It’s summer, and that means I get to read fiction. The time I spend preparing for class during the semesters prevents me from often getting to enjoy the simple luxury of a book that I’m not either teaching from or reviewing. With my grades turned in, it times time to find a good paperback. Wanting to be a properly educated geek, I turned to Larry Niven’s “Ring World“. While I’m only a little way’s in, I already have this feeling of “Wow, this was great science once, but that was a long time ago.” Just as astronomy text books can go out of date, science fiction books based on science can go out of date.

No significant spoilers ahead.