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{{Short description|1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven}}
{{Split-apart|date=February 2009}}
{{Infobox Book | <!-- See ]. Information about first edition is preferred. --> {{Infobox book <!-- See ]. Information about first edition is preferred. -->
| name = Ringworld | name = Ringworld
| title_orig = | title_orig =
| translator = | translator =
| image = ] | image = Ringworld(1stEd).jpg
| image_caption = Cover of first edition (paperback) | caption = Paperback first edition
| author = ] | author = ]
| illustrator = | illustrator = Dean Ellis
| cover_artist = | cover_artist =
| country = ] | country = United States
| language = ] | language = English
| series = Ringworld, ] | series = ] storyline from ]
| genre = ] ] | genre = ]
| publisher = ] | publisher = ]
| release_date = 1970 | release_date = October 1970
| english_release_date = | english_release_date=
| media_type = Print (] & ]) | media_type = Print (], ]), ]
| pages = | pages = 342 pages
| awards = ] (1971)
| isbn = 0-345-02046-4 | isbn = 0-345-02046-4
| oclc= 28071649 | oclc =
| preceded_by = | preceded_by =
| followed_by = ], 1980 | followed_by = ], 1979
}} }}

'''''Ringworld''''' is a ], ], and ] award-winning ] ] novel by ], set in his ] universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. It is followed by three sequels, and ties into numerous other books set in Known Space. ''Ringworld'' won the Hugo Award in 1970,<ref name="WWE-1970">{{cite web
'''''Ringworld''''' is a 1970 ] novel by ], set in his ] universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. ''Ringworld'' tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, an enormous rotating ring, an alien construct in space {{Convert|186|e6mi||abbr=off}} in diameter. Niven later wrote three sequel novels and then cowrote, with ], four prequels and a final sequel; the five latter novels constitute the '']'' series. All the novels in the ] tie into numerous other books set in Known Space. ''Ringworld'' won the ] in 1970,<ref name="WWE-1970">{{cite web|url= http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1970|title=1970 Award Winners & Nominees|work=Worlds Without End|access-date=2009-07-20}}</ref> as well as both the ] and ] in 1971.<ref name="WWE-1971">{{cite web|url=http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1971|title=1971 Award Winners & Nominees|work=Worlds Without End|access-date=2009-07-20}}</ref>
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1970
| title = 1970 Award Winners & Nominees
| work = Worlds Without End
| accessdate=2009-07-20
}}</ref> as well as both the Nebula and Locus Awards in 1971.<ref name="WWE-1971">{{cite web
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1971
| title = 1971 Award Winners & Nominees
| work = Worlds Without End
| accessdate=2009-07-20
}}</ref>


==Plot summary== ==Plot summary==
On ] in 2850 AD, a bored ] is celebrating his 200th birthday. Despite his age, Louis is in perfect physical condition due to the ] ]. ], a ], offers him a mysterious job. Intrigued, Louis accepts. Nessus also recruits the ] ] and ], a young human woman who becomes Louis's lover, for the rest of the ship's crew.
The novel opens in 2855 with ] stepping out of a transfer booth, a teleportation kiosk, in ], thus entering yet another time zone. Louis, after having escaped the festivities of his own 200th birthday, is now bar-hopping the world, jumping west and always staying behind the local midnight in order to extend his birthday as long as possible.


On the puppeteer home world (which is fleeing deadly radiation that will arrive in 20,000 years), they are told that their goal is to determine if the Ringworld, a gigantic artificial ring near the puppeteers' path, poses any threat to their migration. The Ringworld is about one million miles (1.6 million km) wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit, encircling a sunlike star. It rotates to provide artificial gravity 99% as strong as Earth's from ]. It has a habitable inner surface (equivalent in area to approximately three million Earths), a breathable atmosphere, and a temperature optimal for humans. Night is provided by an inner ring of shadow squares which are connected to each other by thin, ultra-strong wire. When the crew completes their mission, as payment they will be given the starship they used to travel to the puppeteer world; it is about 1000 times faster than any human or Kzinti ship.
Despite his age, Louis turns out to be in perfect physical condition owing to a combination of advanced medical technology and ], a drug that ] human life. However, though healthy, rich and intelligent, it is becoming clear Louis is utterly bored. Having lived for two centuries, he has seen it all many times over and people in general are getting on his nerves. Between transfer booths he considers another sabbatical — a trip to and beyond the reaches of Known Space, all alone in a single ship for a year or more, until he begins to yearn for people's company again — when all of a sudden the transfer booth materializes him in a sunlit hotel room, rather than the nocturnal Seville he had set its control for.


When they reach the vicinity of the Ringworld, they are unable to contact anyone. Their ship, the ''Lying Bastard'', is disabled by an automated ]-defense system. The vessel collides with a strand of shadow-square wire and crash-lands near a huge mountain, which is called "Fist-of-God" by the first natives they speak with. The fusion drive is destroyed, so they set out to find a way to get the ''Lying Bastard'' off the Ringworld and use the undamaged hyperdrive to return home.
Facing him is an alien with three legs, no arms and two heads. The alien introduces himself as ] and Louis recognizes him for a ], a species that had the most advanced technology in Known Space but vanished from the region before Louis was born. Nessus has been ordered to hire three mercenaries to do the things he himself dare not. Louis is on top of his list of candidates.


Using their flycycles, they set out for the rim of the ring, searching for technology to help them get home. They encounter primitive human natives who live in the ruins of a once-advanced city. The natives think that Louis is one of the engineers who created the ring, whom they revere as gods. The crew is attacked when Louis accidentally commits what the natives consider a blasphemy, but extricate themselves.
With Nessus being secretive about the mission, Louis is reluctant to join, but when the Puppeteer eventually shows Louis a blurry picture of a distant star with a ring around it, the bored Louis immediately signs up: this ring turns out to be the ''Ringworld'', an artificial circular strip of world with ] for surface gravity, orbiting the star. The Puppeteers, fleeing from the galaxy, have spotted this artifact in their path; being cowards, the sheer power of whatever has created such a structure frightens them profoundly. Hence, Nessus' mission is to assemble a team, visit the Ringworld and see whether it poses a threat to his species. Payment to the expedition's members will be the '']'', the extremely fast ship depicted in the story "]", that ] rode to the galactic core and back, centuries earlier.


