History Main / Ringworld

[[redirect:Literature/{{Ringworld}}]]

[[quoteright:250:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ringworld-cvr250_5062.jpg]]
->'''Louis Wu:''' It looks like a star with a ring around it. What is it?\\
'''Chiron:''' [[ShapedLikeItself It is a star with a ring around it.]] A ring of solid matter. An artifact.

An epic science fiction series by LarryNiven set on the original BigDumbObject.

Imagine a giant ring, a million miles wide, with a radius of one Earth orbit and a circumference of some 600 million miles. The Ring is far enough out that the heat is comfortable for humans to live on. It spins to mimic gravity, and has walls a thousand miles high to keep the air from spilling off its sides. Such a ring would have an inhabitable surface area equal to almost three million planets the size of the Earth.

It is big. It is huge. Much of the work dealing with the Ringworld is about the difficulties of such a large world. The issues include how it was made, who could have built it, the various societies developed on it over time, and the problem of running it.

Ties into Niven's ''KnownSpace'' series.

Unrelated to Literature/{{Discworld}}.
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!!Tropes encountered:

* AbsurdlySharpBlade: The variable sword, a piece of monomolecular wire held taut by a stasis field.
** Also the Shadow Square Wire. A heap of it looks like smoke from a distance. It will slice apart any matter that touches it: trying to pick it up will cut off your fingers, and [[spoiler:one character even runs into a trap made from it and gets his head cut off (fortunately he has a spare).]]
* AfterTheEnd: The Ring once had a widespread civilization, but it fell-- literally.
** "Widespread" compared to Terran standards. It never actually covered more than about a twelve degree arc of the Ring.
*** Which still is more widespread than some civilizations that claim multiple star systems.
* AncientConspiracy: It's revealed in the first novel that the Puppeteers secretly [[spoiler:interfered in the Man-Kzin wars to try and breed docile Kzinti]] and also secretly [[spoiler:lobbied for the Birthright Lottery to breed someone like Teela Brown]]. In the second novel, we also learn that the Puppeteers secretly [[spoiler:engineered the Ringworld's superconductor plague so that they could investigate the Ringworld safely]].
** [[spoiler: The superconductor plague was a LOT worse than that. They engineered it so they could arrive in the nick of time and save everything, making a LOT of money and getting a LOT of power in the process. Then politics happened between sowing the plague and fixing it, and the fixing never happened.]]
* ArtificialGravity: The Ringworld generates this using centrifugal force.
* AuthorAppeal: Rishathra. [[NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat Not that we're judging or anything]] -- all we're saying some of the books in the series have quite a lot of it. Niven reportedly wearing a shirt to conventions that says "I have sex outside my species" doesn't help.[[hottip:*:He wrote that if wearing a badge with the same slogan, you really have to remember to take it off outside SF conventions, or people draw funny conclusions.]] Of course, his in-story reasoning makes sense, and he restricts it to sentient hominid species...
** [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Vampires]] aren't [[spoiler: usually]] sentient, but the point is taken.
* BadassBoast: "It was I who, on a world which circles Beta Lyrae, kicked a kzin called Chuft-Captain in the belly with my hind hoof, breaking three struts of his endoskeletal structure." -- Nessus, making a ContinuityNod to the KnownSpace short story "The Soft Weapon".
* BigDumbObject: The Ringworld itself is an ancient and mysterious super tech that dwarfs anything else in the galaxy. Though its population numbers in the trillions, the empty areas are so large that it feels practically abandoned.
** The feeling is entirely justified. The human characters are used to planets with population densities a thousand times that of the Ringworld, and even the Kzinti character is used to population densities of his own species ten to a hundred times greater, and has spent the last few years on Human-occupied worlds.
* BizarreAlienBiology: One of the main themes of the book.
* BizarreSexualDimorphism: Kzinti females are non-sentient. Also, it's suggested at one point that puppeteer females must mate with [[ThreeWaySex two males]] in order to concieve.
