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In the Mote the humans find an ancient civilization--at least one million years old--that has always been bottled up in their cloistered solar system for lack of a star drive. The Moties are welcoming and kind, yet rather evasive about certain aspects of their society. It seems the Moties have a dark problem, one they've been unable to solve in over a million years.
This is the first collaboration between Niven and Pournelle, two masters of hard science fiction, and it combines Pournelle's interest in the military and sociology with Niven's talent for creating interesting, believable aliens. The novel meticulously examines every aspect of First Contact, from the Moties' biology, society, and art, to the effects of the meeting on humanity's economics, politics, and religions. And all the while suspense builds as we watch the humans struggle toward the truth. --Brooks Peck
Review
San Francisco Chronicle As science fiction, one of the most important novels ever published.
Columbus Dispatch A superlatively fine novel...no writer has ever come up with a more appealing, intriguing, and workable concept of aliens.
Frank Herbert A spellbinder, a swashbuckler...And, best of all, it has a brilliant new approach to that fascinating problem -- first contact with aliens.
Theodore Sturgeon One of the most engrossing tales I've read in years...fascinating.
Minneapolis Tribune Intriguing and suspenseful...the scenes in which the humans and aliens examine one another are unforgettable.
"Admiral's compliments, and you're to come to his office right away," Midshipman Staley announced. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Larry Niven ... another way to spell unique,
By Michael (Orleans, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mote In Gods Eye (Paperback)
Unexpectedly one of the best books I have read, Larry Niven creates a world with a mystery. A world where common humanoid biology has been turned on it's ear. Followed by the equally compelling "The Gripping Hand"
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful pacing,
By
This review is from: The Mote in God's Eye (Mass Market Paperback)
The story is wonderfully well-paced, with three distinct "action"sections, and a final court-room style showdown. Each action section grips you to the climax, and then you take a breather and start building up to the next. I'd love to see a film based on this! The science fiction elements are good, but it'd still make a decent story without it. However, the romance is rather poorly done. - Rujith.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!,
By
This review is from: Mote In Gods Eye (Paperback)
I first read this one at 15 and have been dying to review it ever since! This is an epic space opera played out on a grand scale, with an engaging cast of characters and bursting with ideas. It's theme of first contact with aliens is handled better than any other example I can think of in SF.Set a thousand years in the future, the novel takes place in a fragmented space empire reeling from a series of civil wars. Against this background an ailing warship is sent to investigate an enormous unidentified vessel approaching the sun. This turns out to be powered by a "light sail", a sheet of gossamer fabric thousands of miles across which the ship must navigate against: this is one of the earliest and most dramatic uses of the "sunjammer" thesis first postulated by Robert Forward in the (1950s?) The discovery of dead aliens aboard and the subsesquent expedition to the alien homeworlds reveal a fantastically advanced culture locked into a tragic cycle of overpopulation and war, and with the meeting of technologies, threatens human survival as they begin to learn the secret of faster than light travel which would enable them to swarm through the galaxy. There are passages of great potency and swashbuckling in the book: the encounter with the alien ship, the destruction of one of the human ships and the voyage across the foreign planet by fugitive survivors are unforgettable, as is the genuine sense of wonder evoked by the description of the alien civilisation. Unfortunately the book does have its faults: it is immensely long and lacks real descriptive power robbing it of its visual potential unless you are empowered with a superb visual imagination. It also adopts the language of sailing to an unwarranted extent giving it the feel of a seafaring tale, and the future described is peppered with terms associated with the British Empire, with minor characters who sound as if they served at Waterloo. Also, the lack of real drama in some important passages weakens the whole and gives it at at times a wearily trudging pace. The last hundred pages are taken up in political wrangling which further interfere with but do not spoil the tremendous power of the whole. Despite these weaknesses, THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE is an unforgettable read: its feeling of exploration and adventure are rarely matched in SF: plus its basis in hard science renders it a must for every fan of technological science-fiction.
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