During their journey, Nessus reveals several puppeteer secrets. They initiated research into rendering the Kzinti extinct, considering them dangerous and useless, but found that the numerous ] wars&mdash;which the Kzinti always lost&mdash;had greatly reduced their aggression: a very high percentage of Kzinti males were killed in each conflict, leaving more prudent and cautious survivors to breed. The puppeteers had also used Birthright Lotteries to try to breed humans for luck: all of Teela's ancestors for six generations are lottery winners. Speaker's outrage at learning the former forces Nessus to flee from the group and then follow from a safe distance.
Eventually the team is assembled. The third member, ] (Speaker) is a ], a ferocious ] predator species which has, in the recent past, fought a ] with humanity, losing consistently because of a tendency to attack before being quite ready. The Kzin, a translator, is a low-ranking official at the Kzinti embassy to Earth. He reckons obtaining the ''Long Shot'' for the Kzinti Empire is enough of an achievement to give him a name ("Speaker-to-Animals" being a literal description rather than a name), and therefore signs on too, as the expedition's security chief.


While flying through a giant storm, Teela becomes separated from the others. When Louis and Speaker search for her, their flycycles are caught by an automated trap designed to catch speeders. They are brought to a floating police station. There, they meet Halrloprillalar Hotrufan ("Prill"), a former crew member of a ship that had brought back goods from worlds abandoned by the Ringworld builders. Nessus, using a tasp (a remote pleasure-giving device), conditions Prill into helping and joining them. When her ship returned to the Ringworld the last time, they discovered that civilization had collapsed. Louis surmises that a mold inadvertently brought back by a ship like Prill's mutated and broke down the superconductors vital to the Ringworld civilization, causing its fall.
Finally, ] is a young human female whose role in the mission is not immediately clear. But Puppeteers do not do anything without a very good reason, and her significance is revealed as the plot unfolds. She is the result of a secret Puppeteer experiment in selective breeding for luck among humans, which generally helps her and her descendants. The Puppeteers reckon her luck will increase the probability of a successful mission, however it soon turns out that Teela's personal luck and the luck of the expedition seldom go hand in hand.


Teela rejoins them, accompanied by her new lover, a traveling warrior named Seeker who protected her. Based on an insight gained from studying a Ringworld map, Louis comes up with a plan to get home. Teela chooses to remain on the Ringworld with Seeker. Louis, formerly skeptical about breeding for luck, now wonders if the entire mission was caused by Teela's luck, to unite her with her true love and help her mature.
As they approach their target in their ship, ''Lying Bastard'', the Ringworld turns out to be an awesome sight: a huge, circular strip of land, teeming with life and with entire oceans bigger than Earth. Between the Ringworld and its star, a series of squares (dubbed ''shadow squares'' by the expedition) are suspended in another ring, orbiting the sun faster than the Ringworld itself, thus providing the artificial world below with a day/night cycle. However, when their ship is hit by a powerful, automated meteor defense system and then strikes one of the near-invisible ''shadow-square'' wires, the severely damaged vessel crash-lands on the Ringworld . They now have to set out to find a way to get back into space, as well as fulfilling their original mission. They cross vast distances, witness strangely evolved ]s originating from many different planets, including Earth, and interact with some of the Ringworld's varied primitive ]s. They attempt to discover what caused the Ringworld's inhabitants to lose their technology, and puzzle over who created the Ringworld and why.


The party collects one end of the shadow-square wire that snapped after the collision with their ship and fell near their path, and drag it behind them. Louis threads it through the ''Lying Bastard'' to tether it to the floating police station. "Fist-of-God", the enormous mountain near their crash site, was not on the Ringworld map, leading Louis to guess that it is the result of a meteoroid striking the underside of the ring, pushing the ring's floor up and finally breaking through. The top of the mountain, above the atmosphere, is therefore just a hole. Louis uses the police station to drag the ''Lying Bastard'' up and into the hole. Once the ship falls through and clears the ring, they can use its hyperdrive to get home. The book concludes with Louis and Speaker discussing returning to the Ringworld.
==Concepts==
In addition to the two aliens, Niven includes a number of concepts from his other Known Space stories:


==Reception==
* The Puppeteer's ], which are impervious to any known force except ] and ], and cannot be destroyed by anything except ].
{{Expand section|date=November 2020}}
] found ''Ringworld'' to be "excellent and entertaining&nbsp;... woven together very skillfully and proceed at a pretty smooth pace." While praising the novel generally, he faulted Niven for relying on inconsistencies regarding evolution in his extrapolations to support his fictional premises.<ref>"Galaxy Bookshelf", '']'', March 1971, pp.112–13</ref>


Sam Jordison described ''Ringworld'' as "arguably one of the most influential science fiction novels of the past 50 years."<ref>{{Cite web |date=2010-07-02 |title=Back to the Hugos: Ringworld by Larry Niven {{!}} Sam Jordison |url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/jul/02/larry-niven-ringworld |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}</ref>
* The ], which causes time in the enclosed volume to stand still; since time has for all intents and purposes ceased for an object in ], no harm can come to anything in its field.


==Concepts reused==
* The idea that ] is a ] trait that can be favored by ].
In addition to the two aliens, Niven includes a number of concepts from his other Known Space stories:


