Ringworld's Children
Larry Niven may be America's greatest living hard-SF writer. Much of his SF belongs to his famous future history, the Tales of Known Space. His preeminent creation is the Ringworld: an immense, artificial, ring-shaped planet that circles a Known Space star. Possibly SF's greatest feat of world-building, the Ringworld is featured in four novels: the Hugo and Nebula Award winnerRingworld(1970);The Ringworld Engineers(1980);The Ringworld Throne(1996); andRingworld's Children(2004).Ringworld's Childrenreturns series protagonist Louis Wu to the titular world. Louis and his friend The Hindmost, an alien of the Pierson's puppeteer race, are prisoners of the Ghoul protector Tunesmith, a Ringworld native, who is deliberately provoking the warships that surround his world. All the star-faring races of Known Space have sent warships to the Ringworld, and they are already at the brink of war. If fighting breaks out, the near-indestructible Ringworld will be destroyed: dissolved by antimatter weapons.The Ringworld series is so complex and ambitious thatRingworld's Childrenopens with a glossary and a cast of characters, inclusions that even many Known Space fans will need. Newcomers to Niven's artificial planet should start withRingworld.--Cynthia Ward