Any of his stories would do. I'd love to know what went on in that brain of his. But that doesn't mean it would be a commercially successful movie. Now, compare that to some of Hollywood's best science fiction movies that were adaptations of his novels: Bladerunner, Minority Report, etc. Hugely successful, incredibly entertaining, but not necessarily true to every word he wrote.
Obviously, Larry can afford to take a chance and make his own movie. But that doesn't mean it's going to be a great film. Yes, Hollywood filmmakers can screw up a good story, but some of them can also spin a great movie from a good story.
John