What makes a science fiction classic? People remember Ringworld many years after its first publication.
I have a friend whose face lights up whenever he mentions it.
A science fiction book needs to be the first of its kind if it is to be regarded as a classic. Ringworld is the very first science fiction novel about a 'big dumb object'. Big dumb objects are now so rife in science fiction that they have their own entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
In Ringworld, an unknown and ancient race has converted all the matter in a fairly average solar system into a ring of matter that circles a sun. The ring is 150 million kilometres in radius and 1.5 million kilometres across. The surface area of Earth would fit into one tiny corner of it. The outside of the ring is impermeable.
Walls at the ring's edges hold in the atmosphere. A net of sails circling inside the ring gives night and day.
Mountains, oceans, forests and plains cover the inside surface of the ring.
The four explorers (two humans and two aliens) who discover Ringworld crash-land on its surface.
Their task is to cross some tiny part of its surface to find the Ringworld engineers in order to repair their ship. But where are the billions of people you might expect to fill this world? They find small pockets of people who live in the ruins of a once-great civilisation. The Ringworld engineers have disappeared. The explorers pass a giant mountain a thousand miles high, traverse a storm many thousands of miles wide, and eventually find some answers.
Niven throws away the impact of his great idea. The characters don't have independent lives. They stand around explaining their discoveries.
Teela, the girl who has been bred for luck, is merely a puppet of forces that are completely beyond her control.
During the journey they face some dangers, see a bit of Ringworld, and eventually find a way to escape. The book has almost no plot after the discovery of the planet itself.
So what makes a science fiction classic? Look at Ringworld. Not a good novel, or even a good adventure book, but itself a memorable artefact. I'm sure the new edition will sell well.
