Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld

Kevin Stein,

James Clouse (Illustrator),

Todd Hamilton (Illustrator)

3.45 · Rating details · 73 ratings · 4 reviews

Guides readers through Ringworld, a land area of seven million Earths populated by strange and wonderful beings. By the author of Tales of Known Space.

Get A Copy

Paperback, 188 pages

Published February 1st 1994 by Baen Books

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld

Lists with This Book

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by John Clute

The Jewel-Hinged Jaw by Samuel R. Delany

Science Fiction and Fantasy Critiques

140 books — 9 voters

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials by Wayne Barlowe

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges

Xenobiology,Speculative Biology, and other reference and field guides of fictional creatures

44 books — 10 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-53

Average rating 3.45 ·

Rating details

· 73 ratings · 4 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Guide to Larry Niven's Ringworld

Aug 01, 2012 Andrew rated it liked it

This is an interesting book - for several reasons . First off I love the tales of Known Space the loosely set series of stories which link together the majority of Larry Niven's science fiction stories, secondly some years ago Chaosium released a role playing game based on the Ringworld book (yes there are now a whole series in fact several but at the time only 1 was in print) and this book acts as an unofficial reference and guide to the world sometimes supporting others copying that game.
Now ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 10, 2015 Fungus Gnat rated it it was ok

Fans of Niven’s classic novel and his other “Known Space” works will likely find this Guide fascinating and handy. Starting with maps and a timeline, Stein covers Ringworld physics, life forms of Known Space and beyond, and relevant space gizmos before concluding with a glossary. It’s a credit to the capacious nature of Ringworld that it can support such a panoply of alien races over dozens of light-years of space and billions of years.

Having read only the central novel, I cannot answer a questi Fans of Niven’s classic novel and his other “Known Space” works will likely find this Guide fascinating and handy. Starting with maps and a timeline, Stein covers Ringworld physics, life forms of Known Space and beyond, and relevant space gizmos before concluding with a glossary. It’s a credit to the capacious nature of Ringworld that it can support such a panoply of alien races over dozens of light-years of space and billions of years.

Having read only the central novel, I cannot answer a question that intrigues me: How much of this book is Niven and how much is Stein? Clearly, much of the book, perhaps most of it, is not drawn from Ringworld. Is Stein taking off from material in the other books, filling in details out of his imagination, or is he elaborating on the substance as well? For example, I don’t think the notion that the Puppeteers instigated the superconductor plague appears in Ringworld, where the plague’s provenance is attributed to inadvertent interstellar transport of microbes adapted to live off a technological society’s junk—an alternative that strikes me as more scientifically compelling. Also, Stein clearly separates the Ringworld Engineers and City Builders by hundreds of thousands of years—a separation that is less clear in the novel, where I recall Prill’s affiliation as vague. Some more comprehensive crosswalk (or any crosswalk) from Stein’s timeline to the Ringworld books would have been more helpful.

The Guide is sized to its tasks: An 8.5 x 11 inch paperback (also available in hard cover), it contains some 180 pages, including roughly 30K words of text and dozens of drawings (b&w), mostly of alien life forms, which match closely the verbal descriptions provided. That text is hardly meticulous, though—grammatical and other errors in the copy are frequent.

My rating applies to readers like myself who liked but were not in awe of the central Ringworld novel. True fans and SF world builders are likely to react to the Guide with more enthusiasm. People who did not appreciate or have not read the central novel are of course not likely to have any use for the Guide.

...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 14, 2011 Darth rated it liked it

Shelves: niven

More a compilation of folks, facts and figures in the "Known Space" Universe, this has interest to Niven completists, but do not expect it to cut any new ground. It may give the casual reader a better insight into the goings on all around the galaxy of the Niven stories. ...more

flag Like · see review