Bruguru's Full Review: Larry Niven - The Mote in God's Eye
When it comes to science fiction accounts of man’s first contact with an alien species, the common theme seems to be that they will come to us. Think about. The War of the Worlds, Independence Day, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Close Encounters of the Third Kind….and so many more. And most of the time, the visitors aren’t here to make friends.
But what if things went the other way? What if we wound up sailing off to an alien homeworld, and our intentions were not entirely benevolent? Such is the premise of The Mote in God’s Eye, a fascinating tale of first contact by award-winning authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
This may be Niven’s best work, though Ringworld may be his most famous. It is certainly the premier novel for the team of Niven and Pournelle, who also collaborated on the aliens-invading-the-Earth tale Footfall and the exceptional Lucifer’s Hammer . The latter posits a comet smacking into the planet and ending civilization as we know it.
The Mote in God’s Eye gets its title from a stellar phenomenon that appears much like a tiny little dot in a giant red eye, which is actually a nebula. When an alien probe enters human-occupied space at the dawn of the 31st century, the Mote is thought to be inhabited-and the Empire of Man dispatches a pair of warships to investigate.
What they find is a strange alien race completely unlike mankind: asymmetrical with three arms and one large ear, the “Moties” as they come to be called are separated into casts of engineers, mediators, and rulers. Never having fully mastered the art of hyperspace jumps between stars, as humans have, the Moties have been restricted to their own system for millennia, if not longer.
And so it is the mission of Captain Roderick Harold, Lord Blaine, to discover the secrets of the Moties. He must also determine if they pose a threat to the Empire, and if so, take whatever action is necessary to preserve it. And the longer Blaine, his crew, and the team of civilian scientists in his charge remain in the Motie system, the more it seems they are hiding secrets-secrets that may force him to exterminate the very first alien race mankind has ever come into contact with.
With The Mote in God’s Eye, Niven and Pournelle have crafted a true page-turner that is impossible to put down. It isn’t just the intricacies of inter-species politics that make the book so interesting. It’s the care the authors have taken to devise a truly original work, with interesting characters and situations.
Unlike Gene Roddenberry’s semi-utopian Star Trek universe, where mankind has seemingly grown beyond his greedy and warlike ways, the Empire of Man is not much different than the Earth of today. There are wars and rebellions, mass murders, and all the worst of human nature still at the forefront.
Then there are the Moties. They’re completely unlike the human race, though not always in positive ways. They aren’t evil, nor are they completely virtuous: they are, just like mankind, simply what they are. And that’s a good part of what makes the book work so well.
The characters themselves may be the weakest links in the novel. There isn’t a whole lot of exposition as to their backgrounds and personalities, but then really, they aren’t the main focus. The concept of how mankind handles First Contact is, not how any individual does.
There’s plenty of action, too, for those who can’t imagine a good space opera without a laser battle or two. But this is not a shoot ‘em up saga by any means. The Mote in God’s Eye is much more an intellectual Sci-Fi exercise than anything else.
Above all, this is a classic, and it’s definitely worth your time. Robert Heinlein called it “possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read.” That’s high praise indeed, and just another reason why The Mote in God’s Eye is must reading for Sci Fi lovers everywhere.
Writing separately, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are responsible for a number of science fiction classics, such as the Hugo and Nebula Award-winnin...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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