* The puppeteers' ], which are impervious to any known force except ] and ], and for a long time thought indestructible by anything except ]. The ''Fleet of Worlds'' prequels reveal two other ways that the hulls can be destroyed.
* The ], a device that induces a state of extreme pleasure in the ] of the ] at the push of a button; it is used as a method of debilitating its target and is extremely addictive. If the subject cannot, for whatever reason, get access to the device, intense depression can result, often to the point of madness or suicide.
* The ], which causes time in the enclosed volume to stand still; since time has for all intents and purposes ceased for an object in ], no harm can come to anything within the field.
* The idea that ] is a ] trait that can be strengthened by ].
* The tasp, a device that remotely stimulates the ] of the ]; it temporarily incapacitates its target and is extremely psychologically addictive. If the subject cannot, for whatever reason, get access to the device, intense depression can result, often to the point of madness or suicide. To use a tasp on someone from hiding, relieving them of their anger or depression, is called "making their day".
* ], a drug that restores or indefinitely preserves youth.
* Scrith, the metal-like substance of which the ''Ringworld'' is built (and presumably the shadow squares and wires too), that has a ] nearly equal in magnitude to the ] making it similar to the concept of ]. This makes it an example of ]. This is similar to the Pak Protector's "twing" used in other Larry Niven stories.
* Impact armor, a flexible form of clothing that hardens instantly into a rigid form stronger than steel when rapidly deformed, similar to ].
* The hyperspace shunt, an engine for faster-than-light travel, but slow enough (1&nbsp;] per 3&nbsp;days, ~122&nbsp;]) to keep the galaxy vast and unknown; the new "quantum&nbsp;II hyperspace shunt", developed by the Puppeteers but not yet released to humans, can cross a light-year in just 1.25&nbsp;minutes (~421&nbsp;000&nbsp;]).
* Point-to-point teleportation at the speed of light is possible with ]s (on Earth) and ]s (on the Puppeteer homeworld); on Earth, people's sense of place and global position has been lost due to instantaneous travel; cities and cultures have blended together.
* A theme well covered in the novel is that of cultures suffering technological breakdowns who then proceed to revert to belief systems along ] lines. Most ''Ringworld'' societies have forgotten that they live on an artificial structure, and now attribute the phenomena and origin of their world to divine power.


==Errors==
* ], a drug that extends human life to near immortality.
]
The opening chapter of the original paperback edition of ''Ringworld'' featured Louis Wu teleporting eastward around the Earth in order to extend his birthday. Moving in this direction would, in fact, make local time later rather than earlier, so that Wu would soon arrive in the early morning of the next calendar day. Niven was "endlessly teased" about this error, which he corrected in subsequent printings to show Wu teleporting westward.<ref>{{cite web|title=Fantastic Reviews: Larry Niven Interview|url= http://www.geocities.com/fantasticreviews/niven_interview.htm|date=August 2004|access-date=2009-05-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091026143700/http://geocities.com/fantasticreviews/niven_interview.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=2009-10-26}}</ref> In his dedication to ''The Ringworld Engineers'', Niven wrote, "If you own a first paperback edition of ''Ringworld'', it's the one with the mistakes in it. It's worth money."<ref>{{cite book|title=The Ringworld Engineers|last=Niven|first=Larry|year=1980|publisher=Ballantine Books (Del Rey)|location=New York|isbn=0-345-33430-2|page=vii }}</ref>


After the publication of ''Ringworld'', many fans identified numerous engineering problems in the Ringworld as described in the novel. One major one was that the Ringworld, being a rigid structure, was not actually in orbit around the star it encircled and would eventually drift, ultimately colliding with its sun and disintegrating. This led ] students attending the 1971 ] to chant, "The Ringworld is unstable!" Niven wrote the 1980 sequel '']'' in part to address these engineering issues.
* Impact armor, a flexible form of clothing that hardens instantly into a rigid form stronger than steel when rapidly deformed, similar to ].


The second chapter refers to standard Earth gravity as {{val|9.98|u=m/s2}} (or even gives the unit as m/s ), while ] is {{val|9.81|u=m/s2}}.
* ]s allow for faster-than-light travel, but at a rate slow enough (1 light year per 3 days, ~125]) to keep the galaxy vast and unknown; the new Quantum II Hyperdrive, developed by the Puppeteers but not yet released to humans, can cross a light year in just 1.25 minutes (~425,000c).
The fifth chapter refers to Nereid as Neptune's largest moon; the planet's largest moon is Triton.


]
* Near instant point-to-point teleportation is possible with ]s (on Earth) and ]s (on the Puppeteer homeworld); on Earth, people's sense of place and global position has been lost due to instantaneous travel; cities and cultures have blended together.


==Influence==
* A theme well-covered in the novel is that of cultures suffering technological breakdowns who then proceed to revert to belief-systems along ] lines. Most Ringworld societies have forgotten they live on an artificial structure, and now attribute the phenomena of their world to divine power.
"Ringworld" has become a generic term for such a structure, which is an example of what science fiction fans call a "]", or more formally a ]. Other science fiction authors have devised their own variants of Niven's Ringworld, notably ]' ]s, best described as miniature Ringworlds, and the titular ring-shaped ] structures of the video game series '']''. Such a mini-Ringworld appears in ''Star Wars: ]'', season 1, episode 5.{{cn|date=February 2023}}. In the Paramount+ series ] season 4, episode 3, "In the Cradle of Vexilon", A Ringworld-like world is prominently featured.


==Adaptations==
==Science error in first edition==
The opening chapter of the original paperback edition of ''Ringworld'' featured Louis Wu teleporting eastward around the Earth in order to extend his birthday. (Moving in this direction would, in fact, make local time later rather than earlier, so that Louis would arrive in the early morning of the next calendar day.) Niven was "endlessly teased" about this error, which he corrected in subsequent printings to show Louis teleporting westward.<ref>{{cite web | title= Fantastic Reviews: Larry Niven Interview | url= http://www.geocities.com/fantasticreviews/niven_interview.htm | date= 2004-08 | accessdate=2009-05-10}}</ref>


===Games===
In his dedication to the 1980 sequel '']'', Niven wrote, "If you own a first paperback edition of ''Ringworld'', it's the one with the mistakes in it. It's worth money."<ref>{{cite book | title= The Ringworld Engineers | last= Niven | first= Larry | year= 1980| publisher= Ballantine Books (Del Rey) |location= New York |isbn= 0-345-33430-2 |page= vii }}</ref>
In 1984, a ] based on this setting was produced by ] named '']''. Information from the RPG, along with notes composed by RPG author John Hewitt with Niven, was later used to form the "Bible" given to authors writing in the '']'' series. Niven himself recommended that Hewitt write one of the stories for the original two MKW books, although this never came to pass.<ref>'']'', pp. 293-301</ref>