** In the second book, The Hindmost (who is mated to Nessus) explains Puppeteer reproduction in more detail. The 'female' Puppeteer is actually a different species, which acts as a host for the embryo formed by the gametes placed into it by the Puppeteers. The organs used to deposit gametes are described as being "most similar". Louis then understands why Nessus didn't want to talk about it: "This is ugly."
* BornLucky: Teela Brown (to the extent of being a canon BlackHoleSue), later deconstructed to hell and back.
** On the other hand, she might not have been born lucky after all, and just looked that way for the benefit of people who were.
* BrownNote: The descriptions of the vast dimensions of the Ringworld have given people nausea from misplaced vertigo (1000 mile high mountains no thank you).
* CaptainOblivious: Teela Brown.
* {{Chestburster}}: Louis suspects that puppeteers reproduce this way, although there is no definitive confirmation about whether he's right. (''[[KnownSpace Fleet of Worlds]]'' only confirms that gestation is always fatal to the "mother"/host.)
* ConsummateLiar: Almost all of the information that Halrloprillalar provided in ''Ringworld'' turned out to be untrue thanks to {{retcon}}ning.
* ConvergingStreamWeapon: The upgraded Slaver Disintegrator.
* CoolShip: Anything that reaches the Ringworld from ''Known Space'' in a reasonable amount of time qualifies. Eventually the Ringworld it self qualifies as the largest starship ever.
* CowardlySidekick: Nessus, through and through. It's a known trait of his people, to the point that puppeteer society considers him insane for willing to risk his life to starship travel.
** Nessus isn't just considered insane. He ''is''. He is bipolar, swinging back and forth between "normal" puppeteer cowardice, and periods of berserker-like bravery.
*** His insanity is infact bred for in his species. The Hindmost isn't actually in the safest position of the tribe, but the one in the best position to strike enemies following them. Puppeteers can kick a heart out the back of the ribcage with little physical effort, assuming their mental effort is able.
* CryCute: "[Teela] was one of those rare, lucky women whom crying does not make ugly."
* [[DroppedABridgeOnHim Dropped A Bridge On Her]]: Halrloprillalar.
* ElectricInstantGratification: The tasp, which stimulates the pleasure center of the brain from a distance, and the droud, a surgically implanted device used by current addicts.
* FamousFamousFictional: Louis' opinion of [[AudioErotica Nessus' voice]] -- "Had Louis visualized a woman to go with that voice, she would have been Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe and Lorelei Huntz rolled into one."
* FasterThanLightTravel: Though the Ringworld is so distant it still takes years to get there from Known Space.
* FloatingContinent: from buildings to cities.
* ForeignQueasine: The City Builders are disgusted by Louis Wu's love of cheese.
* FreeLoveFuture
* GambitPileup: The third and fourth books become this when dozens of protectors start plotting against each other.
* GargleBlaster: The Machine People ethanol is both fuel and drink.
* GodGuise: The strategy that the characters call the "God Gambit", where they pretend to be gods among Ringworld natives.
* HotLibrarian[=/=]WhiteHairedPrettyGirl: Harkabeeparolyn, if you're into rishathra.
* InterspeciesRomance: "Rishathra" is sex between different species used for diplomatic purposes or when meeting new tribes. It's also apparently a form of birth control for those species that get pregnant every time they mate amongst their own.
* InferredHolocaust: The climax of ''Ringworld'' features kind of a doozy. They leave the Ring by [[spoiler: dragging their ship with shadow square wire. Thing is, they only have one end of the wire. The other is coiled up in a heavily inhabited city. Ever seen a high-tension cable break free? It can take off limbs. Now imagine ''hundreds of miles'' of ''razor sharp'' wire doing something similar...]] Apparently the author noticed this "small" problem (or a fan pointed it out) between the first book and the second, where our hero goes [[WhatTheHellHero What The Hell, Me]].
** Although the way they get the end of the wire they have is by retrieving it from the death-trap it was used to set up. The locals used it to string up the shadow square wire at neck-height, behind the protagonists.
* LoveIsInTheAir: Vampires have super-pheromones that induce a [[DistractedByTheSexy very distracting]] mating frenzy in their victims. "Essence of Vamp" is a popular perfume among City Builders...
* LukeIAmYourFather: [[spoiler:Wembleth.]]
* NeglectfulPrecursors: The Pak built the Ringworld and seeded it with Pak breeders, ''Homo habilis''. It's a pity the Pak are so bad at building societies.
