In the 29th century, the world has become a boring succession of parties and empty pleasures for Louis Wu, a 200-year-old space adventurer still at the peak of his physical fitness. When he is offered the chance to explore the Ringworld, a gigantic artificial structure many millions of times the size of Earth, he seizes it. Together with three companions - a woman named Teela Brown, who has been genetically selected to be a lucky individual; Nessus, a member of an advanced alien species known as Pierson's Puppeteers; and the ferocious Speaker-to-Animals, one of the cat-like aliens, the Kzinti - he departs for Ringworld. Their ship crash-lands on the mega-structure and the foursome must find a way of getting back into space. They begin an exploration of Ringworld and the strange ecosystems and civilizations that have evolved on it.

Niven's novel is a relatively short one but there is much in it to hold the reader's attention. The descriptions of what the explorers encounter are compelling and imaginative; the tensions between the very different individuals forced into co-operation and competition provide an ever-present undercurrent in the narrative. None the less, the real star of the novel is the Ringworld itself. The vast engineered 'planet', both skillfully conceived and rigorously defined in terms of potential future physics and technology, is a triumph of the imagination and dominates the novel to which it gives its name, overshadowing the human and alien characters let loose on its surface. Niven went on to write several sequels to the original book, in which he explored the further possibilities of his creation, and he has also produced a number of large-scale sagas of alien invasion and planetary colonization in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle. Unlike many SF writers of his generation, who tend towards the dystopian, Niven remains basically an optimist and his celebrations of the transforming power of engineering and technology are among the most exciting and rewarding examples of hard SF in the last forty years.

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