] released two ]s based on ''Ringworld''. '']'' was released in 1992 and ''Return to Ringworld'' in 1994. A third game, ''Ringworld: Within ARM's Reach'', was also planned, but never completed.
==Ringworld engineering==
{| class="wikitable" style="width: 20em; text-align: left; float: right; margin-left: 1em;"
|+ Ringworld parameters
|-
! ]
| 9.5×] miles (~1.5×10<sup>8</sup> km) (~1 ])
|-
! ]
| 6×] miles (~9.7×10<sup>8</sup> km)
|-
! ]
| 997,000 miles (1,600,000&nbsp;km)
|-
! ] of rim walls
| 1,000 miles (1,600&nbsp;km)
|-
! ]
| 2×10<sup>27</sup> kg (1.8×10<sup>24</sup> ]s) (1,250,000&nbsp;kg/m², e.g. 250 m thick, 5,000&nbsp;kg/m³)
|-
! Surface ]
| 6×10<sup>14</sup> sq mi (1.6×10<sup>15</sup> km²); 3 million times the surface area of ].
|-
! Surface ]
| 0.992 ] (~9.69 ])
|-
! Spin ]
| 770 miles/second (~1,200,000 m/s)
|-
! Sun's ]
| G3 verging on G2; "barely smaller and cooler than ]".
|-
! ] length
| 30 ]s
|-
! ]al time
| 7.5 Ringworld days (225 hours, 9.375 Earth days)
|-
| colspan="2" | On Ringworld, time longer than a day is measured in '''falans''', with 1 falan being 10 turns or 75 Ringworld days (93.75 Earth days), so 4 falans are slightly longer than 1 Earth ].
|}


The video game franchise '']'', created by ], took inspiration from the book in the creation and development of its story around the eponymous rings, called Halos. These are physically similar to the Ringworld, however they are much smaller and do not encircle the star, instead orbiting stars or planets.
The "Ringworld" is an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit (which makes it about 600 million miles in ]), encircling a Sol-type star. It rotates, providing an ] that is 99.2% as strong as Earth's gravity through the action of ]. Ringworld has a habitable flat inner surface equivalent in area to approximately three million Earth-sized planets. The majority of the surface is land interspersed with shallow, freshwater seas. On opposite sides of the ring are two large deep saltwater oceans, placed in counterbalance to one another. One of the large oceans, known as the "Great Ocean", contains one-to-one maps of all of the inhabited worlds of known space. The "Other Ocean" has many maps of a single world: the Pak Homeworld. Walls 1,000 miles tall along the edges retain the atmosphere. The Ringworld could be regarded as a thin, rotating slice of a ], with which it shares a number of characteristics. Niven himself thinks of the Ringworld as "an intermediate step between Dyson spheres and planets."<ref>{{citation|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=XG2v6VRRItIC&pg=PA343|title=The Age of Rand|chapter=Scale|author=Frederick Cookinham|pages=343}}</ref>


The open source video game '']'' features an alien species that creates ringworlds.
===Source of material===
The Ringworld is described as having a mass approximately equal to the sum of all the planets in our solar system. The adventurers surmised that its construction consumed literally all the planets in that original system, down to the last asteroid and/or moon, as the Ringworld star has no other bodies in orbit. In ''Ringworld's Children'' it is additionally explained that it took the ] of roughly 20 Jupiter masses to spin up the ring; thus either the combined mass of the planets of the original system was that much larger than our solar system's, or there was other source material.


In 2017, Paradox Interactive added a ] called "Utopia" to their game ],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/281990/Stellaris/|title=Stellaris on Steam|website=store.steampowered.com|language=en|access-date=2019-02-15}}</ref> allowing the player to restore or build ringworlds.
===Scrith===
Scrith, usually written italicized as ''scrith'', forms the walls and floor of the Ringworld.


In 2021, Mobius Digital added a ] called ] to their game '']'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/|title=Outer Wilds on Steam|website=store.steampowered.com|language=en|access-date=2021-01-06}}</ref>{{primary source inline|date=March 2022}} which allows the player to explore a hidden, abandoned ringworld and determine what happened to its inhabitants.<!--
''Scrith'' is a milky-gray translucent, nearly frictionless material. The fairly thin layer of ''scrith'' that forms the floor of the Ringworld blocks the passage of 40% of the ]s that encounter it, equivalent to almost a ] of ]. It also absorbs nearly 100% of all other radiation and subatomic particles and rapidly dissipates heat. The ] of ''scrith'' is similar to the ], with the Ringworld foundation only about 30m (100 ft) deep. Also, it is transparent to large magnetic fields.


--><!-- Notability not established: The ] ''Shores of Hazeron'' by Software Engineering Inc. features abandoned ringworld structures for players to discover and colonize. Ringworlds in '']'' are the creations of ancient precursor species not featured in the game. In addition to acting as centres for habitation, these rings feature functionalities such as self-sustaining power generation, the creation of interstellar wormholes, and simulated day-night cycles via orbital solar shields. -->
Due to its enormous strength, ''scrith'' is impervious to most weapons. A body (such as a comet or asteroid) striking with enough ] may be able to deform the Ringworld floor and punch a hole. The Ringworld engineers used a device, called the ''cziltang brone'' in their language, to pass from the vacuum of their ]s right through the ''scrith'' to the habitable surface of the Ringworld.


===On screen===
The physical composition of ''scrith'' is unclear, but it appears to share some of the properties of a ] (albeit in a greatly exaggerated form): for instance, the high tensile strength, the ability to ] and the ability to retain an ]. ''Scrith'' is said by one inhabitant to have been artificially produced through the ] of matter, though this is later thought to have been a lie.
There have been many aborted attempts to adapt the novel to the screen.


In 2001, Larry Niven reported that a movie deal had been signed and was in the early planning stages.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/ringworld_movie_001106.html |title=Ringworld Movie Around the Corner |publisher=Space.com |date=2000-11-06 |access-date=2010-06-28 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100831133325/http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/ringworld_movie_001106.html |archive-date=2010-08-31 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.larryniven.org/ringworld_movie_news.shtml| title = Ringworld Movie News| work = Known Space: The Future Worlds of Larry Niven| access-date = 2008-08-10| archive-date = 2009-09-21| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090921170940/http://www.larryniven.org/ringworld_movie_news.shtml| url-status = dead}}</ref>
===Variations===
"Ringworld", or more formally, "Niven ring", has become a generic term for such a structure, which is an example of what science fiction fans call a "]", or more formally a ]. Other science fiction authors have devised their own variants of Niven's Ringworld, notably ]' ]s, best described as miniature Ringworlds, and the ring-shaped ] structure of the video game '']''.