* OffToSeeTheWizard: After finishing the first book, Larry Niven realized that its plot and characters mirrored those of TheWizardOfOz. (Louis Wu is Dorothy, Nessus is the Cowardly Lion, Speaker-To-Animals is the Scarecrow, Teela Brown is the Tin Man, and Halrloprillalar is the Wizard.)
* OlderThanTheyLook: Louis Wu, Chmeee, and pretty much anyone else who has taken boosterspice [[spoiler: or used Carlos Wu's nanotech autodoc.]]
* OurBetterIsDifferent: The Puppeteers value survival to the point of cowardice, so their leaders are "those who lead from behind" and the highest ranking one is called "The Hindmost".
** This has a hidden subtlety. As herd animals, the Puppeteer don't charge enemies the way territorial hominids do; they run away. So the hindmost member of a puppeteer herd is actually the rear guard, the ''most'' exposed and combative of the bunch. It's unclear if the title of Hindmost is actually meant to be read this way, or is a CulturalTranslation into human terms.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: They are non-sentient, for starters.
** Or at least they are [[spoiler: until transformation into a Protector.]]
* OverlyLongName: City Builders, and races influenced by their culture like the Machine People, have names five to six syllables long.
* {{Prequel}}: The novels in the ''Fleet of Worlds'' series, co-written with Edward M. Lerner, are marketed on their front covers as prequels to ''Ringworld''.
* ProudWarriorRace: The Kzinti.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Speaker-to-Animals (Later Chmeee) [[spoiler: and his son, Acolyte.]]
* PutOnABus: In ''Ringworld's Children'', the Hindmost only briefly mentions that Harkabeeparolyn and Kawaresksenjajok were returned to their hometown floating city, and they otherwise don't appear in the book at all. In a surprising case of TheyJustDidntCare, Niven gets Harkabeeparolyn's name wrong and calls her Fortaralisplyar, who was a different ''male'' character from the same floating city in ''The Ringworld Engineers''.
* RazorFloss: Shadow square wire; Sinclair molecule chain.
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Louis Wu is almost two-hundred and fifty years old by the end of the series but looks around twenty. It's implied Hindmost is (like most Puppeteers) several centuries older. And of course, Protectors can live for thousands of years.
** The last novel has a character who's the last surviving true Pak Protector on the Ringworld. She's several MILLION years old.
* {{Retcon}}: At the time Niven wrote ''Ringworld'', he hadn't decided to integrate his stories of the Belters and near-future space exploration, including ''Protector'', into the same universe with the far-future stories of Beowulf Shaeffer and Louis Wu. This is why Nessus says "There is evidence enough that your species evolved on Earth," even though later novels show he would have known who the Pak were. It wasn't until after Niven established the [[StandardSciFiSetting future history]] of KnownSpace that he realized Pak Protectors were the most likely builders of the Ringworld.
** Louis doesn't seem to know that the galactic core explosion was discovered by Beowulf Shaeffer. Later stories revealed that Shaeffer was his adopted father, and so must carefully note that Shaeffer kept his adventurous life a secret.
*** Which is quite odd, as Teela reads about Beowulf's trip to the galactic core in Louis's library in his mansion. Aparently, Louis never bothered to check into the publicly available materials on his fathers.
** The fact that most Ringworlders pronounce Louis' name as "Luweewu" in ''The Ringworld Engineers'' implies that Louis uses the French pronunciation of his name. ''Ringworld's Children'' says he pronounces it "Loo-is."
*** [[spoiler: That was actually an assumed name he took when he met up with some crash-landed ARM crewmembers, as Louis Wu is known to pretty much everyone and he didn't want to explain he was working for a Protector.]]
** The inspiration for many of the sequels was to provide explanations for some of the [[FridgeLogic technical problems]] that other people found with the original design. (See ShownTheirWork, below.)
* RingWorldPlanet: The original.
* RubberForeheadAliens: With the exception of the garden maps and food animals, any being with two arms and two legs is some sort of strange Homind species. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] since they all evolved from the same common ancestor as human beings from Earth.
