Mining the Genre Asteroid: Ringworld
Mining the Genre Asteroid is Paul Weimer’s look at the history of the science fiction and fantasy field, bringing to light important, interesting and entertaining books from science fiction and fantasy’s past to you. Welcome to the inaugural installment of Mining the Genre Asteroid. On a recent podcast, a Campbell award winning writer admitted that they had not read our first book, a seminal work of the field, and so I thought that it would be a fine place to begin the column. Imagine a ring of material the size of Earth’s orbit around the sun. A vast structure with a surface area millions of times the size of earth’s continents. Hundreds of different human-like and not so human like species run rampant on it, at all sorts of levels of technology. And yet, the builders of this amazing structure seem to be gone. This ring is not only an enigma, but it’s even unknown to the universe at large, until a powerful alien puts together an expedition of misfits to explore its mystery. I give you RINGWORLD.
