History Literature / Ringworld

* ''The Ringworld Engineers''
* ''The Ringworld Throne''
* ''Ringworld's Children''

** It's brought up at one point she might not have been born all that lucky after all, and just looked that way for the benefit of people who were -- or who were just born way more lucky (that or their kids' would turn out to be really lucky that a lucky-enough person wound up going to the Ring when she did). (Trying to follow cause and effect in a universe with people whose mere existence is supposed to cause the entire universe to automatically conspire in their favor is a serious MindScrew.)

%%* CaptainOblivious: Teela Brown.

* LongevityTreatment: There is an equivalent to boosterspice available on the title space construct.

* CowardlySidekick: Nessus, through and through. It's a known trait of his people, to the point that puppeteer society considers him insane for willing to risk his life to starship travel.

A LiveActionAdaptation is currently in pre-production at Creator/PrimeVideo.

A LiveActionAdaptation is currently in pre-production at Amazon Studios.

* CriticalResearchFailure: Niven is rightly viewed as one of the hardest of hard science fiction authors and technologically literate to boot; but he quotes the constant of gravitational acceleration as 9.98 metres per second (the correct figure is 9.81, and the unit is metres per second ''squared''), and names Nereid as the larger moon of Neptune (that's Triton; Nereid is ''far'' smaller).

* FasterThanLightTravel: The characters make use of experimental, extremely fast FTL drives to reach the Ringworld, although it's so distant that it still takes years to get there from Known Space.

** Louis Wu actually discusses this at one stage, making the obvious suggestion that it may simply not have worked at all. Later on, it turns into BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor as Teela morphs into a Protector, at which point it becomes obvious that what actually constitutes "luck" is so subjective as to be meaningless.

* {{Pheromones}}: [[ourVampiresAreDifferent "Vampires"]] secrete pheromones which are "close enough" to affect all other Pak-descendants (it's implied there are some hallucinogenic properties as well). The pheromone-fueled orgy that follows serves as a distraction to allow the vampires to feed.

* NeverLiveItDown: InUniverse. Because Red Herders are culturally monogamous, much of the conflict in the "Fearless Vampire Slayers" storyline in ''The Ringworld Throne'' comes from Tegger and Warvia fearing that they'd get a reputation for promiscuity after all the rishathra they had while under the influence of vampire scent.

* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Louis Wu is almost two-hundred and fifty years old by the end of the series but looks around twenty. It's implied Hindmost is (like most Puppeteers) several centuries older. And of course, Protectors can live for thousands of years.

* CaptainOblivious: Teela Brown.
* CentrifugalGravity: The Ringworld is designed to make use of it.

** Nessus isn't just considered insane. He ''is''. He is bipolar, swinging back and forth between "normal" puppeteer cowardice and periods of berserker-like bravery.
*** His insanity is in fact bred for in his species. The Hindmost isn't actually in the safest position of the tribe, but the one in the best position to strike enemies following them. Puppeteers can kick a heart out the back of the ribcage with little physical effort, assuming their mental effort is able.
* CryCute: "[Teela] was one of those rare, lucky women whom crying does not make ugly."

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Halrloprillalar [[spoiler:dies between the first and second books, due to the interaction of incompatible drugs]].
* ElectricInstantGratification: The tasp, which stimulates the pleasure center of the brain from a distance, and the droud, a surgically implanted device used by current addicts.

* FasterThanLightTravel: Though the Ringworld is so distant it still takes years to get there from Known Space.

* ForeignQueasine: The City Builders are disgusted by Louis Wu's love of cheese.

* HotLibrarian: Harkabeeparolyn, if you're into rishathra.
* InterspeciesRomance: "Rishathra" is sex between different species used for diplomatic purposes or when meeting new tribes. It's also apparently a form of birth control for those species that get pregnant every time they mate amongst their own.

* LoveIsInTheAir: Vampires have super-pheromones that induce a [[DistractedByTheSexy very distracting]] mating frenzy in their victims. "Essence of Vamp" is a popular perfume among City Builders...
* LukeIAmYourFather: [[spoiler:Louis is Wembleth's father.]]
* MetalPoorPlanet: As an artificial world, there are no mineral ores: if you dig into a mountain, you'll hit the [[{{Unobtanium}} scrith]] underlying the sculpted landscape after a few hundred meters. As a result, if civilization on the ring collapses it will remain stuck at the stone age.
** Consequently, Larry Niven is constantly talking about all the ways that the Ringworld is reacquiring knowledge. The ghouls have an extensive communication network and advanced knowledge, City Builders have huge libraries, returning ships have brought back advanced knowledge, and Protectors with their genius intellects are CONSTANTLY turning up all over the ring. Add to that a large number of Known Space ships marooned all over the Ringworld with vast information storage libraries and you're looking at a dawning technological renaissance.

