This was the point where my enjoyment of Niven books started to really drop. It was awfully self-indulgent -- not just the political slams on both environmentalists and religious fundamentalists, but more specifically, the fact that it's science fiction writers and science fiction fans who save the world. Just too many cute SF insider references, characters, slang, etc. Read it on the plane as I first headed to Boston for grad school, as I recall. I never did read it a second time.

I gave up on Niven with Ringworld Throne five or six years later. It was just bad, lacking in cool ideas, confused and poorly edited structure, way too much sex for no good reason. Read like the motivation for writing it was buying a new boat, not exploring some neat new concept.

I also got annoyed at a silly science goof in Throne, too. One chapter is titled, "The Map of Mt Saint Helens", in that the main characters vist the 1:1 map of Earth on the Ringworld, and pass by Mt St. Helens, still a 10,000 foot tall cone, as it was pre 1980. Except when the Ringworld was built 25,000 years ago in Niven's chronology, the mountain didn't even exist yet -- most of Mt. St. Helens is less than 2500 years old, and the part that collapsed in 1980 was mostly 500 years old or less. Likewise, back then there'd have been a tall Mt. Mazama in southern Oregon (now Crater Lake), most of the snowclad part of Mt. Adams didn't exist yet, etc. 25,000 years is actually a significant chunk of time for a volcanic range like the Cascades.