The events of Ringworld revolve around four explorers who set out to explore this massive world and end up crashing on it. The novel is set in Niven's "Known Space" and it helps to some foreknowledge of this to appreciate the events of Ringworld. It isn't really necessary though, as this was my first taste of Niven and I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Ringworld is hard science fiction at its best. The characters in the book are esentially devices for conveying Niven's awesome ideas. Therefore they tend to lack depth and sometimes their behavior seems a bit incongruous. There is a story around their exploration of Ringworld, but it is somewhat secondary to Niven's descriptions of this awesome feat of engineering.

I can only speculate as to whether mankind will one day possess the technological expertise to undertake an endeavour of this magnitude and scale, but I would like to believe that it is possible. Niven's concept of Ringworld, while certainly a novel idea, is derived from the design of another hypothetical engineering marvel known as a Dyson Sphere. It is essentially an artificial sphere constructed around a sun to harness all of its energy. The idea was proposed by Freeman Dyson in 1959, though ironically the origin of the concept itself comes from science fiction.

I actually had the chance to meet Freeman Dyson at a departmental luncheon back when I was an aspiring physics major. I recall iscussing with him the idea of a Dyson Sphere and its feasibility. During the course of the discussion, he made mention to Niven's idea of a Ringworld and I made note at the time to check out the book. For whatever reason, I didn't get around to read it until now. Just an interesting aside I thought I would share :)

As you can imagine, I really loved this book and it is probably the best hard science fiction novel I've ever read. I would compare it to Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, another one of my favorite books, as both are concerned with explorations of massive alien technological creations. As good as Rama was, it pales in scope to Ringworld. Just trying to envision the scale of Ringworld gives me a headache!

I really love books like these which challenge your imagination and force you to consider what could be possible in the future. I don't know if humanity will ever obtain the technology to build something on the level of Ringworld, but I'd sure like to think so. It are ideas like this that really got me into science fiction to begin with. Ringworld may not appeal to everyone though and those that value the "science" part of science fiction will be the ones that appreciate it the most.

The book does have some shortcomings, like its somewhat hollow conclusion and poor character development. There are also a few ideas that I found to be rather contrived and implausible. I consider these to be minor issues and are forgivable considering the scope and scale of this particular novel.

This novel is well worth the read and will definitely have you re-evaluating your concepts of size and distance! I also highly recommend reading its sequel, Ringworld Engineers, to find out more about Ringworld and to learn of its creators.