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Andrea's Reviews > Ringworld
Ringworld (Ringworld #1)
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I'm afraid this made me want to punch Larry Niven in the stomach on the behalf of all women everywhere. Along with people who aren't so privileged that life bores them with its comforts, but mostly on behalf of women.
A 180 year old man sleeping with a 20 year old woman? Just so wrong, and it keeps going more wrong. He writes things about Teela like
"Her lips, he saw, were perfect for pouting. She was one of those rare, lucky women whom crying does not make ugly."
It is painfully condescending, even as her power is revealed, her thinking and aware self remains enslaved to it. But I said it got worse. The females of the feline alien race on the ship are non-sentient beings whose only purpose is to have babies, and it is intimated that the puppeteers might have a similar system. We finally meet one of the Ringworld over-race whatever and it's a woman who is not too bright and there were only three women there in a crew of 36 on the spaceship she worked on so obviously she is some kind of prostitute. Why else would a woman be on a spaceship? So apart from that infuriating fact, there are sentences like "Prill tried to explain to me what happened here, as one of her crew explained to her. He had oversimplified of course." And then: "Her touch was a joy as thick as syrup. She knew a terribly ancient secret: that every women is born with a tasp, and that its power is without limit if she can learn to use it..." And she will use it to enslave and control her man, of course she will, she has no other options.
Worst of all? He names one of his creatures the frumious bandersnatch. My favourite Carroll creation, I did not appreciate finding it here. The ring world is very cool, Nessus too, but I couldn't get over the anger. Still, I finished it and it kept me turning the pages, so it is now two stars as I suppose one star is for the books I just couldn't even finish.
A 180 year old man sleeping with a 20 year old woman? Just so wrong, and it keeps going more wrong. He writes things about Teela like
"Her lips, he saw, were perfect for pouting. She was one of those rare, lucky women whom crying does not make ugly."
It is painfully condescending, even as her power is revealed, her thinking and aware self remains enslaved to it. But I said it got worse. The females of the feline alien race on the ship are non-sentient beings whose only purpose is to have babies, and it is intimated that the puppeteers might have a similar system. We finally meet one of the Ringworld over-race whatever and it's a woman who is not too bright and there were only three women there in a crew of 36 on the spaceship she worked on so obviously she is some kind of prostitute. Why else would a woman be on a spaceship? So apart from that infuriating fact, there are sentences like "Prill tried to explain to me what happened here, as one of her crew explained to her. He had oversimplified of course." And then: "Her touch was a joy as thick as syrup. She knew a terribly ancient secret: that every women is born with a tasp, and that its power is without limit if she can learn to use it..." And she will use it to enslave and control her man, of course she will, she has no other options.
Worst of all? He names one of his creatures the frumious bandersnatch. My favourite Carroll creation, I did not appreciate finding it here. The ring world is very cool, Nessus too, but I couldn't get over the anger. Still, I finished it and it kept me turning the pages, so it is now two stars as I suppose one star is for the books I just couldn't even finish.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
September 8, 2012
– Shelved
September 8, 2012
– Shelved as:
sf-fantasy
September 8, 2012
–
Finished Reading
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Feliks
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rated it 1 star
Jan 09, 2013 11:50PM
Extending age-ism onto a fictional fantasy-world is wrong. Unless a relationship leads to a profitable marriage, its not your cup-of-tea, eh? How 'condescending' to men...
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The bandersnatch I can forgive, because I know where the idea came from (in other Niven books). The sexiam is rather a product of the times, I am afraid. Quite often, when revisiting old favourites, you find that your bookshelf has been visited by the Suck or Sexism Fairy, and ideas you accepted as a younger person now rankle. In 'A Gift From Earth', Niven has a group of revolutionaries which includes a woman. She is there to make sure the REAL revolutionaries are kept free from having to worry about getting some sexual relief.yes, it rankles and stinks, but it is a product of the prevalent culture of the time.
That's the danger of looking at a historical work through your 21st century glasses. Surely you will seem very sexist, specieist, agist, or some other -ist by future humans. You think he's sexist but you hav age-ism after all. Surely you wouldn't object if it was a 100 year old woman with a 20 year old man. You also need to realize that modern women writers are just as insensitive to their male characters, but that's okay in a PC 21st century
It's very immature of you to react to fiction that offends you with a proud urge to violence. Like punching someone in the gut is somehow better than offending you.It's funny how much you have to say about the novel's women, but nothing to say about the musclebound, violence-obsessed Kzinti men or the bookish, logical Puppeteers being driven completely by cowardice. You only saw what you wanted to see.
That's without even mentioning that Teela's interactions with the other characters was partially defined by her luck. That concept, of inherent worth coming from beyond a person's faculties, is extremely relevant to you based on the hyper-focused diatribe that you call a review.
If you thought Halrloprillalar wasn't bright, then you were so caught up in your perceived slight that you completely missed the idea that the main characters misjudged her intelligence. She was a skilled member of high society from a decaying culture.
Niven is communicating these concepts to you so you can use your damned brain and evaluate them. He's not trying to convince you that they're right.
Andrea, I couldn't agree more. Thank you for pointing it out. The sexism in "Ringworld" is typical of the times, but as a 66 year-old woman I'm bored of reading the caricatures of women in sci-fi of the past. Those aspects of "Ringworld" are offensive to me and unredeemable. But I'm continuing to read the book anyway, to see if there's something else in it that I might like. I do this also with Philip K. Dick, one of my favorite writers (sci-fi or otherwise), whose relationships with women were one long disaster and whose female characters tended to be seductive, vain, shallow harridans out to steal his money and emasculate him. The topic of sexism in sci-fi could fill a doctoral dissertation, but it would depress me to write it. So I read the classics with a grain of salt and look for women writers who are interested in topics that transcend gender as an issue, since that also gets boring.
I never understood why some people have to take SciFi/fantasy books and then start some discussion about sexism and other things.If I read a fiction book and the male protagonist is let's say a serial killer, I do most definitely not take that as a statement that the writer thinks that most men are serial killer.
Or did I read books where the male protagonist is sleeping around behind his wives back, do I take that as an attack to my male self?
Why would I? At the end of the day, it is still a FICTION book.
It is mind boggling and hilarious at the same time how everything has to be taken as somesort of statement nowadays :D
This entire stance is bullshit:"a product of the times"
"it is a product of the prevalent culture of the time"
Umm, yah. 'product of the time' ...'time' as in, all of civilized culture and western history, that is to say 'time' from as long ago as Neolithic peoples or the age of the Great Kingdoms of Egypt, all of the High Greeks, all of the Romans, all of the Renaissance, all of the right up until the last few years of imbecilic post-WWII mass-market capitalist pop 'fuck-culture' which curdled and soured long before you were even born, long before your pathetic concept of 'history' which began when you put your flaccid mouth to the television-tube and started mindlessly sucking on 'placebo' ideas. Dingbats from the irrelevant, internet-era ...parrots and macaws yammering away on every low-hanging branch. I can smell the brainwashing from all the way over here. You simpletons have no standing to curl your little lip at anything that came and went before you arrived.
The OP is a sap. Period. This is an unabashed blanket statement which includes anyone of the same ilk who agrees with her.
These books are far less boring than the pages and pages of monomaniacal women complaining about the books on here.If my radio had this signal to noise ratio, I'd ask my cleaning lady to put it in the bin.
Indeed so. Although the sexism is mild in this one. I’d say Isaac Asimov is perhaps worse, but AC Clarke is mindboggling. What IS interesting is that this brand of patronising chauvinism indeed seems to reflect the “zeitgeist” of the 50s-70s, and I am pretty sure Niven et al are no more chauvinistic in their outlook than the societies of their day as a whole. So all I can say is that I do not ENJOY reading these characters now, but I also need to admit that as a young teenager in the 70s I was blind to this subtext.
Read these books in the 1990s, who would’ve thought I’d see hissy fit reviews like these in the 2020s. The me too party is over guys, and all we got are these lousy tee shirts (and also young adults can’t properly form healthy relationships anymore)
