Word.
I liked it. I haven’t read enough of the top 100 to say where it should rank in that crowd, but it’s good. It does a good job of building up the sense of dread. You know something bad is going to happen to Bob. You also know Bob is filthy rich after Gateway. It’s a good tension.
I generally prefer a faster moving plot, but the pacing really works for Gateway. Slower and it would have moved into Foundation territory (a classic which I will never like, but that’s another thread). Faster and it wouldn’t have had that tension.
There are aspects that haven’t aged well, to be sure. The situation on Earth, which is only alluded to, never clicked with me, for one. Still, it’s a classic.
I’ve read most (but not all) of that list and would pretty much recommend the whole thing, although I never did see all the love for Foundation or Ringworld. Both left me cold. You could certainly do a whole lot worse than that list.
Insult RINGWORLD??!!!
Pistols at dawn!
What’s the point of Ringworld? It’s just, like, a schematic with some tacked-on story.
I am too busy spluttering with outrage to respond properly!
What’s the point of Moby Dick? What’s the point of life?
You say that like it was a bad thing. *Ringworld *is the best of the “engineering diagram as a novel” sub-genre.
Ringworld rocks!
Have I mentioned that I own a personalized First Edition?
Engineering diagrams work better as short stories, IMHO. The only IDEA in Ringworld is the concept of the ringworld. That’s it.
What about rishathra? 
That wasn’t until the sequals.
I’ve got to agree about Ringworld not being that great. Niven in general was always kind of blah to me. Too much sci-, not enough -fi.
Ringworld was great!
I always thought of it as a member of the "really big things " genre, which includes things like Rendezvous with Rama, Ringworld, Mission of Gravity, and others where the humans encounter something out of the ordinary and have to deal with the physics we know in a new setting. Of these, Mission of Gravity is my favorite, but the Ringworld is great too. IMO, they’re all three better than Gateway.
Rama is way better than Ringworld. Everything they do on Rama is connected to “what would it really be like to see some totally strange spacecraft? What would we do there?” Ringworld is more like “Here’s a really cool idea for a world! And then some stuff happened on it, 'cause… shit, who cares?”
That’s what Niven does. I like him a lot better when he’s writing with a co-author.
I loved The Mote in God’s Eye. But that was him and somebody else, right?
I LOVED Ringworld, and its sequels. It didn’t just contain an engineering concept, it also concerned the ethics of altering another sentient species. The Puppeteers can’t keep their meddling mouths off of other species. It was also about interspecies co-operation, when members of the species really can’t trust each other.
Mote and Gripping Hand were written by Niven and Pournelle. I can’t stand Pournelle’s solo efforts, but he’s pretty good with Niven.
I think that’s a fair description. I just don’t agree that it means the novel is worthless. Some novels have great plots, some have great characters, and some have great settings. In Ringworld’s case, a really good setting carries what’s an otherwise minimal story.