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jimsreadingandstuff 's review for:
The Mote in God's Eye
by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven
I was aware of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle as acclaimed sci-fi writers but this was my first read from them. This book took a long time to get through, I started at the end of May, it is not a bad book, it is just I find forty years on I am subject to so many distractions, the small shot of dopamine with every Facebook or other social media notification draws me from my reading to check who has liked or commented on a post. I fear the social media world has made long focusing on a piece of writing rare, I touched on this in my blogpost: 5 Books below target or the Ballad of Reading Goals
The Mote in God’s Eye is a first contact book, set a thousand years in the future, humans have a vast inter-galactic empire. In all those years they had never encountered an intelligent alien race until the start of this novel. The aliens they find emerge from a tiny speck of light hardly visible in the corona of a red supergiant (the ‘mote’ and the ‘God’s eye’), an exploration ship using a hydrogen scoop light-sail emerges into human known space.
The “moties” could be the greatest potential danger mankind ever faced, or the greatest potential opportunity they’ve ever found. Humans have discovered what is known as the Alderson Drive, which allows them to travel the vast emptiness of the space between stars. The moties are advanced and great toolmakers but they haven’t discovered the secret of interstellar travel, they are effectively bottled up in their own solar system, their home planet Mote Prime is heavily overpopulated and they would love to be able to expand to new planets. Upon arriving in the Mote system the human expedition discovers a technologically advanced race of beings genetically engineered for high efficiency and speciated into various casts such as engineers, watchmakers, mediators, and masters each with it’s own extraordinary innate genius. To the crew who meet the moties they seem unthreatening but are they hiding something?
There are many considerations when two intelligent species meet in space for the first time. How much do you keep back? How much information can you learn about the other without giving away too much of your own nature? How do you appear both friendly and strong? How do you hide the worst of your species? The inter-species politics is tricky. Both go in with assumptions learned from their own experiences which can’t accommodate for the fact that the others are alien. It makes for interesting communications.
This is classic science fiction, so the science and nature of space travel is integral to the plot “and in one corner a candle burned before an icon of St Katherine. There was even a special ventilation system to keep it burning in zero gee.” Niven and Pournelle create a truly alien society and explore its evolution, history, sociology, and motivations. The story is compelling because Niven and Pournelle capitalize on the mystery, leaving the reader as much in the dark about the Moties’ true intentions as the human characters are. It is a dense book of 560 pages, so not a quick read. The aliens are more interesting than the human characters, who are rather stereotypical. The humans could be straight out of seventies casting (the book was published in 1974). You have the heroic square-jawed aristocratic naval officer Roderick Blaine, ruthless planet-killing Admiral Kutuzov, the sleazy bad guy Horace Bury who of course is a Muslim Arab, and Lady Sally Fowler, a noblewoman, anthropologist, designated love interest, and the only woman in the book. The characters stick more or less to their roles throughout the book with little development.
So, this is good science fiction, but hardly great literature. If you want interesting aliens and an examination of inter-species politics, with a decent amount of spaceship action thrown in, you will enjoy this, but there isn’t a lot of depth, nor characters you’re really going to care about.
The Mote in God’s Eye is a first contact book, set a thousand years in the future, humans have a vast inter-galactic empire. In all those years they had never encountered an intelligent alien race until the start of this novel. The aliens they find emerge from a tiny speck of light hardly visible in the corona of a red supergiant (the ‘mote’ and the ‘God’s eye’), an exploration ship using a hydrogen scoop light-sail emerges into human known space.
The “moties” could be the greatest potential danger mankind ever faced, or the greatest potential opportunity they’ve ever found. Humans have discovered what is known as the Alderson Drive, which allows them to travel the vast emptiness of the space between stars. The moties are advanced and great toolmakers but they haven’t discovered the secret of interstellar travel, they are effectively bottled up in their own solar system, their home planet Mote Prime is heavily overpopulated and they would love to be able to expand to new planets. Upon arriving in the Mote system the human expedition discovers a technologically advanced race of beings genetically engineered for high efficiency and speciated into various casts such as engineers, watchmakers, mediators, and masters each with it’s own extraordinary innate genius. To the crew who meet the moties they seem unthreatening but are they hiding something?
“You see, none of us really knows what to do next. We’ve never contacted aliens before. “
There are many considerations when two intelligent species meet in space for the first time. How much do you keep back? How much information can you learn about the other without giving away too much of your own nature? How do you appear both friendly and strong? How do you hide the worst of your species? The inter-species politics is tricky. Both go in with assumptions learned from their own experiences which can’t accommodate for the fact that the others are alien. It makes for interesting communications.
This is classic science fiction, so the science and nature of space travel is integral to the plot “and in one corner a candle burned before an icon of St Katherine. There was even a special ventilation system to keep it burning in zero gee.” Niven and Pournelle create a truly alien society and explore its evolution, history, sociology, and motivations. The story is compelling because Niven and Pournelle capitalize on the mystery, leaving the reader as much in the dark about the Moties’ true intentions as the human characters are. It is a dense book of 560 pages, so not a quick read. The aliens are more interesting than the human characters, who are rather stereotypical. The humans could be straight out of seventies casting (the book was published in 1974). You have the heroic square-jawed aristocratic naval officer Roderick Blaine, ruthless planet-killing Admiral Kutuzov, the sleazy bad guy Horace Bury who of course is a Muslim Arab, and Lady Sally Fowler, a noblewoman, anthropologist, designated love interest, and the only woman in the book. The characters stick more or less to their roles throughout the book with little development.
So, this is good science fiction, but hardly great literature. If you want interesting aliens and an examination of inter-species politics, with a decent amount of spaceship action thrown in, you will enjoy this, but there isn’t a lot of depth, nor characters you’re really going to care about.