© 2023 Science Fiction Motif Index by Alexander Lowry. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
An alien recruits a team to scout out a mysterious structure in the path of his species' migration: an enormous ring with a massive livable surface.
The Ringworld is a giant ring structure with a radius of about 1 AU inhabited to be explored by a landing party hired by a cowardly alien who wants to know if it poses any danger. It is inhabited by "fallen" civilizations, none of whom know its history.
The Ringworld spins very quickly to create gravity for its inhabitants, even though its shape cancels out any real gravity its mass produces (as all its inhabitants are on the inside surface of the ring).
Pierson's Puppeteers are so cowardly that their entire society is built around cowardice and safety. All their furniture has rounded corners and soft textures. None travel into space or are seen by other species except those considered "insane" by their own kind. The whole species is migrating outside the Milky Way after learning of an explosion in the core that will reach them in tens of thousands of years.
The Ringworld's "nights" are shadows cast by a ring of giant squares closer to its sun. These enormous squares are held together by thin wire that the hero ship, The Lying Bastard, crashes into and knocks loose. Later, Ringworld natives use the thin wire to construct traps, beheading an alien.
Faster than light drives are common among the species in the Ringworld universe. The reward offered by Nessus for his Ringworld exploration team is a ship called the Long Shot, which has a much faster FTL drive than any other known.
Slavers, a species once prolific in Known Space, left behind disintegrator weapons, stasis fields, and weaponized flowers.
Incorrectly referred to as a "Kemplerer rosette", the Pierson's Puppeteers keep their "Fleet of Worlds" in a pentagonal configuration. Technically this solution to the n-body problem was worked out before Klemperer's paper.
Perhaps the ur-example of this motif, Ringworld won both the Nebula in 1970 and the Hugo in 1971. Though not noted for its characters or plot, the technical aspects and fantastic concepts of this novel have made it one of the most influential 'Big Dumb Object' books. The Ringworld is an enormous megastructure built by unknown predecessors that features the livable surface of three million Earths, which is only partially scouted by the landing party.
The Ringworld used to have superconductor, but some mold or fungus has broken it all down.
Mentioned by name, by the character Speaker to Animals. Speaker points out that the Ringworld expedition ship, though devoid of weapons, has forward-facing engines that could easily destroy many ships. The crew decides to name the ship Lying Bastard because of this.
© 2023 Science Fiction Motif Index by Alexander Lowry. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0