In 2004, the ] reported that it was developing a ''Ringworld'' miniseries.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Television&action=page&type_id=&cat_id=270355&obj_id=41212 |title=Sci Fi Channel goes supernova with new shows, series and specials |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061006170420/http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Television&action=page&type_id=&cat_id=270355&obj_id=41212 |archive-date=2006-10-06 |author=Patrick Sauriol |date=6 April 2004 |work=The Sci Fi Channel}}</ref> The series never came to fruition.
===Technical realities===
====Construction issues====
The construction of a ringworld remains firmly in the area of speculation. If such a structure were built it could indeed provide a huge habitable inner surface, but the energy required to construct it, set it rotating, and keep it stabilized is so significant (several centuries' worth of the total energy output from the Sun) that without as-yet unimagined energy sources becoming available, it is hard to see how this construction could ever be possible in a time frame acceptable to humans.


In 2013, it was again announced by the channel, now rebranded as ], that a miniseries of the novel was in development. This proposed 4-hour miniseries was being written by ] and would have been a co-production between ] and ].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/04/10/ringworld-syfy/|title='Ringworld' miniseries in the works at Syfy |publisher=ew.com |date=2013-04-10 |access-date=2013-04-11}}</ref>
====Tension on material====
The tensile strength of the material required would be on the same order as the ], according to Niven &ndash; since the artificial gravity is the same as normal gravity, the structure is comparable with a bridge with an extremely long span; nothing even remotely strong enough is known to exist in nature. In Niven's ''Ringworld'' novels, the material &ndash; which he calls ''scrith'' &ndash; is said to have been artificially produced through the ] of matter into the required substance. (This merely gives a name to the ] that would have to be used.) In later novels the "transmutation" idea is simply discarded and the construction method of ''scrith'' left open, although one engineer is able to use nanotechnology to weave new scrith into meteor punctures.


In 2017, ] announced that Ringworld was one of three science fiction series it was developing for its streaming service. MGM were again listed as a co-producer.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/amazon-studios-lazarus-snow-crash-ringworld-1202576048/|title=Amazon Increases Production Spending for 2018, Developing 3 New Sci-Fi Series|magazine=Variety|date=2017-09-28|last=Birnbaum|first=Debra}}</ref>
====Instability====
A ringworld design requires active stabilization, because it is not in ]l ]. Though the ring itself is rotating at 1,200&nbsp;km/s (to approximate Earth gravity), the center of mass is stationary — in fact, it is at an unstable equilibrium, roughly comparable to a small sphere balanced on top of a pin.


===OEL manga===
Thus, large thrusters must be incorporated into the design to keep it centered about its star. This point gave Niven some difficulty after he published his first ''Ringworld'' novel; he was deluged with letters pointing out that "the Ringworld isn't stable" and dedicated the first sequel to a resolution of this problem. He notes in the dedication of '']'' that at the 1971 ], ] students crowded the hotel hallways chanting "The Ringworld is unstable!" In this first sequel, he also tackled how to prevent all the soil from ending up in the oceans. In the fourth book in the series, ''Ringworld's Children'', he creates backplot explanations for several of the imperfections in his original design of the Ringworld — and wholly glosses over others, such as that Louis Wu is worried about his dietary intake of ] since only the Great Oceans are described as being ].
Tor/Seven Seas (same joint venture of ]'s ] and ] who also published the English-language translation of '']'') published a two-part ] adaptation of ''Ringworld'', with the script written by ] and the artwork by ].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Ringworld: The Graphic Novel, part one|url=https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765324627}}</ref> ''Ringworld: The Graphic Novel, Part One'', covering the events of the novel up to the sunflower attack on Speaker, was released on July 8, 2014. ''Part Two'' was released on November 10, 2015.

====Imperfect shadow squares====
To provide an approximation of the day&ndash;night cycle common to planets, Niven's Ringworld was also provided with a separate ring of "shadow squares" linked together (by "shadow square wires") in a ring close to the star, rotating at slightly faster than the Ringworld's spin, providing a lot of ], as well as a day-night cycle. This is not the perfect match for a planet however, as there is no sunrise or sunset in Ringworld, and when not covered by a shadow square, the sun is always at high noon. These absorb a huge amount of sunlight energy, which is beamed to the Ringworld as its primary source of power. They are also not in inertial orbit, and must be actively stabilized as well. The shadow squares provide another of the imperfections "clarified" in ''Ringworld's Children'', as five shadow squares of greater length, orbiting ] would provide a better day-night cycle, with less twilight. As revealed in ''Ringworld Engineers'', the "shadow squares" also provide a shielding to the inner surface of the Ringworld when someone in the control room uses a magnetic field embedded in the Ringworld to fire the meteor defense system.

==Movie==
Larry Niven reported in 2001 that a movie deal had been signed and was in the early planning stages. There have also been many abortive attempts to adapt the novel to the screen.<ref></ref><ref></ref> In 2004, the ] reported that it was developing a ''Ringworld'' miniseries.<ref> By Patrick Sauriol, April 06, 2004 Source: The Sci Fi Channel</ref>


