by Larry Niven
First published 1996
Louis Wu joins an unlikely crew sent to investigate the most spectacular discovery in known space. The Pierson's puppeteers have found an artificial ring encircling a star, stretching 180 million miles across its diameter. Too terrified to explore it themselves, the two-headed aliens recruit Wu and his human companion, along with a fierce kzin warrior and a single puppeteer guide. The ringworld dwarfs any known structure, offering land area equivalent to millions of Earths. But their mission goes catastrophically wrong when their ship crashes on the ring's surface. Stranded on an alien construct of impossible scale, the team must traverse vast distances on foot. They encounter the ring's mysterious inhabitants and uncover clues about its ancient builders. Wu discovers that survival depends not just on crossing the ringworld's enormous expanse, but on understanding why the puppeteers really sent them there. The journey becomes a test of human ingenuity against alien engineering on a cosmic scale.
Genres: science-fiction, adventure, space-opera, hard-science-fiction
Vibes: epic, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Ringworld
Audio Cassette · Blackstone Audio, Inc.