Larry Niven's 1970 science fiction novel Ringworld is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Niven manages to spin a good story out of a fairly simple premise. The story's pacing and narrative structure are good, and its scientific grounding is excellent. On the other hand, it suffers from overt sexism and an utter lack of believable or enjoyable female characters.
Ringworld is one of the classics of hard science fiction, and rightly so. Armed with a degree in math, Niven has put real thought into the problems of traveling through space, constructing megastructures, and building up huge civilizations. His characters make believable inferences from the facts at their disposal, and even make believable mistakes in their reasoning before being corrected by other characters. It's as if Niven wrote down the mistakes he had in his thought process as dialogue for the characters, which is probably what he did. The characters don't seem particularly omniscient, and most of their deductions seem to be ones that any person might have made, given a long enough time to consider the matter.
Niven also shines in pacing the story and developing it in ways that leave the reader guessing. At first glance, the plot is extremely simple: a crew finds and explores an alien megastructure drifting in space. Niven takes this simple story and stretches it out to such great potential that by the end of the book it feels like a long series could be devoted to the exploration of the Ringworld and encounters with its denizens, and then another whole series devoted to the backstory and lore of the Ringworld Engineers. There are so many unanswered questions at the end of the novel that it leaves the reader nearly salivating for a sequel, which leaves one slightly aghast to learn that Niven took ten years to write a sequel, finally penning The Ringworld Engineers in 1980. Niven eventually went on to write a short series of Ringworld novels, including prequels and sequels. Part of the lasting appeal of Ringworld is that it represents something of a blend of hard science fiction and light fantasy. Due to the breakdown of advanced civilization on the Ringworld, society has reverted to a pre-industrial state. There is a potential for “civilized” characters to get stranded in what is essentially a fantasy world. I think that has immense appeal.
Despite all the great things to say about the novel, it does have one glaring issue: the choices concerning female characters. Out of 5 primary characters (Louis, Teela, Speaker, Nessus, and Prill), 2 are women, not a bad mix for this era in science fiction. Teela is introduced as being quite stupid at the beginning of the book. This is later explained as her having never been exposed to harm due to her genetically superior luck. However, the choice to make this character a female smacks of sexism. Why does the nearly pathologically dimwitted character have to be a female? Teela is constantly getting herself into danger and then being saved by Louis or one of the other characters or by her good luck. It takes the form of Louis “educating” Teela in how the world works as she's never been exposed to true danger or harm before. It essentially reads like an extended session of mansplaining, except it's somehow warranted because Teela never got hurt before. Additionally, Teela is a sexual partner for Louis, and almost instantly falls in love with him, adding to the female character trope count. It's all explained as having been due to “Teela's luck” but it does all seem awfully convenient.
And that's just Teela. The character Halrloprillalar (quickly shortened to Prill, although I'm guessing at an original pronunciation of “haller-lo-prill-alar”) is deduced to have been a sex worker on a freighter ship delivering supplies to the Ringworld. It's curious why to me a hyper-advanced civilization would continue to have sex workers in the first place? If indeed this civilization was so technologically advanced that they could construct the Ringworld, why couldn't they also invent highly effective sex surrogates? It seems dubious that an advanced civilization would continue to employ real people for sex work, especially if those workers were free to choose their profession. Few enough people do sex work by choice. Louis and the other characters discuss Prill's profession with more disdain than seems fitting, given the apparent loosening of sexual mores alluded to elsewhere in the novel. And the characters also conclude that Prill is not very intelligent, despite her ability to have learned and subsequently commandeered the controls of the police station, and her advanced knowledge of sex and other talents that she displays through the course of the novel.
If I'm being charitable to Niven, I could say that while he does typecast his two female characters in pretty sexist ways, he at least develops their characters in somewhat surprising although still problematic ways. Teela falls in love with a He-Man-esque hunk and elects to stay on the Ringworld, leaving Louis in the process (although she is literally sold to the hunk to cater to his “women as property” view of females), thus sort of rejecting the “marry the male protagonist and live happily ever after” trope. Although it seems extremely unlikely that anyone would choose to give up the comforts of hyper-advanced 29th-century civilization to become essentially an anarcho-primitivist for love. Gah. As for Prill, she could be seen as having a certain amount of agency and choosing to leave the Ringworld with Louis and company, although she is implied to be romantically interested in Louis and has become his sexual partner, and had been trying to leave the Ringworld for some time. It seems quite problematic that Prill is first a jailer to the crew, trapping them in the police building and cruelly toying with them, before being addicted to the tasp and choosing to help them, before going off the tasp cold-turkey and then befriending them. Like, wouldn't someone who was addicted to the tasp be grateful for its loss and turn on its user? That question is briefly asked by Niven, and answered with a resounding “Pfffft, nah, ladies are forgiving because love, yaknow.”
Besides the many, many issues with the human female characters, the kzin are said to have nonsentient females who are property, and the Pierson's puppeteers also have a nonsentient property gender (although the puppeteer genders are described quite ambiguously, so saying that they are females would be too strong a claim, although Nessus is constantly referred to using he/him pronouns). And in general, the novel never really describes any female characters as being particularly bright, resourceful or valuable. Teela is lucky, and Prill is talented in bed. Any of these things taken on its own would be simply problematic, and some could probably be forgiven, but all of them taken together is not good. It paints a pretty negative picture of Niven's views on women.
Ultimately, I thought Ringworld was well-written and structured, and Niven did a lot with the simple story he chose to tell. Many of the scientific concepts he discusses are sound and well-written, and Niven seems to have done his homework on how to construct a thing like the Ringworld. However, his writing of women was quite abysmal, and in parts made me uncomfortable. If I'm uncomfortable reading it, I can only imagine what a woman reading it might feel like. I will likely be reading some more of his work at some point, and hope that he improves.