Still a favorite, the Ringworld series, which I think of now and again. So when I saw this wonderful book cover repro from Ringworld’s Children, I had to post it. I’m surprised the three four-book series isn’t packaged to sell as one. Maybe rare reader Veeshir, who also enjoyed the series, has some thoughts on that.
I’ve read so many Larry Niven novels and stories by now that I can’t remember them all. This was one of the most satisfying, on a par to my mind with the Ringworld series. Jemmy is a lovable character who always means well and has to be pushed to do bad.
In the end he gives back in the most meaningful way: freeing his people from a tyranny imposed by the colony planet’s founders. I don’t understand the really savage criticism of the book by a majority of reviewers at Amazon: don’t waste your time, big disappointment, a mess, etc.
I agree with some of them that the dialogue was occasionally hard to follow. But reading back over it didn’t take a lot of energy and I was soon set right. Likewise with puzzling out a few typos. Sometimes I think the Amazon reviewers are sheep, and this is one of those times. I especially loved the ending, which I reread several times. I hope the amateur reviewers didn’t hurt the book’s sales and that we see more of Destiny, down the road.
I inhaled this third in the Ringworld series in a few days and while I understand the criticism of many of the Amazon reviewers who didn’t like it (mostly because author Larry Niven drops you into it without much prep and doesn’t seem to be taking you anywhere) I enjoyed getting to know the various hominid species. Read carefully, you soon see where it’s going and why. But anyone encountering it alone without having read the previous two would be lost, so it’s a very poor starter.
But it’s a treat if you read them in order–especially one after another the way I have without intervening years to cloud the memory. It’s also a cliffhanger, which I’ve read is resolved, and then some, in Ringworld’s Children, which appears to be the final book. I hope not. Niven hasn’t explored more than a tenth of the available terrain. But maybe he’s tired of it. Maybe I will be, too, after number four. But I doubt it. I’ve put a library hold on it, and hope to have it by Tuesday or so.
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Posted in Library
Tagged Acolyte, Bram, Hindmost, Larry Niven, Louis Wu, Puppeteer, Ringworld, Ringworld Throne, Tzin
This second in the Ringworld series was a lot of fun. It was nice to see the old gang back together, except for the missing Nessus the Puppeteer. Even the heroine of the first book has a cameo. If you haven’t read these, you should give them a try. I’m only a few decades late getting to them myself. Got an email yesterday that the library has Ringworld Throne awaiting pickup. After that, there’s only one left.
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Posted in Library
Tagged Larry Niven, Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, Ringworld Throne
Or, as it might be subtitled: The Luck of Teela Brown. Easy to see why this 1970 Larry Niven novel is a classic. It kept me turning the pages to the end. The adventures of Louis Wu, Nessus the Puppeteer and Speaks-to-Animals (plus, of course, Ms. Brown) are a lot of fun. I came away wanting more.
Fortunately there are sequels. And at least Louis Wu reappears. The description of the Ringworld (with six million times the surface area of Earth), not to mention the book jacket cover drawings, certainly was the basic inspiration for the Stanford Torus of the L5 Society, of which I was once in awe. Gerard O’Neil’s ideas for such a space colony (though obviously smaller than Ringworld) still have merit. And the opening title graphics for the first Halo game also are a version of Ringworld. On to the sequel(s). So many good books to read, so little time.
A rollicking bit of anti-warmist fiction that is more science than sci-fi, despite the sci-fi fan characters and events. Course it was published in ’91 (republished in ’02), so it is a little dated in its Global Warming criticism. Still, the thesis is interesting: The Northern Hemisphere has been in an ice age for decades but the ice has been restrained by the pollution and carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping into the atmosphere. So when we stop…
In the novel by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn (I do wonder why it took three guys to write it), the pollution has been cleaned up, we are no longer a carbon economy, and the U.S. is becoming a Third World country. Meanwhile, the glaciers have returned, three hundred feet high at their leading edge, and are sliding ever farther south. Blizzards in September are common north of Missouri. If that’s not likely (I hope), the Green Police of the story certainly are. As one character says: "We’re the land of the fee, and the home of the slave." The GP are the Gorebot with a badge. Yipes.
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Posted in Library
Tagged AGW, and Michael Flynn, anti-warmists, Fallen Angels, ice age, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven
Cytokine Storm. Sounds like the title of a Larry Niven space opera. It’s the Internet’s latest scare meme that’s supposed to explain why those twenty-something Mexicans died of the, uh, swine flu. Yawn. Call me when the CDC-confirmed death toll reaches a thousand in the first world. Then I’ll, maybe, get alarmed.
UPDATE: Yes, this is where I got the title. Credit where it’s due, after all. Even if it’s late.
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Posted in South of the Border
Tagged CDC, Cytokine Storm, Larry Niven, swine flu
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 