Ringworld's Children

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Larry Niven may be America's greatest living hard-SF writer. Much of his SF belongs to his famous future history, the Tales of Known Space. His preeminent creation is the Ringworld: an immense, artificial, ring-shaped planet that circles a Known Space star. Possibly SF's greatest feat of world-building, the Ringworld is featured in four novels: the Hugo and Nebula Award winner Ringworld (1970); The Ringworld Engineers (1980); The Ringworld Throne (1996); and Ringworld's Children (2004).

Ringworld's Children returns series protagonist Louis Wu to the titular world. Louis and his friend The Hindmost, an alien of the Pierson's puppeteer race, are prisoners of the Ghoul protector Tunesmith, a Ringworld native, who is deliberately provoking the warships that surround his world. All the star-faring races of Known Space have sent warships to the Ringworld, and they are already at the brink of war. If fighting breaks out, the near-indestructible Ringworld will be destroyed: dissolved by antimatter weapons.

The Ringworld series is so complex and ambitious that Ringworld's Children opens with a glossary and a cast of characters, inclusions that even many Known Space fans will need. Newcomers to Niven's artificial planet should start with Ringworld. --Cynthia Ward


From Publishers Weekly
Ringworld (1970) and its many offspring (The Ringworld Engineers, etc.) are an SF institution. Unfortunately, bestseller Niven's first Ringworld installment in 10 years combines the worst qualities of hard SF (i.e., cardboard characters, a plot propelled primarily by technological infodumps) with the least appealing characteristics of sequelitis (i.e., a story no one can follow without fanatic dedication to earlier books). In the year 2893, 67 Ringworld days after Louis Wu, badly wounded in battle with "the Vampire protector, Bram," stepped into a healing autodoc, our hero awakens with a restored, younger body. The passive Louis and several alien companions soon get caught up in a war involving weaponery that could destroy Ringworld. The novel finally comes into its own about midway through, while a glossary and a cast of characters will help orient those new to the series. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
After a decade, Niven returns to that marvel of engineering, a world consisting of an enormous ring circling a star, inhabited by all sorts of interesting species. Louis Wu, survivor of the first human expedition to Ringworld, is at the mercy of Tunesmith, the ghoul protector, who struggles to defend Ringworld from all comers. Ships of many races continue the Fringe War, and Wu, with Acolyte, a protector of a "hanging people" species, and mysterious but lucky Wembleth take it upon themselves to save Ringworld from overzealous outsiders. It takes Wu a while to piece together the present situation, for he has just spent some time in the autodoc after a battle with Bram, but he and his companions end up in the realm of an especially old protector, Proserpina, who is imprisoned in the Isolation Zone. Thereafter, the protectors' plan to save Ringworld and end the Fringe War takes shape. Action and clever world building should captivate newcomers to Ringworld, while returners will appreciate picking up loose ends from previous Ringworld volumes. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Welcome to a world like no other.

The Ringworld: a landmark engineering achievement, a flat band 3 million times the surface area of Earth, encircling a distant star. Home to trillions of inhabitants, not all of which are human, and host to amazing technological wonders, the Ringworld is unique in all of the universe.

Explorere Louis Wu, an Earth-born human who was part of the first expedition to Ringworld, becomes enmeshed in interplanetary and interspecies intrigue as war, and a powerful new weapon, threaten to tear the Ringworld apart forever. Now, the future of Ringworld lies in the actions of its children: Tunesmith, the Ghould protector; Acolyte, the exiled son of Speaker-to-Animals, and Wembleth, a strange Ringworld native with a mysterious past. All must play a dangerous in order to save Ringworld's population, and the stability of Ringworld itself.

Blending awe-inspiring science with non-stop action and fun, Ringworld's Children, the fourth installment of the multiple award-winning saga, is the perfect introduction for readers new to this New York Times bestselling series, and long-time fans of Larry Niven's Ringworld.



About the Author
Larry Niven is the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Ringworld series, along with many other science fiction masterpieces. His Beowulf's Children, co-authored with Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes was a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Chatsworth, California.



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The fourth and seemingly last visit to Niven's spectacular ring-shaped space habitat (The Ringworld Throne, 1996, etc.), whose livable surface area is three million times that of planet Earth. Earth explorer Louis Wu, trapped on the Ringworld along with the Hindmost, a timorous, manipulative alien, finds the Ringworld's very survival threatened by the Fringe War, a motley collection of human and alien spaceships that fight among themselves, each hoping to conquer (or at least land on) the Ringworld and learn its fabulous scientific secrets. However, the Ringworld's own defenses and the vigilance of the blindingly fast, armored, sexless, superintelligent Ghoul protector, Tunesmith, prevent the Fringe Warriors from prevailing. Tunesmith, Louis suspects, intends to make Louis himself into a protector. Finally, the Fringe War erupts when an antimatter bomb blows a hole in the Ringworld through which the atmosphere would drain and be lost to space in a matter of days. Another complication arises with the emergence of Proserpina, an ancient protector who claims to be a Pak, one of the Ringworld's vanished builders (protectors vigorously compete to protect their own species' genes). Aided by the young Kzinti exile Acolyte; Wembleth, a Ringworld native with a lucky knack for survival; and detective Roxanny Gauthier of Earth's armed forces, Louis is willing to help Tunesmith save the Ringworld. But, disinclined to become a protector permanently bound to the Ringworld, he must also find a way to escape the fate Tunesmith has planned for him. An involving and engrossing addition to one of science fiction's grand sagas.


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