Ringworld

Content Ratings

Moderate Romance

The novel contains frank discussions of selective breeding for luck through generations of sexual reproduction; Louis Wu's sexual history is referenced with period frankness, and relationships between characters carry a casual attitude toward sex typical of Niven's era.

Mild Themes

The novel explores the implications of artificial worlds, civilizational collapse, the ethics of breeding humans for genetic traits, and the hubris of any civilization that believes it can engineer the future.

Mild Violence

Survival dangers, ancient weapons, and encounters with feral Ringworld inhabitants involve combat and threat; violence is action-adventure in tone without graphic detail.

Synopsis

A mixed team of two humans, a catlike alien, and a two-headed alien from a species that evolved on luck sets out to explore the most astonishing structure in the known galaxy: the Ringworld, an enormous artificial band encircling a star with a surface area of millions of Earths. When they crash-land on its inner surface, the group must survive and unravel the mystery of why it was built and where its builders went. A landmark of hard science fiction worldbuilding.