BOOKS: A Ringworld Successor

Larry Niven's Ringworld is a science fiction classic. It's generated two sequels over the last two decades and each has been fine in an of themselves. Good writing around a great concept. Ringworld is a construct. It's many thousands of worlds smashed together until they form a colossal ring around some far-off sun. The sheer enormity of the land mass allows for many civilizations and races to inhabit the same spatial body, but be completely unaware of each other. Or in some cases, be all TOO aware of each other. Crash-land a Terran or two on it, and Ringworld offers an exciting milieu for a travel adventure. Three times.

So, how do you play Top That! with Ringworld. There's the myriad of shell world stories with the sun contained in the middle. Dime a dozen. Hmmmm, any other ideas?

Eric Brown has one. It's called Helix. As a character demonstrates in the book, you take a glass lamp and a long beaded necklace. You coil the necklace around the lamp, starting at the bottom until you reach the top. And you have a helix shape.

Helix, the novel, features a set of Builders who take the Ringworld idea and expand on it, in many strands. Each little worldlet rotates on its helical centre, giving the worldlet a night and day. Each worldlet is separated from its neighbour by an ocean. Difficult, but not impossible to cross. Then the builders went out and populated the worldlets with as many samples of various races and species as they could find. Aliens from cold-weather worlds were put on worldlets at the top or the bottom of the helix. Hot-weather folk ended up on the central strands, nearest the sun centre. Some of the worldlets got specialized climates, such as the grey overcast that permeates over the world where Ehrin Telsa lives under Church tyranny.

Ehrin's not human. He's sort of a sentient rat/weasel/lemur. He's a non-believer and seeks proof the organized religion in his world is wrong and outdated. He hooks up with some Humans who have fled Earth in a cryo-ship, anxious to leave a worn-torn, material-sapped home planet behind and start anew somewhere else in the galaxy. A thousand years of cold-sleep has set the humans down on Helix. Four intrepid Terrans start exploring this wondrous world and finally happen upon Ehrin.

While plenty happens before Ehrin and the humans meet up, enough to really come to like all of the characters, the book really heats up from that point on. Helix is explored by a multi-species exploratory force as various worldlets are found and searched as a potential new home for humanity. Good and bad beings are met. The good ones are genuinely altruistic. The bad ones evil to the core. It's tiresome to present a Church as a bad thing these days, but Brown makes it work.

And when we get to the conclusion 500 some pages later, we are happy. I hope there are going to be sequels to Helix. But I implore Mr. Brown to do it a little faster than did Mr. Niven. I'm not sure I can wait 20 more years!