Our verdict on RingWorld de Larry Niven: Sci-Fi Classic has beautiful mathematics, shame about Teela

It was a whole experience, going from Magic Technicolor realism of the wild dystopia of Michel Nieva, DengueLarry Niven's classic science fiction edge, RingworldPublished for the first time in 1970 and very refolutive of science fiction writing of that time. Not an entirely bad experience, the mind, but a change of rhythm all enough for the new reading club of scientists. I was a teenager when I read for the last time RingworldAnd a kind of extremely non -critical adolescent girl, so I wanted to return to a novel which I remembered affectionately and to see how it resisted the test of time – and my eye a little more critical.

The first thing to say is that a lot of things I loved Ringworld were still there. It is, for me, a novel that inspires fear – with the immensity of its imagination, the size of its megastructures, the distance it travels in space. I remembered this fear very early, when our protagonist Louis Wu (more on him later) remembers standing on the edge of Mount Looktthat on a distant planet. “The long Fall River, on this world, ends with the highest cascade in the known space. Louis' eyes had followed him as far as they could penetrate the empty mist. The white without business of the emptiness himself had seized his mind, and Louis Wu, half hypnotized, had sworn to live forever. How can he see everything there was?

This enormous, this desire for exploration, knowledge and discoveries, is one of the main reasons why I like science fiction. What else is there and what can we know more? From this domain of deadly sunflowers in the ringworld – what a scene! – like Niven of our crew in space, looking at the bottom of the ring world and the enormous bulge of a deep ocean that goes beyond them, Ringworld He has the shovel, and I lapped it. “A man can lose his soul among the white stars … they call it The look far. It's dangerous.

I also really appreciated the way Niven made us pick up the breadcrumbs from the place where we are in time and in technological developments; At one point, Freeman Dyson, that of the Dyson spheres which inspired the Ringworld, is described as “one of the ancient natural philosophers, pre-centers, almost pre-atomic”. I find this kind of delicious thing, and I was also (largely) amused by the extraterrestrials of Niven, from the curled terror of puppeteers to the speaker to animals brilliantly named (we, the extraterrestrials, are the animals). I imagined the speaker as a huge version of our large ginger cat, and I loved it rather.

As I wrote earlier, however, it is a piece of writing that feels a lot of his time, in terms of prose and somewhat excited sexist connotations, even if she succeeds (for me) in the wonderful mathematics and the physics of all this. The characters of Niven are quite unidimensional. Louis Wu is quite boring. There could be so much more in Teela, our wife clips. And once the crew is in the ringworld, it all seems a bit “then they went here, then they went there”, rather than being closely traced.

There was an intense discussion on this novel on our Facebook Page, and many of you have felt in the same way. “Although I appreciated it, I continued to withdraw interesting scientific aspects of history as well as the Rollicking adventure by the sexist aspects of the boys' club. It is a little sad that Larry Niven's vision of the distant future does not imply any progress in the vision of men on women, “said Jennifer Marano. “It reminds me of the first spy films. Beautiful woman who does not make enough sense not to be in love with a less interesting or intelligent man with a fairly enormous ego,” said Eliza Rose.

Alan Perrett was even less impressed by the behavior of Louis Wu: “I must admit that Louis Wu is absolutely frightening. He treats the woman he claims to love with contempt. He laughs when he discovered that she is the result of an experience of eugenics and then I look at her, I see her in the casual and continues to laugh. I hope I have been 200 years old, I learned a little more empathy than that. ”.

Gosia Furmanik grew up reading science fiction from Niven's era because that was what was available-but “finally, sexism and the lack of female / various protagonists pushed me out science fiction for 15 years”. She did not again become in science fiction when she discovered “that nowadays, it is easy to find books of this kind written by non-white non-men who do not have this trap”. “”Ringworld Brought me back, not in the right direction, “writes Gosia.” Although not as blatant as in some of his contemporaries, grumpy sexism nevertheless infiltrates this book. “”

It is certainly true that the arch of the character of Teela was the biggest problem for most of us with this book. “I hated the end of Teela's story and the explanation of the way her luck has brought her to come on a mission. It seems that a woman cannot have a significant existence without a man! ” wrote Samatha Lane.

Samantha also makes a great point on the way in which “male human is the most perceptual creature in the universe” created by Niven. “This arrogance on the pure intelligence of humans comes from traditional humanism that puts humans at the center of everything – as rational, special and upper beings. Combine this with the recent conquest of space (man landed on the moon the previous year) and it is like a joy fire of the collective ego, ”she writes.

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However, on the positive points: Niall Leighton “appreciated the magnitude of the novel” and thinks that he did not “dated science fiction of that time”, while for Andy Feest, “science was probably the most interesting thing” (he found the characters “unwavering” and the “slightly shaken” chauvinism).

Some readers approved Niven's heavy hand with mathematics – this “added to my pleasure,” wrote Linda Jones, while Darren Rumbold “particularly liked” the Klemperer Rosettes. It did not work for all of you, however: Phil Gurski “was delighted to read this classic science fiction novel and I really wanted, really enjoying it, but the technobabble continued to bother me. I had trouble following. “

Overall, I think the reading club has found an interesting exercise to dig into this classic science fiction and to hold it in today's light. I think we will make another classic early enough, and listen to the suggestions of readers who have tipped the books of Ursula K. Guin, Nk Jenisin and Joanna Russ as possible palace cleaners.

Then, however, is something a little more modern: Kaliane Bradley's successful travel novel, The Ministry of Time. Yes, he has a woman as a protagonist, and yes, he passes the Bechdel test. You can read an article from Kaliane here in which she explains why (and how) she wrote a novel on time travel, and you can consult this fun opening of the book here. Come read with us and tell us what you think of our Facebook page.