==In other works== ==In other works==
<!-- Not an example, there is no star involved: * In the '']'' setting ], the city ] sits atop a gigantic spire that the Outlands rotates around, which is portrayed as a Niven Ringworld that all the other planes have representative cities upon. -->
* ] intended his 1981 novel '']'' to be a "piss-take/homage/satire" of ''Ringworld''. Niven took it in good humor and enjoyed the work.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/strata.html|title=The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Strata|publisher=Lspace.org|access-date= 2010-06-28}}</ref>
* The plot of the ] '']'' for the ], ], and ] also takes place on an artificial ring structure. Similarities to ''Ringworld'' have been noted in the game,<ref name="literary">{{cite web|url=http://xbox.ign.com/articles/709/709122p5.html|title=The Influence of Literature and Myth in Videogames|website=IGN|first=Douglass C.|last=Perry|date=2007-03-17|access-date=2007-12-10|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090220080109/http://xbox.ign.com/articles/709/709122p5.html|archive-date=2009-02-20}}</ref> and Niven was asked (but declined) to write the ] based on the series.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bs.bungie.org/2003/03/the_halo_author_1.html#000320|title=The Halo Author that Wasn't|publisher=]|date=2003-03-05|access-date=2007-10-04}} – Condensed version of information found at {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090220160506/http://www.larryniven.org/chatlogs/chat060402.shtml |date=2009-02-20 }}</ref>
* "All in Fun" by Jerry Oltion, in '']'', January 2009, mentions a faithful big-budget movie adaptation of ''Ringworld''.
* In ]'s 2011 novel '']'', one of the sectors of the OASIS, the worldwide ] network that is the novel's primary setting, is mentioned as being an adaptation of ''Ringworld''.
* The 1987 novel ''The Alexandrian Ring'' by ] takes place on a ring much like Niven's.
* Episode 5 of '']'' features a station called Glavis that is shaped like a ring and features sun shades in much the same way that Niven's does.


==Books in series==
*In the 1980s a ] based on this setting was produced by ] named '']''.


* ''Ringworld'' (1970)
*] released two ]s based on ''Ringworld'', ''Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch'' in 1992 and ''Return to Ringworld'' in 1994. A third game, ''Ringworld: Within ARM's Reach'', was also planned, but never completed.
* '']'' (1979)

* '']'' (1996)
*] intended his 1981 novel '']'' to be a "pisstake/homage/satire" of ''Ringworld''. Niven allegedly took it in good faith and enjoyed the work.<ref></ref>
* '']'' (2004)

* '']'' (2007)
*Some of ]'s novels of '']'' involve smaller circular structures called ], their day-night cycle is inherent in their rotation, since they do not encircle a star but orbit around it like a planet does.
* '']'' (2008)

* '']'' (2009)
*A ringworld appears in '']'', by ], used to make an anecdote about population pressure.
* '']'' (2010)

* '']'' (2012)
*The plot of the ] '']'' for the ] ], ] and ] also takes place on an artificial ring structure. Given its dimensions (10,000 kilometers in diameter) it is more like Banks' ]s (though much smaller) than Niven's behemoth. Similarities to ''Ringworld'' have been noted in the game,<ref name="literary">{{cite web| url=http://xbox.ign.com/articles/709/709122p5.html| title=The Influence of Literature and Myth in Videogames| publisher=]| author=Douglass C. Perry| date=2007-03-17| accessdate=2007-12-10}}</ref> and Niven was asked (but declined) to write the first novel based on the series.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://bs.bungie.org/2003/03/the_halo_author_1.html#000320| title=The Halo Author that Wasn't| publisher=]| date=2003-03-05| accessdate=2007-10-04}} — Condensed version of information found at Niven's own site: </ref>

*There is a Ringworld-like structure in the Tre'illica system in the video game '']''; also, in the game, ] has a ring structure built around its equator.

*]' '']'' series has each planet in that empire with an orbital ring station around its center, connected by towers to the planet (also called a ]). The ring has a stationary and a rotating part, generates huge amounts of power, houses millions of people, docks ships to keeps them individually from having to use energy to take off and land on the planets, and uses the 2nd, outer, moving ring section to launch ships.

*In the game '']'' it is possible for players to create a Ringworld around a star using Stellar Technology.

*"All in Fun" by Jerry Oltion, in ''Fantasy & Science Fiction'', January 2009, mentions a faithful big-budget movie adaptation of ''Ringworld''.


==See also== ==See also==
{{Portal|Novels}}
* ]
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* ]
* ]
* ]
* ] * ]
* ] * ]
* ] * ]
* ] * ]
* ] * ]
{{div col end}}


==References== ==References==
{{reflist}} {{Reflist}}


==External links== ==External links==
*
*
* at Worlds Without End *
*
* at Worlds Without End
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180418072051/http://www.larryniven.net/physics.shtml |date=2018-04-18 }} (official site)
** {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160124094457/http://larryniven.net/physicsinscifi/img7.shtml |date=2016-01-24 }}
*
*


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Latest revision as of 09:15, 29 December 2024

1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven
Ringworld
Paperback first edition
AuthorLarry Niven
IllustratorDean Ellis
LanguageEnglish
SeriesRingworld storyline from Known Space
GenreScience fiction
PublisherBallantine Books
Publication dateOctober 1970
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover, paperback), audiobook
Pages342 pages
AwardsLocus Award for Best Novel (1971)
ISBN0-345-02046-4
Followed byThe Ringworld Engineers, 1979 

Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. Ringworld tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, an enormous rotating ring, an alien construct in space 186 million miles (299 million kilometres) in diameter. Niven later wrote three sequel novels and then cowrote, with Edward M. Lerner, four prequels and a final sequel; the five latter novels constitute the Fleet of Worlds series. All the novels in the Ringworld series tie into numerous other books set in Known Space. Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970, as well as both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971.

Plot summary

On Earth in 2850 AD, a bored Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday. Despite his age, Louis is in perfect physical condition due to the longevity drug boosterspice. Nessus, a Pierson's puppeteer, offers him a mysterious job. Intrigued, Louis accepts. Nessus also recruits the Kzin Speaker-to-Animals and Teela Brown, a young human woman who becomes Louis's lover, for the rest of the ship's crew.

On the puppeteer home world (which is fleeing deadly radiation that will arrive in 20,000 years), they are told that their goal is to determine if the Ringworld, a gigantic artificial ring near the puppeteers' path, poses any threat to their migration. The Ringworld is about one million miles (1.6 million km) wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit, encircling a sunlike star. It rotates to provide artificial gravity 99% as strong as Earth's from centrifugal force. It has a habitable inner surface (equivalent in area to approximately three million Earths), a breathable atmosphere, and a temperature optimal for humans. Night is provided by an inner ring of shadow squares which are connected to each other by thin, ultra-strong wire. When the crew completes their mission, as payment they will be given the starship they used to travel to the puppeteer world; it is about 1000 times faster than any human or Kzinti ship.

