[9/10] Because of the Alderson Drive we need never consider the space between the stars. Because we can shunt between stellar systems in zero time, our ships and ships' drives need cover only interplanetary distances. Any self-respecting space opera must start by postulating first a method for overcoming the vast emptiness of the space between stars. You can call it 'unobtainium' or 'equipotential thermonuclear flux' , but you need to overhaul known physics principles in order to move instantly...

Well, this was a fascinating book. I can't imagine the thoroughness of invention in creating the Moties, and making sure the science of this book was as believable as could be with known science, especially at the time. It's truly astonishing.I WILL say that I wasn't caught up in the book in a way that I couldn't stop turning pages: I found it a bit hard to get through, the characters were not particularly engrossing PERSONALLY, but the plot and particularly world-building were so deep and fasci...

“We play your part in order to understand you, but you each seem to play a thousand parts. It makes things difficult for an honest, hard-working bug-eyed monster.” In a way, Larry Niven's The Mote in God's Eye is two books. On the one hand, we have a serious story of first contact with an alien race very different than us (with their own misconceptions and motivations). I enjoyed all that went into the mutual attempts at understanding. On the other hand, we have two-dimensional and often annoyin...

"Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise, you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked." —Larry Niven

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a number of science fiction novels which I fondly remember. The Legacy of Heorot tells the story of colonization and the perils of misunderstanding xenobiology. Footfall is an exciting update on the War of the Worlds. Lucifer's Hammer concerns the collapse of society in the face of a comet impact on Earth. My major issue with Lucifer's Hammer, bloat, is a much bigger issue in highly regarded Mote in God's Eye.The bloat issue is gigantic here. The first 150 p...

An excellent read & raises a lot of interesting thoughts for me. It's about contact with an alien civilization in a more interesting setting than most. Makes me think a lot about some of our civilizations. Well worth reading & a classic of science fiction.

A classic SF novel, but another one that hasn't aged well. I'm kinda sorry I reread it (2021), as much of the rosy glow that I recalled from past reads was gone this time. Sigh. Happens.It's a book of its time (1974), and new readers (who may not have even been born then) will have to cut the book some slack for the dated, clumsy backstory. And female readers will note the vanishingly small representation for their half of the human species. Females are better-represented among the alien moties,...

The Mote in God's Eye is probably the finest contemplation of a human-alien first contact that I have ever read. The story deals out a sizable cast of characters without seeming overwhelming. Mote explores every issue from multiple perspectives, leaving no room for good vs. evil simplifications despite that fact that some characters are not likable. The core theme of the book - that a superior alien intelligence is limited by its inability to tolerate ideas based in hope and imagination - evolve...

Solid science fiction about first contact, set in a universe where humanity reached the stars, fractured, and has slowly knit itself back together under imperial/aristocratic power. This doesn't actually come through that much for much of the book, other than mentioning that one of the main characters will have a title one day. And then at the end, we're thrust into imperial politics with little preparation - it's interesting, but a bit jarring.Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn du...

This book gave me a really bad vibe from the outset. Maybe it was the captain's use of the word "rape" as an epithet. Maybe it's the token female aristocrat whose sole job is so predictable from the very outset: (view spoiler)[to get rescued then fall in love with and have babies for the unlikeable leading man (hide spoiler)]. Maybe it's the incessant stupidity and naivety of the big players in the story throughout the course of its run. We'll get into all of that during the course of this revie...

What could have been a decent fist-contact story is completely undercut by poor character writing, lazy sexism, lack of actual critical thinking about human society, and a science fiction plot twist that itself undercuts the book's lazy sexism. The book has the pieces for what should be a decent science fiction story. First contact with a reasonably interesting alien civilization. Misunderstandings and realizations of the aliens along the way at a satisfying pace. Some decent humor. Some decent

Written in 1972, The Mote in God’s Eye is the premier work by award winning authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who also collaborated on the science fiction classics Footfall and Lucifer’s Hammer. Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read." It easily makes my Top 10 Sci/Fi Book List.The story is set in the year 3017 A.D. The Second Interstellar Empire of man is in the process of forcefully reuniting many colonies long lost since th...

You know those books that aren't really that bad but you notice something that bugs you early on. Then you have a bad day at work and start taking it out on the book by noticing more and more things that bug you. Like someone smoking a pipe and drinking scotch because they want to be posh or british or some sort of sailing captain. Or setting up a story where there is one human woman in the entire fleet while the aliens they meet switch between male and female at will and they have to be pregnan...

Very entertaining, interesting, intriguing, thought provoking, etc. Good science fiction. Robert A. Heinlein himself is quoted as saying something to the effect that this was the best science fiction novel he had ever read. I don’t know that I’d go that far, but this was very good. David Allen Coe claimed to have sang the perfect country and western song, and in that same regard, Niven and Pournellle may have collaborated to create the perfect science fiction novel, it contains all of the import...

This is a fantastic first contact novel! I thoroughly enjoyed it. The Moties were fascinating and much like their fellow human cast, I found my opinion of each of them changing as the story progressed. There were many whom I loved at first and came to dislike, and vice versa. All in all a wonderful set of characters to journey through the difficulties of first contact with.There are a lot of considerations when two intelligent species meet in space for the first time. How much do you keep back?

Fairly interesting contact novel. A yellow star in front of a red giant star in the Coal Sack Nebula resembles a hooded man with one eye, the giant red star being the eye and a yellow star in front of it is what gives the suggestion of the mote in the eye of said hooded head suggests a "mote in god's eye" , thus the name. The race of beings from this system, the "Moties" represent a kind of threat humans haven't faced before.I read this some time (read some years) ago and still remember the idea...

For some reason I always find Larry Niven much better with Jerry Pournelle than without; Inferno, Lucifer's Hammer and Footfall are all winners (they have collaborated on quite a few other titles, but I have not read them yet). The Mote in God's Eyeis generally considered to be their partnership’s best book (have a look at Larry Niven’s Goodreads page).I believe the blurb by Robert A. Heinlein that appears on many editions of the book’s cover* has been around since its first publication in 1974;...

This story tells the world created by the duet of writers Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle known as the condominium, where humanity has followed an evolution that today has not been completed. Neither Pournelle nor Niven were unable to imagine the collapse of the Soviet Union (although communism has not yet disappeared, but has taken on more dramatic overtones, as we are seeing in the case of China, where you can see the worst of both worlds, and where we see how every day the Chinese Communist

Larry and Paul... doesn't that sound like a sitcom couple? I've read a lot of Niven and Pournelle's collaborations over the years, and at the height of my Very White Space Opera phase (i.e., when I was a teenager with no taste and liked anything with spaceships and aliens in it) Niven was one of my favorite authors.The Mote in God's Eye was their first collaboration, and never having read it before, I was expecting something like Footfall. It kind of is, but of course it was written over twenty

A political novel about first contact with extra-terrestrials27 November 2014 To me there seems to be something about these pre-1980's science fiction novels that I am drawn towards reading. Maybe it has something to do with being influenced by my Dad to read the Isaac Asimov novels, or more likely it has something to do with my life long passion for science-fiction. However, the books written in my father's generation seem to have a lot more character, and a lot more insight, than much of the r...