Ringworld

So way back when, some previous version of me - let's call him 22-year-old me - thought it would be a great idea to get into some classic sci-fi. And that was by and large a fairly bad idea. It's very easy, and fairly interesting, to read about 20th century science fiction. It's much less easy and interesting to actually read 20th century sci-fi.

Ringworld is a book about a ring-shaped world (go figure). That's the most interesting aspect of it - its setting. You ever play Halo? Like, more than just the multiplayer? If so, you're familiar with the idea of the ring-shaped world, an impossibly large man-made structure that provides a ring of terraformed surface area spanning an entire orbit - three million times the surface area of the earth. How's that for a solution to your sustainability crisis? Larry Niven goes into specific details, sometimes to a fault, about the physical properties of the ringworld - the "what" and the "why" - but never really dives deep into the "how." Which is just as well - it lends a bit of an air of mystery to the whole place, which is kind of cool. And again, the setting is really the only memorable part of the book.

The rest is generic, shitty, 1970s sci-fi fodder. (Here's an alien species with two heads and three legs and a snake tail! Here's one that's basically just giant ferocious housecats! Mushrooms! Acid! Whoa...) And the characters, and the story they're involved in, and the prose they speak in.... yikes. The less said about any of that, the better. You can just see the line between sci-fi and fantasy being blurry as hell here. A field full of monster sunflowers! A human being who's literally been bred to have good luck! (D&D much, bro?)

You don't need to read this. I barely feel more well-read for doing so. But still, props for a cool concept, Larry.