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The GUIDE TO LARRY NIVEN'S RINGWORLD
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.
- GenresScience Fiction
188 pages, Hardcover
Published February 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 4, 2025
Well I found this book again in my shelves and thought I would give it a go. Though I will be honest it has really surprised me how long ago I read it (13 years !!!)
The reason I decided to read it again was the fact that I have been looking back at the wider collection of work - tales of Know Space and more importantly the Man-Kzin wars so of course sooner or later the Ringworld would make an appearance. So here we are - and ironically I think I should be giving this a higher rating as having re-read some of the material already it makes a lot more sense.
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 the book itself - I am in two minds over visual guides - sometimes they help support my imagination - where i am not sure or cannot make my mind up they bring clarity and show me what the author/artist was thinking then at other times I hate them as they conflict with what i have in mind - this book wanders from one to the other. The technology I love but I always find the beasts I can imagine differently.
Either way its a fascinating book fleshing out a lot of material - I just wish as the series progressed that they would reissue it with updated material
The reason I decided to read it again was the fact that I have been looking back at the wider collection of work - tales of Know Space and more importantly the Man-Kzin wars so of course sooner or later the Ringworld would make an appearance. So here we are - and ironically I think I should be giving this a higher rating as having re-read some of the material already it makes a lot more sense.
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 the book itself - I am in two minds over visual guides - sometimes they help support my imagination - where i am not sure or cannot make my mind up they bring clarity and show me what the author/artist was thinking then at other times I hate them as they conflict with what i have in mind - this book wanders from one to the other. The technology I love but I always find the beasts I can imagine differently.
Either way its a fascinating book fleshing out a lot of material - I just wish as the series progressed that they would reissue it with updated material
May 6, 2023
Good resource for ringworld and known space fans but it could have used more illustrations and better quality color ones would be preferable. Also I wish they would have notes on which stories the stuff appeared in.
June 18, 2021
Good companion to the series's. Art is a bit basic. But it was a nice refresher to the books. It was not complete in detail and misses a few things, gets some wrong and there is more that happened after the events discussed. But that might be due to when this and other books publishing sequence.
January 10, 2015
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.
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.
March 15, 2011
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.
June 11, 2011
This book goes along great with the Ringworld RPG
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews