Key: ellipsis = confusion

Rating: 1 star

Ringworld is a very strange book. What else can I say. It's odd. Sometimes I thought it was self aware, like it knew that it was this bizarre, but other times I swear it was dead serious. Like, Zignamuclickclick, Mount Lookitthat... what kind of names are those. Even though I finished it ten days ago, I still can't tell if this book is taking itself too seriously.

And then there are the puppeteers. Oh, the puppeteers. I suppose I kind of blanked out when Niven described them, so I just kind of imagined them like Zaphod from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy because of the two heads, (dammit I got a new phone a couple months ago and the predictive text has yet to get used to my interests. I used to just have to type “hitch” and it would come up with “…hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” but now I need to type the entire title out. Sigh. Anyway) but then about 80ish pages in I realised I actually didn’t know what they looked like… so I googled it… and... haha...at the risk of sounding whiter than white: ew. Ew ew ew ew. They are like giraffes with two heads and no fur and pale white skin with like... goat hooves or something? And then they have these weird mouth things...like... *confused hand movements*... tiny tentacle things? Basically if an octopus, a giraffe, a goat and a hairless cat somehow had a baby (don't try to figure out how), it would be a puppeteer. Just... um... picture (sorry if you’re on a phone):
How Niven came up with this idea on his own I have no idea. Weeeeell, this book was written in the 70's after all, so he could have been helped by some certain white powders, but I don't want to even go there.

And then there is all the weird sex stuff. Of course. How could a male author's 20th century story be complete without it? You know I just skimmed those parts. Because there are aliens watching humans... you know... getting it on... because they were... curious?? Ick. Ick ick ick ick ick. (I learned just last night that "ick" is an internet thing, and I had written this way before then. I mean "ick" in the ordinary sense, like "yuck".) Oh, and then there was this weird-ass sentence: "She sobbed miserably, wrackingly, in an orgy of self-pity." What kind of a sentence is that?!?!?! There is just so many mentions of sexy stuff for no reason. What is it with all the sexy times anyway?? They hare not warranted, and they serve no purpose to the plot, the wider world or literally anything! Fortunately for my super-prone-to-second-hand-embarrassment self, they were not too detailed, except for an observation about when the orgasm happens, which occurs every time mind you, because apparently that is vital (and realistic) information. And it also doesn't matter who you do it with. You can do it with one person for months, and then switch. And the word "love" is thrown around so flippantly. Like, "yeah I love him, that guy I met a few days ago. We banged a few times and now I want to abandon my whole way of life for him." ...Mmm?

So the conclusion I think I have come to is that Ringworld is too weird a book for me. Now I've read weird books. I've read Stranger in a Strange Land, for goodness sake. Ok yeah, I haven't gone down the Haruki Murakami route yet so I'm far from an expert, but I know weird books. And I get the way classic scifi is. I get that its target demographic was 30 year old single white dudes who live in their mum's basement- ah, I mean, bachelors. But, believe it or not, I do not fall into that category, so Ringworld (for me) was just... ellipsis to emphasise confusion... weird.