* OddOrganUpTop: Zigzagged by Pierson's Puppeteers, which have their brains in their thoracic cavities. Their two heads, resembling hands with ExtraDigits, play no role in thinking, instead being used mainly for eating and manipulating objects.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Louis Wu, Chmeee, and pretty much anyone else who has taken boosterspice [[spoiler:or used Carlos Wu's nanotech autodoc.]]
* OurBetterIsDifferent: The Puppeteers value survival to the point of cowardice, so their leaders are "those who lead from behind" and the highest ranking one is called "The Hindmost".
** This has a hidden subtlety. As herd animals, the Puppeteers don't charge enemies the way territorial hominids do; they run away. So the hindmost member of a puppeteer herd is actually the rear guard, the ''most'' exposed and combative of the bunch. It's unclear if the title of Hindmost is actually meant to be read this way, or is a CulturalTranslation into human terms.
* OurGhoulsAreCreepier: They are a carrion-eating species of Ringworld hominid who are the Ring's garbage collectors, long-range communicators, information brokers and undertakers. Yes, they eat the dead. No, the other races don't object: that's their job.
** Well, okay, occasionally other races have objected. This has always resulted in aggressive negotiations by the ghouls, followed by extermination by the ghouls if said race doesn't get the point. No one knows how advanced the ghouls are and NO ONE wants to find out.

* ProudWarriorRace: The Kzinti.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Speaker-to-Animals (Later Chmeee) [[spoiler:and his son, Acolyte.]]

* RazorFloss:
** Shadow square wire.
** Sinclair molecule chain.
** Variable swords.

** The last novel has a character who's the last surviving true Pak Protector on the Ringworld. She's several MILLION years old.

** At the time Niven wrote ''Ringworld'', he hadn't decided to {{Canon Weld|ing}} his stories of the Belters and near-future space exploration, including ''Protector'', into the same universe with the far-future stories of Beowulf Shaeffer and Louis Wu. This is why Nessus says "There is evidence enough that your species evolved on Earth," even though later novels show he would have known who the Pak were. It wasn't until after Niven established the [[StandardSciFiSetting future history]] of Known Space that he realized Pak Protectors were the most likely builders of the Ringworld. In some author's notes he's said that he deliberately let Louis come to the wrong conclusion to simplify the first book.
** Louis doesn't seem to know that the galactic core explosion was discovered by Beowulf Shaeffer. Later stories revealed that Shaeffer was his adopted father, and so must carefully note that Shaeffer kept his adventurous life a secret. Which is quite odd, as Teela reads about Beowulf's trip to the galactic core in Louis's library in his mansion. Apparently, Louis never bothered to check into the publicly available materials on his fathers.
*** It's usually at this point that the Larry Niven discussion group starts mumbling about one or more lost generations between Beowulf and Louis. Yes, there are holes and no, you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for it to be patched up.
** The fact that most Ringworlders pronounce Louis' name as "Luweewu" in ''The Ringworld Engineers'' implies that Louis uses the French pronunciation of his name. ''Ringworld's Children'' says he pronounces it "Loo-is."
*** [[spoiler:That was actually an assumed name he took when he met up with some crash-landed ARM crewmembers, as Louis Wu is known to pretty much everyone and he didn't want to explain he was working for a Protector.]]
** The inspiration for many of the sequels was to provide explanations for some of the [[FridgeLogic technical problems]] [[invoked]] that other people found with the original design. (See ShownTheirWork, below.)
** The native bird-hunters encountered in the first book didn't understand what sickness was, apparently under Niven's assumption that the Ringworld's builders wouldn't have brought diseases into their artificial habitat. By the third novel, someone must've pointed out to him that ''new'' diseases would evolve from benign soil bacteria that would've been necessary for its ecosystem; the existence of plagues on the Ringworld is acknowledged when one of the Night People describes how they'd directed the necessary cremation of victims.
* RingWorldPlanet - but of course.
* RubberForeheadAliens: With the exception of the garden maps and food animals, any being with two arms and two legs is some sort of strange hominid species. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] since they all evolved from the same common ancestor as human beings from Earth.

** NotDrawnToScale: However, many of the artists in various countries who paint cover art for the ''Ringworld'' novels have a hard time grasping the proportions of it. One of the few exceptions is Rick Sternbach's cover, pictured above.
** A to-scale drawing of the Ringworld isn't very dramatic. As Niven himself put it in ''The Ringworld Engineers'': "Picture fifty feet of baby-blue Christmas ribbon one inch wide. String it in a circle, on edge on the floor, and put a candle in the middle. Now expand the scale: The Ringworld was a ribbon of unreasonably strong material, a million miles wide and six hundred million miles long, strung in a circle ninety-five million miles in radius with a sun at the center."

* TagalongKid: Kawaresksenjajok.
* TragicMonster: [[spoiler:Teela, after becoming a protector in ''The Ringworld Engineers'' and deliberately forcing Louis to kill her.]]

