Does Ringworld have an amazing ending?

[Andols]

No spoilers please, but does it have one of those jaw dropping endings?

I'm just over half way through and I am at a total loss as to how it won anything. Was it just a right place/right time kind of novel?

[MrBF1V3]

What Ringworld has is an amazing setting, it beats the 'eck out of a cramped old mechanical space ship any day of the week. Yes, there's kind of an interesting situation in there, and characters who, um ... have names. But the big thing is the setting.

Without spoiling, it has one of those "I should have seen that coming" endings. Oh, and the situation has a "I did not guess that" kind of conclusion too.

B5

[psikeyhackr]

I haven't read it in a long, long time but if memory serves I would call it more "neat trick" than "jaw dropping".

psik

[RimWorlder]

"and characters who, um ... have names" !?!

Come on. Characters who go through a lot of logical twists and turns, some of which are non-obvious - and some of those are red herrings.

Nessus is featured in numerous stories, as is Louis Wu and Speaker-to-Animals. Teela Brown comes back in R.E.

At a loss as to why it won anything. OMG

[phil_geo]

I would say yes, it has an ending that is a big surprise and one of the most original concepts in sci-fi (or literature); one I think about all the time. I do some work using genetic algorithms for software, and without giving anything away, the end of Ringworld relates.

[Yobmod]

Come on. Characters who go through a lot of logical twists and turns, some of which are non-obvious - and some of those are red herrings.

Twists and turns etc are plot, not characterisation, which i also found Ringworld to be lacking.

I don't remember anything especially mind-blowing about the ending - it is just a logical continuation of the plot. Which is fine, but it isn't going to impress anyone who doesn't like the plot of the first half.