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  • Ringworld

  • By: Larry Niven
  • Narrated by: Tom Parker
  • Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (860 ratings)
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Ringworld cover art

Ringworld

By: Larry Niven
Narrated by: Tom Parker
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Editor reviews

I had a chance to listen to this story on a long road trip. Larry Niven populates his universe with a plethora of strange and exotic creatures that are well developed. The basic story is well written and is about a world that is a ring around a star (with over 1,000,000 times the land area of Earth). This novel is one that you cannot stop listening to. The hours on the road just flew by as I became engrossed in the cool story. You will want to listen to more of Niven's novels that take place in the Ringworld universe. (Matt S.)

Summary

Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel, Ringworld remains a favorite among science fiction readers and listeners.

The artifact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its center. Pierson’s puppeteers—strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens—discovered this “Ringworld” in a hitherto unexplored part of the galaxy. Curious about the immense structure, but frightened by the prospect of meeting the builders, they set about assembling a team to explore it:

Louis Wu, human—old and bored with having lived too fully for too many years, seeking an adventure, and all too capable of handling it.

Nessus, puppeteer—a trembling coward from a species with an inbuilt survival pattern of nonviolence. This particular puppeteer, however, is insane.

Speaker-to-Animals, kzin—large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. The kzin are one of the most savage life-forms known.

The party’s expedition, however, goes disastrously wrong when their ship crash-lands and its motley crew faces a daunting trek across thousands of miles of Ringworld territory.

©1970 Larry Niven (P)1996 Blackstone Audiobooks

What listeners say about Ringworld

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Never run out of space again

What can be said about Ringworld that has not been said a thousand times before. The tale of how a rag tag band of people are selected by a mad member of paranoid reclusive alien race to travel to a distant part of the universe to 'see what's there'. This is a reflective book, interested in discussing theoretical concepts about the evolving nature of existence. The reason you have never seen the film of Ringworld is because the book is about ideas not action. Where a lot of things do happen then they are more a framework for discussing why we are who we are and what got us to where we are right now. Many of the concepts are so bizarre by modern standards such as transparent ship hulls and pleasure induced control devices but where The Ringworld is the setting it is the characters and their journey that is the tale to tell here. Some people have called this book boring and the characters unlikeable but this is a slow moving, reflective tale of the human condition as seen by a not always benevolent outsider. This book will make you think, it cannot fail to if you let it into your mind and imagine the possibilities that you can consider from the crew of The Liar.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Hmm... Didn't really work

I found this quite tedious and quickly forgettable. I listened to it because it had won the Hugo and the Nebula awards, but unfortunately, despite a fascinating concept, the story was slow and the characters uniteresting.

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15 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Ringworld

Hate the accent of the narrator. The story is my absolute favourite. I really enjoyed listening to this.

I have enjoyed this so much I have planned books for the next 12 months.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Superb

This is my first audio book from Audible and I have to say I'm really impressed. The narration was good, the story decent, and overall I'd really recommend this book.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Vast

The immensities of this structure never fail to amaze me, and Niven's story telling is a gentle introduction into the pure physics of its construction. Fascinating.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A classic of science fiction

Over 40 years later, ringworld still remains relevant, intriguing and thought provoking. A great pillar of science fiction which has inspired scores of other stories and films since.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A product of the 50s, written in 1970.

The author's attitude to women and sexual politics is extremely hard to take in 2017. Interesting premise and enjoyable story otherwise. The narrator is initially grating, but I got used to him. I don't think I'd seek out more of the narrator's work, but am interested in the rest of the Ringworld series.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A Classic of Sci/Fi

The problem I think is that the age of the book really shows. It's so chauvinistic it's almost creepy.

That aside I did completely miss that when I read it the fist time 30 years ago :-) The ring world is an amazing idea, I just think I remembered the book being better than it was, but then I have read so much more since then. My expectations where maybe too high.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Middle of the road meets overlong prose.

This book is fairly slow going but if I hadn't made notes I might have forgotten it. This book is about exploring the "Ringworld" yet of the 12 or so hours it takes four and a half to even reach the planet. It took 8 1/2 hours before all the story set-up was finished.

The character dialogue started out very stilted but did improve over time. I'm not sure if this was intentional to make some kind of statement about the characters' growth or just bad writing.

Having said that, all of the cast are different species which are largely defined by one trait. This makes them all a bit simplistic and two dimensional. These species also seem... unrealistic... which is an odd criticism for Sci-Fi but I think valid.

While the concept is interesting and the humour good in parts, the carefree use of unknown technical words (often explained) does start to drag a bit.

Apparently, people can also fall madly in love with each other in two days. This is somewhat explained later but still seems mad. All the relationships read like someone who's never been in a relationship trying to make shit up.

Finally, the narration was mediocre. i.e: Nessus said in a flat voice. (Oh crap, that was meant to be flat) Change voice to too flat then "blah blah").

2/5 would not re-read or do prequels/sequels. You can read this without having read prequels.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great classic Sci-fi novel

great classic sci-fi novel. it's certainly more interested in the 'hard sci-fi' elements rather than character and story but that's not to say it lacks in the later two elements.
the performance is good but seems a little dated. world strongly recommend though

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1 person found this helpful