Larry Niven’s 1970 novel Ringworld is a beloved classic that has received Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. But sci-fi author Rajan Khanna says the book has some major shortcomings for modern readers.
“I think what this novel becomes is basically two thought experiments tied together,” Khanna said in Episode 505 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy audio file. “The characters are there to help explain these parts of the thought experiment, but they don’t really — to me — become fully formal, likable, relatable, or even enjoyable characters. ”
Ringworld currently being adapted for television by Akiva Goldsman, with Game of Thrones Director Alan Taylor is scheduled to direct the pilot. Science fiction author Mercurio D. Rivera think that Ringworld can make a great program, provided certain changes are made to the source material. “I can see this being turned into something really cool,” he said. “Because it’s not going to be that they put some of the things that bother us in the TV series — about the treatment of female characters. That will be fixed. And the setup will be phenomenal. They just need to come up with a better plot.”
A major story element in Ringworld is the idea that one of the characters, Teela Brownwas bred to be spiritually “lucky”. Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley say it’s a detail the program will likely want to change. “I feel like the luck of being genetically modified is only believable in prose, and I think if you let the actors talk about it, it would be completely ridiculous,” he said.
Another big challenge for the show will be portraying Nessus, a two-headed, three-legged alien known as “Puppeter.” Science fiction author Abby Goldsmith suggested that instead of using CGI, the program should literally turn Nessus into a puppet. “They will receive Henson Workshop,” she said. “It’s basically a Muppet.”
Listen to the full interview with Rajan Khanna, Mercurio D. Rivera, and Abby Goldsmith in Episode 505 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
David Barr Kirtley on Known space The universe:
When I started reading [Ringworld], I have absolutely loved it. I was like, oh yeah, I remember all this from when I was a kid, when I read books like The War between Man-Kzin, which is covered quite a bit in the early chapters of this book. One of my favorite sci-fi stories is called “The Neutron Star”. Niven has this character named Beowulf Schaeffer, who is an adventurer and explorer. In Beowulf Schaeffer’s second story, called “At the Core”, he flies to the center of the galaxy and reports back that the galaxy is exploding… So I remember reading all that stuff. as a child and all of that is referenced in this novel, so I was very excited when I read the first chapters of this book.
Mercurio D. Rivera on world building:
The first chapters are very powerful. It’s a master class in world building. I realized that this book is called Ringworldand then he actually creates a world, but the figurative world-building in those early chapters – he does it through the lens of our protagonist Louis Wu200th birthday party of. He’s dancing around the planet using transfer booths to celebrate in all different parts of the world and it’s a great device to show us that future. It’s a homogenous future, where because of these transit stations, all cultures have disappeared – distinctions have been erased. So there is a existential identity that creates this restlessness, at least in our protagonist Louis Wu. So I think that’s great.
Abby Goldsmith on Teela Brown:
Teela, objectively, isn’t all so lucky. It’s something that’s been told over and over, but very rarely shown. She ends up with a man who resentes and fears her who doesn’t mourn her when he believes she’s dead – that’s Louis – then she ends up with a barbarian who treats her like a slave. . She fell, she hit her head, she got hit by a crowd, she had to go to the emergency room all the time. So, objectively, she’s not all that lucky, and you have Louis who assumes that any bad thing that happens to her is to cause her to mature and grow, and thus it’s part of her luck factor. But for me it was his own insecurity. He is afraid of a woman who is more powerful or smarter than him. So for me, he is considered a very unreliable narrator.
Rajan Khanna about female characters:
There are two heroines of any note in this book. One was newborn and naive to the point of being stupid, as she described it, and the other was a literal whore… [Louis] tell Prill, “Oh, if you come back to me, we don’t have bald women, so you’ll have to wear a wig.” And it’s like, is that a big deal? If they’re sexually liberal and whatever, why does that matter? That got me thinking, because this whole supposedly liberal future became very conservative and based on traditional gender norms. At first they talked about how they could change their face, skin color, and hair, and one line, I said, “Really? What’s going on here?”
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