When they reach the vicinity of the Ringworld, they are unable to contact anyone. Their ship, the Lying Bastard, is disabled by an automated meteoroid-defense system. The vessel collides with a strand of shadow-square wire and crash-lands near a huge mountain, which is called "Fist-of-God" by the first natives they speak with. The fusion drive is destroyed, so they set out to find a way to get the Lying Bastard off the Ringworld and use the undamaged hyperdrive to return home.

Using their flycycles, they set out for the rim of the ring, searching for technology to help them get home. They encounter primitive human natives who live in the ruins of a once-advanced city. The natives think that Louis is one of the engineers who created the ring, whom they revere as gods. The crew is attacked when Louis accidentally commits what the natives consider a blasphemy, but extricate themselves.

During their journey, Nessus reveals several puppeteer secrets. They initiated research into rendering the Kzinti extinct, considering them dangerous and useless, but found that the numerous Man-Kzin wars—which the Kzinti always lost—had greatly reduced their aggression: a very high percentage of Kzinti males were killed in each conflict, leaving more prudent and cautious survivors to breed. The puppeteers had also used Birthright Lotteries to try to breed humans for luck: all of Teela's ancestors for six generations are lottery winners. Speaker's outrage at learning the former forces Nessus to flee from the group and then follow from a safe distance.

While flying through a giant storm, Teela becomes separated from the others. When Louis and Speaker search for her, their flycycles are caught by an automated trap designed to catch speeders. They are brought to a floating police station. There, they meet Halrloprillalar Hotrufan ("Prill"), a former crew member of a ship that had brought back goods from worlds abandoned by the Ringworld builders. Nessus, using a tasp (a remote pleasure-giving device), conditions Prill into helping and joining them. When her ship returned to the Ringworld the last time, they discovered that civilization had collapsed. Louis surmises that a mold inadvertently brought back by a ship like Prill's mutated and broke down the superconductors vital to the Ringworld civilization, causing its fall.

Teela rejoins them, accompanied by her new lover, a traveling warrior named Seeker who protected her. Based on an insight gained from studying a Ringworld map, Louis comes up with a plan to get home. Teela chooses to remain on the Ringworld with Seeker. Louis, formerly skeptical about breeding for luck, now wonders if the entire mission was caused by Teela's luck, to unite her with her true love and help her mature.

The party collects one end of the shadow-square wire that snapped after the collision with their ship and fell near their path, and drag it behind them. Louis threads it through the Lying Bastard to tether it to the floating police station. "Fist-of-God", the enormous mountain near their crash site, was not on the Ringworld map, leading Louis to guess that it is the result of a meteoroid striking the underside of the ring, pushing the ring's floor up and finally breaking through. The top of the mountain, above the atmosphere, is therefore just a hole. Louis uses the police station to drag the Lying Bastard up and into the hole. Once the ship falls through and clears the ring, they can use its hyperdrive to get home. The book concludes with Louis and Speaker discussing returning to the Ringworld.

Reception

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2020)

Algis Budrys found Ringworld to be "excellent and entertaining ... woven together very skillfully and proceed at a pretty smooth pace." While praising the novel generally, he faulted Niven for relying on inconsistencies regarding evolution in his extrapolations to support his fictional premises.

Sam Jordison described Ringworld as "arguably one of the most influential science fiction novels of the past 50 years."

Concepts reused

In addition to the two aliens, Niven includes a number of concepts from his other Known Space stories:

  • The puppeteers' General Products hulls, which are impervious to any known force except visible light and gravity, and for a long time thought indestructible by anything except antimatter. The Fleet of Worlds prequels reveal two other ways that the hulls can be destroyed.
  • The Slaver stasis field, which causes time in the enclosed volume to stand still; since time has for all intents and purposes ceased for an object in stasis, no harm can come to anything within the field.
  • The idea that luck is a genetic trait that can be strengthened by selective breeding.
  • The tasp, a device that remotely stimulates the pleasure center of the brain; it temporarily incapacitates its target and is extremely psychologically addictive. If the subject cannot, for whatever reason, get access to the device, intense depression can result, often to the point of madness or suicide. To use a tasp on someone from hiding, relieving them of their anger or depression, is called "making their day".
  • Boosterspice, a drug that restores or indefinitely preserves youth.
  • Scrith, the metal-like substance of which the Ringworld is built (and presumably the shadow squares and wires too), that has a tensile strength nearly equal in magnitude to the strong nuclear force making it similar to the concept of nuclear matter. This makes it an example of unobtainium. This is similar to the Pak Protector's "twing" used in other Larry Niven stories.
  • Impact armor, a flexible form of clothing that hardens instantly into a rigid form stronger than steel when rapidly deformed, similar to certain types of bulletproof vests.
  • The hyperspace shunt, an engine for faster-than-light travel, but slow enough (1 light-year per 3 days, ~122 c) to keep the galaxy vast and unknown; the new "quantum II hyperspace shunt", developed by the Puppeteers but not yet released to humans, can cross a light-year in just 1.25 minutes (~421 000 c).
  • Point-to-point teleportation at the speed of light is possible with transfer booths (on Earth) and stepping disks (on the Puppeteer homeworld); on Earth, people's sense of place and global position has been lost due to instantaneous travel; cities and cultures have blended together.
  • A theme well covered in the novel is that of cultures suffering technological breakdowns who then proceed to revert to belief systems along religious lines. Most Ringworld societies have forgotten that they live on an artificial structure, and now attribute the phenomena and origin of their world to divine power.

Errors

Artist's rendition

The opening chapter of the original paperback edition of Ringworld featured Louis Wu teleporting eastward around the Earth in order to extend his birthday. Moving in this direction would, in fact, make local time later rather than earlier, so that Wu would soon arrive in the early morning of the next calendar day. Niven was "endlessly teased" about this error, which he corrected in subsequent printings to show Wu teleporting westward. In his dedication to The Ringworld Engineers, Niven wrote, "If you own a first paperback edition of Ringworld, it's the one with the mistakes in it. It's worth money."

