Kevin Stein - The Guide to Larry Niven’s Ringworld

T HE G UIDE TO L ARRY N IVENS R INGWORLD

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright 1994 by Bill Fawcett & Associates under license from New Frontier Entertainment

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-72204-2

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, February 1994

Distributed by Paramount
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stein, Kevin
THE GUIDE TO LARRY NIVENS RINGWORLD
p. cm.
ISBN 0-671-72192-5: $20.00
1. Niven, Larry. RingworldDictionaries. 2. Science fiction, AmericanDictionaries. I. Niven, Larry. Ringworld. II. Title.

T hough the Ringworld is a very personal vision, it has always had an aspect of collaboration. I finished the calculations for its spin while visiting some friends, borrowing their books to find the formulas. Lectured a Bay area science fiction club on the structure, that night. A stranger in Washington, DC, proof-read the first edition (The Niven/MacArthur Papers, volume 1) and found an amazing number of mistakes for us. The back covers of the fanzine APA-L for many months featured Ringworld puns, or Ringworlds with printing across the underside. One Ring to Rule Them All. Occupancy by more than 31015 persons is dangerous and unlawful.

At the 1971 World Science Fiction Convention, MIT students chanted in the Hilton halls: The Ringworld is unstable!

The best hard-SF artists have tried their skills on the Ringworld.

In 1970 the Ringworld was the strangest engineering feat since Dantes Divine Comedy. I feared it would be too off-the-wall. On the contrary, it seems just strange enough to stretch most minds, and just simple enough that everyone thinks he can improve it.

And the improvements flow in.

The flup/spillpipe/spill mountain system came from a high school class in Florida (and made Ringworld mining rights possible).

The shadow square system provides too much twilight. For proper day and night, use five long rectangles orbiting retrograde.

Why settle for shadow squares? Build a balloon out of solar power collector material, the size of the orbit of Mercury. No spin needed. Furnish with radiator fins, a power beam system, windows along the waist. The sun goes at the center.

Solar gravitywhich is powerful enough to collapse a real Dyson sphereis balanced by sunlight falling on the inside. You use all of the output of the sun for industrial poweras with a Dyson sphere. The windows allow sunlight for the Ringworld, and also allow attitude control.

Two weeks ago, at the second DCX rocket test flight, one of the rocket scientists spoke to me thus. He and some companions believe that the proper diameter for the Ringworld is a million miles (width is optional, as usual). At that size, a 24-hour rotation provides one gravity. You dont even need scrith; predictable materials, such as cable made from Fullerite carbon tubes, would be strong enough.

As always, I most appreciate the reader who gets the most out of the story. You never have to stop with just reading the book. A story is an intellectual playground too; and I like to leave the gates open when I leave.

What can you do with the Ringworld, that the author didnt think of? Dont violate my copyrights, please; dont break the equipment. But it is a playground. So play.

Ringworld is an artificial habitat that surrounds its sun. A good deal of sunlight is converted into energy for use on the surface of the ring. Other than Niven, there have been three other significant futurists who decided that any advanced industrial society must eventually build its own world surrounding its sun to gather the greatest amount of raw energy, the most important resource (other than matter and living space) to any expanding civilization.

In 1895, Constantin Tsiolkovski envisioned in his Dreams of Earth and Sky a cloud of space cities built from asteroids given atmospheres and water. These bubble-domed habitats orbited around the sun, harvesting light for the benefit of the citys inhabitants.

N.S. Kardeshev extended Tsiolkovskis ideas by creating subdivisions of technological societies: Type I, II, and III. Type I civilizations could reconfigure the surface of worlds, terraforming them for eventual population. Type II societies had the ability to transform solar systems. Type III civilizations could harness the matter and energy output of entire galaxies.

Freeman Dyson said that, One should expect within a few thousand years of entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star. The idea of a Dyson Sphere has become a hallmark of science fiction, a hollow, spherical shell built around a star to make use of every photon of light. The mass of a planet the size of Jupiter could be used to create a Dyson sphere several meters thick with the diameter of one Earth orbit.

The interior of a Dyson Sphere has billions of times the surface area of Earth. However, gravity generators must be emplaced all over the shell to ensure that nothing falls into the sun, including the atmosphere; there is no night, only the constant day of the sun overhead. The rest of the universe is hidden.

Ringworld takes care of the major problems encountered with building a Dyson Sphere (other than the actual construction itself, of course). A ring built around the sun with the same resources would be tens of meters thick, a million kilometers wide, and a billion kilometers long. The surface area would still be immense, and the ring can be spun to create artificial gravity through centrifugal force. Building a ringworld also takes care of one more important problem close to every romantics heart.

You can see the stars.

One of the greatest discoveries of the late 20th century was the tenth planet, named Persephone. This inspired the newly unified governments of Earth to begin further exploration of the cosmos. They quickly discovered other planets around nearby stars. The stage was set for outreach.

Space exploration was more than just rewarding, it was also an adventure. Theories on physiology and human behavior were overturned by some of the first long-range shuttle flights. Near-space industries, such as low gravity metallurgy, became more than curiosities. The asteroid belt was mined and inhabited by the resourceful and strong-willed.

The most prominent challenge to the governments of Earth was the fight against hunger, oppression, and illiteracy. This led to the rededication of the United Nations, which was not a figure-head board of important leaders from nations around the world, but a true league that kept sovereignty over the unified countries.

One of the UNs hardest fights was with the Belters, who had declared independence from the Earth. The Belters and Earth waged economic war with each other until the UN recognized the Belt as a separate world government.