by Logan LePage

Larry Niven’s Ringworld was published in 1970 and immediately became one of the standards for which to compare other superstructures to. In the story, a gargantuan ring is explored by the long lived Louis Wu, the lucky Teela Brown, the insane Nessus, and the ferocious Speaker-to-Animals. Being a million miles across, with a diameter of 186 million miles, the protagonists can only look over a small fraction of Ringworld’s surface. The gravity of Ringworld is approximately 99.2% of Earth. Despite this similarity to Earth’s gravity, Ringworld’s genesis can be found not with humans, but with the Pak Protectors. This species is considered the precursor for humanity and the rest of the hominids on Ringworld.