Ringworld: Larry Niven

Book I of Ringworld. Earth, 2850 AD - Louis Gridley Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday. He's in perfect physical health thanks to boosterspice. Nessus, a Pierson's puppeteer, offers him a mysterious job: to investigate the Ringworld, a gigantic artificial ring, 1.6 million kilometres wide and 940 million kilometres in circumference. Pierson's puppeteers are understandably wary of encountering the builders of such an immense structure and in addition to Louis - who they believe to be mad - assemble a team of another mad human, a mad puppeteer and a kzin, a huge war-hungry cat-like alien, to explore it. But their ship, The Lying Bastard, crash-lands on the vast edifice, communications are knocked out and the crew are forced to go on a desperate and dangerous trek across the Ringworld. Cover art by Eddie Jones.