Originally posted by NerveJam:
Just finished reading Ringworld's Children, by Larry Niven. Probably the last part of the Ringworld saga.
I must point out that Ringworld is Hard-SF, not fantasy …and has nothing to do with Hobbits
I was very much into hard-SF as a teen, without probably realising what constituted it! and found myself particularly drawn towards sci-fi books that involved future technology, exploration, but most of all, alien contact.
I’ve read a few of Niven’s ‘Known Space’ novels, and Ringworld with its vast engineered landscape and the mystery surrounding the origins of its long gone creators is my favourite book by him, though I imagine if I re-read it now then all the characters in it would probably appear very one-dimensional. I loved the Puppeteer’s and their whole conception, the secretive location of the home worlds travelling through space, and the Puppeteer's inherent ‘cowardice’ driving them to control everything around themselves, and the fact that it’s the insane ones who are the courageous ones. I read the sequel The Ringworld Engineers when it came out, but I’ve never read any of the other books in the series.
Regarding Niven, in the past I also read some of his collaborations with Jerry Pournelle: Footfall, and The Mote In God’s Eye, both are high action adventure sci-fi, each with fantastic aliens, and would no doubt make for great Hollywood movies.
In Footfall it’s the earth that’s being invaded by the herd-like elephantine Fithp who are on a holy mission, equiped with inherited technology which was left behind by an extinct species that were once the dominant race on their home planet. After the Fithp apparently subdue our resistance, and drop a large asteroid onto the earth causing worldwide damage, the USA secretly undertakes a plan to blast a few shuttles up into space on the back of some nuclear bombs, with the intention to fight the Fithp mothership. And in ‘Gods Eye it’s a first contact drama which unfolds between humans and all of the highly specialized subspecies of Moties that we encounter out in deep space.
