Ringworld
The Ringworld is a fictional world in the known space universe of the science fiction writer Larry Niven . She made her debut in the 1970 science fiction novel Ringworld (German: Ringwelt). The book is now considered one of the classics of science fiction, and the Ringwelt also gave the serial novels The Ringworld Engineers (1980, German: Ringwelt Engineers), The Ringworld-Throne (1996, German: Ringwelt-Thron) and Ringworld's Children ( 2004, German: Guardian of the Ringworld) their scope of action.
construction
The ring world is an artificial world that surrounds a star in a ring. Their radius is roughly equal to the distance between the earth and the sun, about 150 million kilometers. Its width is 1.6 million kilometers, roughly the diameter of the central star, and at the edges there are two 1,600 kilometers high outer walls that hold the atmosphere inside the ring. The Ringwelt is thus a narrow slice of a Dyson sphere . Its surface is about three million times the surface of the earth .
The ring world rotates around its central star at a tangential speed of around 1,200 km / s, so that a pseudo- gravity arises on the surface that roughly corresponds to the earth's gravity. However, the ring world is not in a real orbit around the sun; its position is rather unstable in relation to the central star. Because the gravitational pull of the sun in the plane of the ring acts equally on the ring in all directions, there is no stabilizing effect that is given in a natural planetary orbit . If the ring were shifted by an arbitrarily small amount within the plane of rotation, a stronger force acted on the part of the ring closer to the sun than on the part further away from the sun. After a while, the ring would inevitably collide with the central star, but before that with the "ring of shadows", a series of discs that simulate day and night on the ring world and are located between the sun and the ring world. To stabilize the Ringwelt position, the outer walls of the Ringwelt are therefore equipped with correction engines (English attitude jets ).
Construction details
Little is written about the construction work of the Ringwelt. It is known that it was built by the Pak race about a million years before the protagonists arrived . In relation to its gigantic dimensions, the ring world consists of very little material. The total mass corresponds to about 350 earth masses (as much as the sum of all planets in our solar system). The average thickness of the ring material is only about 30 meters. On the outside of the ring there is an additional foam-like protective layer about 300 meters thick, which is intended to slow down meteoroids and other celestial bodies when they hit. Breaking through the ring would be fatal as the entire atmosphere would escape through the impact hole. An exception to this is the "Faust Gottes", a hollow, conical mountain that extends beyond the atmosphere and that was created by an extremely large impact coming from below.
One of the things the Ringwelt novels lack scientifically is the material called scrith from which the ring is made. The material would have to be incredibly dense and have an unrealistically high tensile strength (in the order of magnitude of the strong nuclear force ) in order to be able to withstand the internal tensile forces generated by the rotation of the ring. To set the gigantic ring world in rotation, the huge energy equivalent of around 0.2 percent of the earth's mass had to be used.
Day-night cycle
Since the sun is always at its zenith on the Ringwelt, there are no times of day or seasons. Another ring made of 20 rectangular shields that rotates between the sun and the ring world creates an artificial day-night cycle. It is never completely dark on the ring world, as the light sections of the ring world indirectly illuminate the dark areas.
geology
The actual rock layer inside the ring is very thin. Therefore, erosion is a huge problem, the technical solution of which is dealt with in the novels. There is no geological activity on the Ringwelt, such as volcanism and tectonic processes, which is why fossil raw materials such as crude oil, hard coal and natural gas are missing. The civilizations on the Ringwelt run combustion engines with fuels based on alcohol, as alcohols can easily be obtained from the abundant vegetable raw materials.
Residents
The ring world is inhabited by different peoples and races, the supposed descendants of the builders of the ring world, who have conquered their own evolutionary niches over geological time periods. Because of the huge surface of the ring, direct contacts between peoples living far apart are virtually impossible.
