Ringworld's Children

June 28, 2004
Ringworld
(1970) and its many offspring (The Ringworld Engineers
, etc.) are an SF institution. Unfortunately, bestseller Niven's first Ringworld installment in 10 years combines the worst qualities of hard SF (i.e., cardboard characters, a plot propelled primarily by technological infodumps) with the least appealing characteristics of sequelitis (i.e., a story no one can follow without fanatic dedication to earlier books). In the year 2893, 67 Ringworld days after Louis Wu, badly wounded in battle with "the Vampire protector, Bram," stepped into a healing autodoc, our hero awakens with a restored, younger body. The passive Louis and several alien companions soon get caught up in a war involving weaponery that could destroy Ringworld. The novel finally comes into its own about midway through, while a glossary and a cast of characters will help orient those new to the series. Agent, Eleanor Wood of the Spectrum Literary Agency. (July)

Forecast:
The high anticipation of the first Ringworld novel in a decade, backed by blurbs from Orson Scott Card, Steven Barnes and Fred Saberhagen, should help launch this onto many bestseller lists. Niven has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards.

June 15, 2004
The Ringworld, an artificially engineered realm resembling a ribbon or ring that is home to over a trillion people of wildly different species, faces threats from outsider ships from the inhabited worlds and its own aging superstructure. Newly restored in mind and body, Louis Wu, a member of the first expedition to Ringworld, joins three individuals of different species to prevent the destruction of Ringworld. After a ten-year hiatus, Niven (Ringworld; Ringworld Engineers; Ringworld Throne) returns with a tale of adventure, romance, and peril. A good choice for most sf collections.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2004
After a decade, Niven returns to that marvel of engineering, a world consisting of an enormous ring circling a star, inhabited by all sorts of interesting species. Louis Wu, survivor of the first human expedition to Ringworld, is at the mercy of Tunesmith, the ghoul protector, who struggles to defend Ringworld from all comers. Ships of many races continue the Fringe War, and Wu, with Acolyte, a protector of a "hanging people" species, and mysterious but lucky Wembleth take it upon themselves to save Ringworld from overzealous outsiders. It takes Wu a while to piece together the present situation, for he has just spent some time in the autodoc after a battle with Bram, but he and his companions end up in the realm of an especially old protector, Proserpina, who is imprisoned in the Isolation Zone. Thereafter, the protectors' plan to save Ringworld and end the Fringe War takes shape. Action and clever world building should captivate newcomers to Ringworld, while returners will appreciate picking up loose ends from previous Ringworld volumes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)