Sci vs Fi
Ringworld vs Disc World
Larry Niven and Terry Pratchett both built impossible worlds on the page and dared readers to believe in them. Niven's Ringworld is an act of engineering faith: a structure 186 million miles in diameter, mathematically plausible, physically demanding, populated by people who are competent and technology that works across millennia. Pratchett's Discworld is its philosophical opposite: a flat disc on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle sailing through space, populated by people who are magnificently, reliably wrong about nearly everything.
What most readers don't know is that Discworld owes Ringworld a direct debt. In 1981, Pratchett wrote Strata, a novel he described on alt.fan.pratchett as "as…
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