After the publication of Ringworld, many fans identified numerous engineering problems in the Ringworld as described in the novel. One major one was that the Ringworld, being a rigid structure, was not actually in orbit around the star it encircled and would eventually drift, ultimately colliding with its sun and disintegrating. This led MIT students attending the 1971 Worldcon to chant, "The Ringworld is unstable!" Niven wrote the 1980 sequel The Ringworld Engineers in part to address these engineering issues.

The second chapter refers to standard Earth gravity as 9.98 m/s (or even gives the unit as m/s ), while standard Earth gravity is 9.81 m/s. The fifth chapter refers to Nereid as Neptune's largest moon; the planet's largest moon is Triton.

Ringworld

Influence

"Ringworld" has become a generic term for such a structure, which is an example of what science fiction fans call a "Big Dumb Object", or more formally a megastructure. Other science fiction authors have devised their own variants of Niven's Ringworld, notably Iain M. Banks' Culture Orbitals, best described as miniature Ringworlds, and the titular ring-shaped Halo structures of the video game series Halo. Such a mini-Ringworld appears in Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett, season 1, episode 5.. In the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Lower Decks season 4, episode 3, "In the Cradle of Vexilon", A Ringworld-like world is prominently featured.

Adaptations

Games

In 1984, a role-playing game based on this setting was produced by Chaosium named The Ringworld Roleplaying Game. Information from the RPG, along with notes composed by RPG author John Hewitt with Niven, was later used to form the "Bible" given to authors writing in the Man-Kzin Wars series. Niven himself recommended that Hewitt write one of the stories for the original two MKW books, although this never came to pass.

Tsunami Games released two adventure games based on Ringworld. Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch was released in 1992 and Return to Ringworld in 1994. A third game, Ringworld: Within ARM's Reach, was also planned, but never completed.

The video game franchise Halo, created by Bungie, took inspiration from the book in the creation and development of its story around the eponymous rings, called Halos. These are physically similar to the Ringworld, however they are much smaller and do not encircle the star, instead orbiting stars or planets.

The open source video game Endless Sky features an alien species that creates ringworlds.

In 2017, Paradox Interactive added a DLC called "Utopia" to their game Stellaris, allowing the player to restore or build ringworlds.

In 2021, Mobius Digital added a DLC called "Echoes of the Eye" to their game Outer Wilds, which allows the player to explore a hidden, abandoned ringworld and determine what happened to its inhabitants.

On screen

There have been many aborted attempts to adapt the novel to the screen.

In 2001, Larry Niven reported that a movie deal had been signed and was in the early planning stages.

In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel reported that it was developing a Ringworld miniseries. The series never came to fruition.

In 2013, it was again announced by the channel, now rebranded as Syfy, that a miniseries of the novel was in development. This proposed 4-hour miniseries was being written by Michael R. Perry and would have been a co-production between MGM Television and Universal Cable Productions.

In 2017, Amazon announced that Ringworld was one of three science fiction series it was developing for its streaming service. MGM were again listed as a co-producer.

OEL manga

Tor/Seven Seas (same joint venture of Macmillan's Tor Books and Seven Seas Entertainment who also published the English-language translation of Afro Samurai) published a two-part original English-language manga adaptation of Ringworld, with the script written by Robert Mandell and the artwork by Sean Lam. Ringworld: The Graphic Novel, Part One, covering the events of the novel up to the sunflower attack on Speaker, was released on July 8, 2014. Part Two was released on November 10, 2015.

In other works

  • Terry Pratchett intended his 1981 novel Strata to be a "piss-take/homage/satire" of Ringworld. Niven took it in good humor and enjoyed the work.
  • The plot of the first-person shooter Halo: Combat Evolved for the Xbox, Windows, and Mac OS X also takes place on an artificial ring structure. Similarities to Ringworld have been noted in the game, and Niven was asked (but declined) to write the first novel based on the series.
  • "All in Fun" by Jerry Oltion, in Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2009, mentions a faithful big-budget movie adaptation of Ringworld.
  • In Ernest Cline's 2011 novel Ready Player One, one of the sectors of the OASIS, the worldwide virtual reality network that is the novel's primary setting, is mentioned as being an adaptation of Ringworld.
  • The 1987 novel The Alexandrian Ring by William R. Forstchen takes place on a ring much like Niven's.
  • Episode 5 of The Book of Boba Fett features a station called Glavis that is shaped like a ring and features sun shades in much the same way that Niven's does.

Books in series

See also

References

  1. "1970 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
  2. "1971 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
  3. "Galaxy Bookshelf", Galaxy, March 1971, pp.112–13
  4. "Back to the Hugos: Ringworld by Larry Niven | Sam Jordison". the Guardian. 2010-07-02. Retrieved 2022-11-30.
  5. "Fantastic Reviews: Larry Niven Interview". August 2004. Archived from the original on 2009-10-26. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  6. Niven, Larry (1980). The Ringworld Engineers. New York: Ballantine Books (Del Rey). p. vii. ISBN 0-345-33430-2.
  7. Scatterbrain, pp. 293-301
  8. "Stellaris on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Retrieved 2019-02-15.
  9. "Outer Wilds on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Retrieved 2021-01-06.
  10. "Ringworld Movie Around the Corner". Space.com. 2000-11-06. Archived from the original on 2010-08-31. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
  11. "Ringworld Movie News". Known Space: The Future Worlds of Larry Niven. Archived from the original on 2009-09-21. Retrieved 2008-08-10.
  12. Patrick Sauriol (6 April 2004). "Sci Fi Channel goes supernova with new shows, series and specials". The Sci Fi Channel. Archived from the original on 2006-10-06.
  13. "'Ringworld' miniseries in the works at Syfy". ew.com. 2013-04-10. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  14. Birnbaum, Debra (2017-09-28). "Amazon Increases Production Spending for 2018, Developing 3 New Sci-Fi Series". Variety.
  15. "Ringworld: The Graphic Novel, part one".
  16. "The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - Strata". Lspace.org. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
  17. Perry, Douglass C. (2007-03-17). "The Influence of Literature and Myth in Videogames". IGN. Archived from the original on 2009-02-20. Retrieved 2007-12-10.
  18. "The Halo Author that Wasn't". Bungie Sightings. 2003-03-05. Retrieved 2007-10-04. – Condensed version of information found at Niven's own site Archived 2009-02-20 at the Wayback Machine

External links

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