Overview of the novels
The main novels:
| US title | year | German title | year | action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ringworld | 1970 | Ringworld | 1972 | A spaceship with representatives of several races, which wants to explore the Ringwelt for the first time, is shot down by the automatic meteorite defense of the Ringwelt and has to make an emergency landing there. It turns out that the indigenous civilization has fallen back to medieval states due to a catastrophe. |
| The Ringworld Engineers | 1980 | Ringwelt engineers | 1982 | The heroes of the first novel return to the Ringworld. Some readers told Niven that the rotation of the ring world around the sun was in principle unstable and that sooner or later the world would drift out of position or oscillate around the sun. Then Niven wrote the second novel in the series, which deals with exactly this problem. The orbit of the Ringwelt is no longer stable, as most of the engines that keep the structure stable against the solar winds were dismantled a long time ago. You are faced with the task of protecting the Ringwelt from its destruction. |
| The Ringworld Throne | 1996 | Ringworld throne | 1998 | A power struggle breaks out between the remaining and new anti-tank protectors in the Ringworld. In order to solve the conflict, someone has to find the control center to control the ring world and occupy it. |
| Ringworld's Children | 2004 | Guardian of the Ringworld | 2006 | The descendants of the former heroes come together to save the threatened Ringworld. |
The prequels (co-author: Edward M. Lerner ):
| US title | year | German title | year | action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fleet of Worlds | 2007 | The fleet of puppeteers | 2008 | The galactic center explosion emits deadly radiation. In the long run, all life in the galaxy is on the verge of extinction. The technically highly developed species of puppeteers flees and takes their planets with them, forming a world fleet.
Kirsten Quinn-Kovacs, a human woman who lives with the puppeteers, is supposed to explore the escape route. Together with her mentor Nessus, she searches for possible dangers that threaten the world fleet on their journey. In doing so, she comes across ancient secrets that shake the whole universe to its foundations ... |
| Juggler of Worlds | 2008 | World changer | 2008 | ? |
| Destroyer of Worlds | 2009 | War of the Puppeteers | 2011 | ? |
| Betrayer of Worlds | 2010 | Betrayal of the worlds | 2012 | ? |
| Fate of Worlds | 2012 | The fate of the ringworld | 2014 | ? |
There are now about ten books (not including the various editions in which only individual stories were summarized) and a separate series only about the Kzin Wars. This currently comprises twelve volumes, the last three of which, however, have not yet appeared in German.
This series contains individual stories in a loose time frame, in which the first meeting of mankind with the Kzinti as well as further contacts and events are described. Sometimes they also close gaps in the three actual Ringwelt novels or write their own story around them.
Anthologies
The first novels of the cycle were reissued as anthologies. These were also published for the first time as an e-book version.
- Ringwelt / Ringwelt Ingenieure , 2016, Bastei Lübbe Verlag, ISBN 978-3-4042-0867-8
- Ringwelt Throne / Guardian of the Ringworld , 2017, Bastei Lübbe Verlag, ISBN 978-3-4042-0885-2
The computer game
The commercially moderately successful computer game of the same name from 1984 was a point-and-click adventure game from the publisher Chaosium . It was authorized by Niven, used the environment, known races and locations of the known space (including the Ringwelt itself), but other main characters than the Ringwelt novels, and was not integrated into Niven's continued main story and was therefore more likely to be classified as a split. For Ringwelt fans, however, there was a built-in encyclopedia which contained information about the races and the technology of the "Ringwelt Universe".
See also
- The Halo computer game series is inspired in parts by Larry Niven's Ringwelt novel cycle. The names of different alien races, the nature and function of the halos - several smaller ring worlds - and the political and historical relationships of different factions are recognizable as a source of inspiration for the video game series. However, these halos are smaller than the Ringworld, and they do not have a star in the center.
- The novel Strata by Terry Pratchett parodies the Ringworld novels and was the basis for his later Discworld novels.
Web link
Individual evidence
- ↑ Calculations for the Ringwelt by Larry Niven ; Walter Bislin