#24 Ringworld by Larry Niven

It is funny to me how I thought this list would be all fantasy books, but ends up with a lot of fiction/science fiction in it. I guess I am a little more rounded than my brain thinks.

I stumbled across this book in college, or just before. It was written in the 1970s and tells the story of Louis Wu, he is 200 and getting tires of life. Nothing is new or different, nothing changes. He is approached by Nessus, who is a Pierson’s Puppeteer, he wants him to go on a mission with him.

Puppeteers are reclusive. In fact, they live in terror of everything. They chose Nessus for this mission because he is slightly insane. Only a puppeteer that is insane would travel among humans, and risk hyperspace.

Louis accepts and is taken to the secret puppeteer home world. They are busily planning for the galaxies end in a billion years. They have seen a ring world planet. Someone that smart could be a threat and a massive galaxy power, so they must go and explore to find the extent of the threat.

Louis accepts, along with his girlfriend Teela, a representative of the Kzin (a cat warrior race) and Nessus. In the process of getting to the ring world, they are attacked by the world’s defenses and crash there and must figure out how to survive. The intelligent beings that built it are gone, or the descendants are roaming this giant world along.

In the end, it is fascinating to think of the science and all that could go wrong with it. The exploration is interesting and fantastic. The world building is great and slowly reveals itself.

The sequels are a mix of good and mediocre. That is normal for sequels, I enjoyed them all to different degrees, but it was always interesting