Ringworld

Larry Niven
Ringworld Cover

Ringworld

imnotsusan
6/3/2021
Email

Can we all please just acknolwedge that this book is almost unreadable? Every Larry Niven book I've read, I go into it thinking, "This plot sounds like it will be pretty cool!" and then I emerge at teh end an empty husk, having staggered for what feels like eons through a desert of flat characters, awkward dialogue, poorly described settings, and moutnains of technobabble. I get that people get excited about the science of the book, but yikes. I was assigned to read this book in college for a "Science Fiction, Science Fact" course. I didn't read it then, and I white-knuckled it this time. Whatever scientific concept we were supposed to be learning in that college course to go along with the novel (I can no longer recall), I hope that professors these days have found a more readable example.