* {{Unobtainium}}: The centrifugal force of the Ring is so great, any physically possible material would be torn apart under the stress. Niven posits ''scrith'', a metal with tensile strength on the order of the force that holds atomic nuclei together.

** The General Products Hull is another example of Unobtainium. It's transparent to visible light and ''only'' visible light, and absolutely impervious to any kind of harm except outright disintegration by antimatter.

** Also the Shadow Square Wire. A heap of it looks like smoke from a distance. It will slice apart any matter that touches it: trying to pick it up will cut off your fingers, and [[spoiler:one character even runs into a trap made from it and gets his head cut off (fortunately he has a spare).]]
* AfterTheEnd: The Ring once had a widespread civilization[[note]]which only covered about 12 degrees of the Ring, but given the size of the Ring itself it dwarfs civilizations that cover multiple star systems[[/note]], but it fell-- literally.

* BizarreAlienBiology: One of the main themes of the book.

** Kzinti females are non-sentient, although [[spoiler:it's all but stated that this is due to deliberate genetic engineering by the Kzinti males so long ago that they themselves have forgotten about it. This is supported by the fact that the Kzinti females on the Map of Kzin, descendants of Kzinti abducted in prehistoric times, are fully sentient beings]].
** It's suggested in the first book that puppeteer females must mate with [[ThreeWaySex two males]], one of each of the two "male types" the puppeteers have, in order to conceive. In the second, the Hindmost (who is mated to Nessus) explains Puppeteer reproduction in more detail. The "female" Puppeteer is actually a different species, which acts as a host for the embryo formed by the gametes placed into it by the Puppeteers, whose two "male types" are their actual "male" and "female" genders. The organs used to deposit gametes are described as being "most similar". They're explicitly compared is to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumonoidea Ichneumonoid wasps]]. Louis then understands why Nessus didn't want to talk about it: "This is ugly."
* [[WorkingForABodyUpgrade Blackmailed With A Body Upgrade]]: In the second book, the Hindmost recruits Chmeee (formerly Speaker-to-Animals) for the second expedition by offering him the technology to perform {{Longevity Treatment}}s on kzinti. The twist is, the Hindmost demonstrated the treatment on Chmeee, who now no longer looks like himself and must have the technology in order to prove his identity to the kzinti government and keep his property and name.

* TurtleIsland: In the second book, it's mentioned alien creatures fitting this trope live in the Great Oval Ocean.

** There's a massive argument for UnluckilyLucky. After all, what Teela needs might not be [[BecarefulWhatYouWishFor what she wants]]. It's highly unlikely to be what those around her want (or need), either. And, then you've got her kids to think about. Or her lottery-cousins' kids. And, all their kids. [[TheNeedsOfTheMany Protectors ''are'' all about the bloodline, after all.]] Even the supposedly "lucky" ones might have luckier relatives who might "need" them where they wind up, regardless of what emotional wringers it puts them and those around them through. Ouch?

** It's brought up at one point she might not have been born lucky after all, and just looked that way for the benefit of people who were. (Trying to follow cause and effect in a universe with people whose mere existence is supposed to cause the entire universe to automatically conspire in their favor is a serious MindScrew.)
** Louis Wu actually discusses this at one stage, making the obvious suggestion that it may simply not have worked at all. Later on, it turns into BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor as Teela morphs into a Protector, at which point it becomes obvious that what actually constitutes "luck" is so subjective as to be meaningless

'''Chiron:''' It is a star with a ring around it. A ring of solid matter. An artifact.

** This has a hidden subtlety. As herd animals, the Puppeteer don't charge enemies the way territorial hominids do; they run away. So the hindmost member of a puppeteer herd is actually the rear guard, the ''most'' exposed and combative of the bunch. It's unclear if the title of Hindmost is actually meant to be read this way, or is a CulturalTranslation into human terms.

* {{Retcon}}: At the time Niven wrote ''Ringworld'', he hadn't decided to {{Canon Weld|ing}} his stories of the Belters and near-future space exploration, including ''Protector'', into the same universe with the far-future stories of Beowulf Shaeffer and Louis Wu. This is why Nessus says "There is evidence enough that your species evolved on Earth," even though later novels show he would have known who the Pak were. It wasn't until after Niven established the [[StandardSciFiSetting future history]] of Known Space that he realized Pak Protectors were the most likely builders of the Ringworld.
** Louis doesn't seem to know that the galactic core explosion was discovered by Beowulf Shaeffer. Later stories revealed that Shaeffer was his adopted father, and so must carefully note that Shaeffer kept his adventurous life a secret.
*** Which is quite odd, as Teela reads about Beowulf's trip to the galactic core in Louis's library in his mansion. Aparently, Louis never bothered to check into the publicly available materials on his fathers.

* FullyAbsorbedFinale: Louis' storyline in ''Ringworld's Children'' is concluded in ''[[KnownSpace Fate of Worlds]]'', the fifth and final installment of the ''Fleet of Worlds'' series co-written with Edward M. Lerner.