* SchizoTech: Ringworld, constructed as a kind of giant garden for children, is very low in metal elements. Technology hits a limit as there are no useful minerals available to be mined. There are just enough of the [[LostTechnology Pak's materials]] around for some civilizations to arise from time to time.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: [[AvertedTrope Averted. Seriously averted.]] The scale of things is mentioned lots of times, usually in a "Holy crap, I can't believe how large this thing is" situation.
** NotDrawnToScale: However, many of the artists in various countries who paint cover art for the ''Ringworld'' novels have a hard time grasping the proportions of it. One of the few exceptions is Rick Sternbach's cover, pictured above.
*** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], in that a to-scale drawing of the Ringworld isn't very dramatic. As Niven himself put it in ''The Ringworld Engineers'': "Picture fifty feet of baby-blue Christmas ribbon one inch wide. String it in a circle, on edge on the floor, and put a candle in the middle. Now expand the scale: The Ringworld was a ribbon of unreasonably strong material, a million miles wide and six hundred million miles long, strung in a circle ninety-five million miles in radius with a sun at the center."
* ShownTheirWork: Niven is famous for working out the problems in his ideas. The problems and questions asked in the first novel lead to a sequel which had still more problems leading to more sequels...
* SpoilerOpening: The current edition of ''The Ringworld Engineers'' has a cover painting by Donato Giancola depicting a Protector, which spoils a major plot point of the book.
* StarfishAliens: Nessus is a Pierson's Puppeteer, a creature with three legs, two heads, and its brain in the middle of its body. Nessus is noted to have his heads look at one another, his equivalent of a laugh. The Ring also has some transplanted Jinxian Bandersnatchi, sentient slugs the size of a freight train.
** This is actually a major spoiler as the other characters, most specifically Louie, only assumes that the gesture is meant as laughter, and frequently suspects other meanings.
* SubspaceAnsible: Faster-than-light communications technology does exist but it can't be used in a gravity well, so communicating across the Ringworld involves a lightspeed delay given it's just over sixteen light-minutes in diameter.
* TagalongKid: Kawaresksenjajok.
* TragicMonster: [[spoiler: Teela, after becoming a protector in ''The Ringworld Engineers'' and deliberately forcing Louis to kill her.]]
* TransplantedHumans: Pak Protectors are a form of ''Homo habilis'' who built the Ringworld as a safe place for their breeders to survive the core explosion. They did not place any animal, not even an insect, which would harm a humanoid. That left many ecological niches empty, and after three million years the humanoids have evolved to fill the roles.
* {{Unobtainium}}: The centrifugal force of the Ring is so great, any physically possible material would be torn apart under the stress. Niven posits ''scrith'', a metal with tensile strength on the order of the force that holds atomic nuclei together.
** The novel also has room temperature superconductors, and superconductors of heat, both of which become an important plot points.
** The General Products Hull is another example of Unobtainium. It's transparent to visible light and ''only'' visible light, and absolutely impervious to any kind of harm except outright disintegration by antimatter.
* TheVamp: Halrloprillalar, a [[SchoolOfSeduction highly trained]] ship's whore.
* WackyWaysideTribe: A number of Ringworlder communities encountered by the characters, like the Hairy Ones and the Grass Giants.
* WeakButSkilled: This is generally Louis' shtick through out the series [[spoiler:until he eats Tree of Life]].
* YouFailGeographyForever: Louis Wu teleports from city to city on his 200th birthday, to stay ahead of midnight and stretch the day out... but the first printing of ''Ringworld'' has him accomplish that by travelling [[DidNotDoTheResearch from west to east]].
* ZeroGSpot: Louis Wu and Teela normally sleep and have sex in weightless sleeping pods, except when using positions and techniques that require gravity.
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* TransplantedHumans: Pak Protectors are a form of ''Homo habilis'' who built the Ringworld as a safe place for their breeders to survive the core explosion. They did not place any animal, not even an insect, which would harm a humanoid. That left many ecological niches empty, and after three million years the humanoids have evolved to fill the roles