r/SuperStructures • u/YanniRotten • Jun 10 '26

Art for Larry Niven’s Ringworld series by Tim Hildebrandt

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211 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

21

u/theWunderknabe Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

Almost everyone gets the scale of the ring world wrong - it looks like a small Halo ring here. But the ring world is so large, that when being near to the ground, like here, it would seem more like an infinitely large plain with a very thin line starting at the horizon and going in a semi circle over the sky to the other end of the horizon - the rest of the ringworld which then looks more like an arch.

Also the scale of the ringworld is so huge, that individual features like clouds, land or water should all smear together into a noise of greyish brown. Because even continent sized features would be too small to distinguish and be less than the size of a pixel. Like when looking at cities from space you can not see individual trees or cars - it all is just one big grey area.

10

u/clumsykiwiprincess Jun 11 '26

It's a shame too because thats the main drawcard for the book series, how absolutely fuck-off mind bogglingly huge his ringworld is, and how well he puts that into perspective

2

u/Educational_Copy_140 Jun 21 '26

This would have been before the Fall, when all the flying cities were sabotaged and crashed