The Mote in God's Eye

The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, was called "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read" by Robert A. Heinlein. It appeared in 1975. The story is set in the distant future of Pournelle's CoDominium universe, and charts the first contact between Mankind and an alien species. The book is notable for the complex alien civilization which the authors have developed — the Moties are believably different both physically and psychologically in a way that becomes more clearly explained as we progress through the book. The human characters range from the typical hero type in Captain Roderick Blaine to the much more ambiguous merchant and traitor Horace Bury.

The novel is an example of hard science fiction, in that attention is paid to scientific detail. Larry Niven is noted for this type of genre, and it is especially evident in this work with regard to the theoretical mechanics and physics of interplanetary travel. The book's Alderson Drive and Langston Field shield system are literary inventions, but they are presented against a background of established science knowledge.

A sequel to The Mote in God's Eye, entitled The Gripping Hand, was written by the same authors over twenty years later. It was published in the U.K. as The Moat around Murcheson's Eye.

Opening in the year AD 3017, Mankind is shown by the book to be recovering slowly from an interstellar civil war which destroyed the old Empire of Man. A new Empire has risen and is occupied in establishing control over the remnants of its predecessor, by force if needed.

An Imperial battlecruiser, INSS MacArthur, happens to be on hand when an alien space craft arrives. Human ships use the Alderson Drive, which allows them to "jump" instantaneously between points in specific star systems. The alien craft, by contrast, is a solar sail vessel which has taken 190 years to cross between stars at sublight speed. MacArthur intercepts the craft and is fired upon by its automated systems, but manages to capture it relatively intact. However, on arrival back at base on New Caledonia, the Sector capital, the pilot is found to be dead.

MacArthur and the battleship Lenin are sent to the Mote - the star from which the alien ship came. The Mote is so called because it is a companion to a red supergiant star, Murcheson's Eye. The two stars, set against a great dark nebula look from the New Caledonia system like a hooded man, with the pair of stars as one eye with a mote in it. MacArthur carries civilian research teams intended to meet with and investigate the Moties, whilst Lenin is there to "ride shotgun" on the mission, avoiding all contact with the aliens. The Mote has only one Alderson point leading to it, and to reach this the ships must actually penetrate the red supergiant itself before using their Alderson drive systems, only possible because they have the Langston field shield technology.

MacArthur successfully makes contact with the Moties. They are found to have much advanced technology and seem friendly and willing to share it. Indeed they would likely have been formidable competitors to Humanity, except for the fact that they lack Langston Field technology and so are unable to leave their system via the Alderson point leading into the red supergiant.

As MacArthur prepares to leave, however, disaster strikes. A pair of the Motie Watchmaker caste has previously escaped into the machinery spaces on the ship, and although they were thought to have died they have actually been breeding furiously. Watchmakers are not sentient, but have an extremely highly developed instinct for technology — and unknown to the human crew have been quietly redesigning and rebuilding MacArthur. The crew is forced to abandon ship, which Lenin then destroys. Lenin proceeds back home, taking with it Motie ambassadors — in violation of her orders to avoid contact with the aliens — which her captain does only after great debate.

As Lenin leaves, three MacArthur midshipmen who managed to escape the ship in lifeboats land on the Motie planet, Mote Prime. Exploring unsupervised for the first time, they make a startling discovery - the Moties are not nearly so peaceful as they seem. Their biology forces the species to be extremely prolific, with a birth rate that ensures a neverending population explosion. Once the population pressure rises high enough, massive wars result which kill off almost everybody - only for the survivors to rebuild and repeat the cycle again. The Moties are utterly convinced that these cycles cannot be ended by any means. The midshipmen also find that there is a Warrior caste, far superior in combat to any human soldier, and these ultimately overwhelm and kill the three humans despite some help from a friendly Motie Master.

Back home, the Empire holds talks aimed at establishing trade and peaceful relations with the Moties, not realising what a disaster it would be to allow the species loose on the galaxy. Fortunately, the humans at the conference manage to put together various clues they have picked up during the course of the story and realise the threat in time. It seems that they will have no choice but to send the Fleet to destroy the Motie civilisation totally, but at the last minute the Motie ambassadors convince the humans instead to blockade the Alderson point and keep their people confined to their own system for at least the foreseeable future. The book ends with one of the Motie Mediators predicting that the humans will take over the Motie civilization after the next collapse, and wondering if perhaps the humans might be able to force an end to the cycles after all.