Book Review: Ringworld

To think there was once a time I could confuse this title with Discworld. They have little in common besides fantasy (in a broad sense that includes sci-fi) and an author whose first name rhymes with "airy." Larry Niven feels less like Terry Pratchett than a combination of Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, for better and worse.

( Hard to summarize without spoiling )

( More on the characters )

( More philosophy and pseudoscience )

Thanks, sleepyjohn00, for recommending the book. I don't find it life-changing the way you did, and I doubt I'll read another in the series, but it kept me entertained.



I'm all sci-fied out in the literary realm. I'll take a break with Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club, a murder mystery featuring real 19th-century figures like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as detectives. The time seems ripe, since I also recently read "The Courtship of Miles Standish" just to see what my mom had to read in school (flowery but hard to absorb).