Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Ringwelt

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Ringwelt by Larry Niven

17 reviews

theobromo's review against another edition

challenging mysterious slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.5

In this riff on Wizard of Oz, the emotionless Looey Woo, takes his “Dorothy” to find the Ringworld full of flying cities and crazy locals. Unfortunately he never finds his heart, the lion-kzin is not without a brain(and may be the most likeable character), the cowardly bifurcated deer is an a-hole mastermind, and ultimately the Dorothy decides to run off with Conan the Barbarian, instead of making her way back home.

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attackrat's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

1.0

miserable, bigoted, and unimaginative. this book is throughly uninteresting beyond its applications of scientific imagination and even those are delivered so dully that it’s impossible to care.

“she must’ve had a doctorate in prostitution” about one of 2 female characters in the entire book. the other’s story is completely revolved around her having no agency. how creative.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote circles around this garbage please go read her books instead.

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angorarabbit's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

0.25

TW: Graphic blood, misogyny, sexual content, xenophobia. Moderate death, fire injury, homophobia, sexism, violence. Minor colonialism cursing (invented words substituted), slavery, war. There are two adults in a relationship with 180 year age difference. Spicy bits can be skipped with no loss to the story.

TLDR: Trying to read this in the early 1980’s caused me to turn to DrangonRiders of Pern.

Clarke tech: To much to type but for starters; transfer booths, ftl travel, tasps, stabis fields, General Product hulls, artificial gravity, sonic folds, food replicators, floating buildings, auto docs, the material for the ringworld, inherited psi.

Normally a 1 star book would be a DNF for me, I made an exception for this since it won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, has a 3.94 star rating on Goodreads and a .3.52 on StoryGraph. Also it is only 313 pages.

Firstly let’s talk about the book itself. Written in the third person the narrator knows the thoughts of one of the main characters. People technology, and places are not well described, the flora and fauna of the ringworld is described as “earth like”. The main characters seem to meander through the story without much idea of what they are doing or why. They also have little to no backstory and are not very interesting. The book ends on a cliffhanger. All in all, frustraing.

Next the science. Ringworld is still praised for the audacity of it’s science, but when you look at his shiny tech it is mostly borrowed from Star Trek. Which is hardly a surprise since Mr Niven did write for the show and the Kzin did appear in one episode, that I remember vaguely. of the animated series. Of the non-Star Trek tech the flycycles are cool, but their sonic fields, food replicators, and auto docs are basicaly magic dressed up in techno words. Floating buildings make absolutely no sense in a world with that much land. And of course the ringwood itself as written is unstable.

Lastly the elephant in the book. The problem of Teela. Of four crew members there is one female. When she expresses her feelings of inadequacy and failure to the crew member who is her partner he says,

“I’ll grant you blew that one. As a good luck charm, you’re fired. Come on, smile. We need you. We need you to keep me happy, so I don’t rape Nessus.…”

Basically Teela exists so we can get mild sex scenes. And a strange subplot about luck.

Finally at page 260 we get another female with a speaking part. This is the conversation that two of the male crew mates have about her after one character’s first conversation with her.

“Did you think to ask about the ratio of sexes abroad ship? How many of the thirty-six were women?”

“She told me that. Three.”

You might as well forget about her profession.”

A few pages later we get a scene that leaves no doubt as to what her profession was on her former ship.

To top it off the other two alien species female’s are non-sentient and for breeding purposes only. A quick check on the interwebs tells me that Mr Niven was husband to an wife who was an MIT graduate and active in many science fiction clubs as well as being a writer herself. I would love to know what her thoughts regarding Teela’s role in the Ringworld novel was. Unfortunately in my quick troll around I found nothing.

There must be something worthwhile in this novel for it to win the accolades it did. I just never found it.

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defcon's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

There is no reason to read this book in the 21st century (or beyond). SFF has come so far, society has come so far. Totally dull, poorly put together story, miserably written, awful characters, the worst politics (the politics are bad even for when it was written). I think even if you are part of this book's intended audience (straight, white, male, libertarian) you will still find plenty in here to make your lip curl in distaste in 2024.

