Mote in gods eye ebook

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An earlier example of very alien aliens aliens so alien they alienate me. Although they are very alien, very strange, they are imbued with enough human character traits to be understandable. Of course, completely inscrutable aliens are fun but the more understandable aliens can be more emotionally invested in.

I love the concept of "specialized subspecies" of the Moties, there are several variations in their species evolved for specialized tasks, such as technicians, warriors, mediators etc.

A Motie "Warrior", art by yoggurt. As the novel was written in the 70s its age inevitably shows in places. These few terms notwithstanding I would argue that The Mote in God's Eye stands the test of time very well. The characters are better than just flat plot devices, though the book is clearly more about the plot than the characters.

Both authors are excel at writing hard science fiction and the science details make the story that much more vivid and believable without ever bogging the book down with excessive infodumping. However, the book is written so well that I never found it necessary to refer to it at any time. The central and very human theme of this book seems to be how difficult it is for different races to coexist peacefully when there is a conflict of interest and when negotiations are hampered by deceptions.

The issue is not entirely resolved in this book but leaves a lot of room for the readers to speculate and draw their own conclusions. One of the all-time greats IMO. 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 pages are boring exposition filled where we meet the stock characters engineer with Scots accent, plucky female aristo along for the ride, young dashing military commander and learn about the painfully uninteresting world of the future.

Once we meet the aliens, known as Moties, it takes many more pages before we learn anything about the society. There are many portentous allusions to things the Moties don't want the humans to learn.

It takes so long to get to the revelations, that I really didn't care once I read about them. All this padding would be fine if Niven and Pournelle had provided a rich world to explore. No such luck. While the initial concept is interesting US and USSR unite, colonize space, have a civil war, new empire tries to pick up the pieces it quickly devolves into cutting and pasting from 19th century Britain.

The navy is straight from Horatio Hornblower, with officers named sailing master and teenage midshipman running crew sections. The Church which is Catholic, a bit odd given the leading space powers were largely Protestant and Orthodox is clearly more powerful, without serving any narrative purpose.

Has the Church followed its social justice wing or become a rival power center to create challenges for the elite? Has the theology created cultural restraints on the development of technology or society? No and No. All the more galling the Church apparently hasn't changed much at all in a millennium.

There is a decent story about alien contact amongst all its problems, but it is such a short part of the book, it is probably not worth working your way through to find it. As the humans encounter the Moties, they learn that the society could threaten human society. The debate concerns the means by which they must deal with it. The viewpoints expressed nicely describe the classical realist view of politics. Alien first contact follows similar rules and problems as seen in foreign relations.

What makes a country a threat? How do you manage threats? What is the purpose of interacting with other societies at all? The book has some interesting, if one-sided, things to say about this, but you have to wade through hundreds of pages of crap to get there. If you are looking for a classic to discover, beware this one. This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. Show full review. Algernon Darth Anyan. 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 from point A to point B, several light-years away. The second thing the writers need to come up with is conflict: something to put meat on the bare bones of the plot. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle gives as right from the prologue a couple of millenia of our space faring future, complete with technological breakthroughs, explosive colonisation followed by economic collapse, imperialism and rebellion, space fleets modelled after the British colonialism Navy, complete with its highly exclusivist social structure.

The detailed setup, and the lively introduction of the Hero, in the incarnation of a young and daring scion of a noble family who distinguishes himself as temporary ship captain in putting down an armed insurrection on a colony world, is merely the background for the most important event humanity has faced so far: first contact with an alien civilization.

They could be the greatest potential danger we have ever faced, or the greatest potential opportunity we've ever found. Out of 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 is coming into the human known space at crawling Newtonian speeds.

First contact is actually botched, so the Imperial court is sending the Hero on a half scientific, half millitary mission to the 'mote' to find out what kind of aliens we have stumbled upon.

The novel may look like a doorstopper but it reads like a blockbuster, at least for those readers who are more interested in speculative ideas and hard science than in well-fleshed out characters or stylistic flourishes. There's enough action and humor to satisfy also the more impatient popcorn style of reader, but for me Niven comes closer to the golden age of SF here, in the Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov mould. Peter Tillman.

A classic SF novel, but another one that hasn't aged well. I'm kinda sorry I reread it , as much of the rosy glow that I recalled from past reads was gone this time. It's a book of its time , 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, with a cruel sfnal twist. But, once the book gets rolling, it still got me in its spell. I will definitely recommend this book to science fiction, fiction lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Great book, The Mote in Gods Eye pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. In the year , the Second Empire of Man spans hundreds of star systems, thanks to the faster-than-light Alderson Drive.

The Mote in God's Eye, set far in the future, tells the tale of humanity's first contact with an alien species. Despite being first published in , the science holds up fairly well.

There are a few funny oddities that show the story's age, such as the mention of "microwave ovens" and "pocket computers" as if we would be shocked by their ubiquity, but these are rare. The first edition of the novel was published in October , and was written by Larry Niven.