Part of what makes it such a slog is that the SF is unimaginative and thinly drawn. I expected at the very least the Ringworld itself would be an interesting entity but it really wasn't, just another excuse for the author to write pointless and meandering vignettes that expand on his cartoonishly reactionary viewpoints. Many of the "revelations" in the book's plot were very obvious and/or came across as the author attempting to write Arthur C. Clarke fanfiction (now Clarke was someone who could offend a modern sensibility but actually tell a compelling sci-fi story).

What struck me as I read this is that the author clearly read plenty of SF, and enjoyed it, but did not himself have a mind for science, for systems, for fantasy or extrapolation. All of his world building comes across as regurgitations of half-digested meals. He's a not terribly smart or curious guy who tried to write terribly smart and curious characters, and the disconnect is palpable.

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ellwell's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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bookishchef's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

Many creative world building ideas but I would rather eat glass than read this again

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mar's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

sorry cant write a proper review bc every time i think about how Niven writes women in this book i start seeing red

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zee's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

3.5

Ringworld is rich in world building (both the Ringworld itself and the Puppeteer planet) and classic sci-fi alien species. It is, unfortunately, also rich in misogyny. There are 2 female-presenting characters, and one is used as a ditzy childish good luck charm (though her character arc at the end is neat!), and the other's purpose was to be her spaceship's whore (and therefore is powerful because sex and men).

For classic sci-fi written over 50 years ago, if you can manage to temper the misogyny, it is fun. The premise is interesting, the science is hard, and the concepts fairly unique. The central characters and dialogue are flat. Certainly not the most sexist of classic sci-fi, but there's also great books with significantly less.

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radmansparks1998's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Sci-fi with heavy world building emphasis at the cost of an engaging plot and characters. Some interesting ideas and themes presented.

If you read through chapter 8 and aren't sold on the premise/writing style then I'd stop reading, it does not get any better. Niven's writing style may be my least favorite thing about Ringworld. Makes reading a slog and exhausting. Some fun quips here and there between the characters are gasps of fresh air between meaningless tech jargon and info dumps. This is written for a particular type of person and that person is not me.

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storyorc's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Creative concepts with implications explored
The Ringworld, with its carefully-considered technologies for air, landscape, a day/night cycle, spaceports, defence and more, is just the start. Teleportation has rendered all human cities one homogenous soup. One weapon disables and addicts an enemy via artificial bursts of happiness. The ships have a stasis field that freezes you in time when it detects trouble. Some races can move entire planets. The idea of breeding for luck is a surprise through-line that explores how being the luckiest person alive might make you something that is barely even human.

Oh, and one of the principle characters is from a two-headed, three-legged horse alien race of highly-advanced cowards. I love him.

Multi-faceted characters

Speaker-to-Animals, an ambassador from the warrior tiger-man race, the kzin, is bloodthirsty, patriotic, and eager to command, but he is also scared at times, admits when he's in pain and is capable of highly intelligent deductions in the heat of battle (and hates being called cute).
Sweet, pitiful Nessus, who curls into a ball at the first sign of danger, is also an outcast among his kind for being bold enough to meet with aliens, longs for a mate, and is not above calculated cruelty when his mission requires it.
Teela Brown wears the skin of your typical 70s sci-fi feeble-brained woman but she contributes scientific theories to the group, does better mental math than the protagonist, and as the story evolves, her recklessness is cast in a very different light to plain old stupidity.
Louis is... ok Louis Wu is an everyman but he skates around some macho stereotypes thanks to his willingness to admit being afraid of pain, his patience with Nessus, and his indifference to power. He only wants to explore and have sex but he's also sharp enough to hold his own. (See content warning for light-spoiler notes on his misogyny.)

I also enjoy how the aliens stayed alien. The formal affectations of their speech makes you as a reader have to learn to read between the lines along with Louis. Rewarding.

Game theory politics
Bucking the trend of early hard sci-fi being all plot and no character, this party is like a group of colleagues desperately trying to remain professional on a business trip whilst the extended proximity reveals more and more to admire and despise about each other. Since the outcome of their mission to the Ringworld will greatly effect their races' futures, each character, despite being atypical for their race, is trying to optimise a particular cultural value - survival for Nessus, honour for Speaker, and whatever Teela's luck decides it wants - with Louis mediating. They hurt each other constantly, often while regretfully explaining their logic for doing so. At times, the coldness of it reminded me of the chess-like moves Cixin Liu's characters make in his Remembrances of Earth's Past trilogy. And yet, Ringworld retains its jovial road trip atmosphere between the gut punches.

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