The Mote in God's Eye by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven Book Review

 The Mote in God's Eye 

(Moties #1) 

By Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven 

Published Year: 1974

Page Count: 535 pages 

Medium Used: Kindle Scribe 

Genre : Science Fiction, Aliens, First Contact, Speculative Fiction,Political Intrigues, 2025-read. 

Rating : 5/5 😀😀😀😀😀

This is my first book with Larry Niven and I will definitely explore more of his brilliant concoctions in future. 🤞✌

Brilliant. I am left speechless. The plot and narrative are simply superb. I wonder why the average rating on goodreads is not higher for this one. I got so invested in the story that I felt my fight or flight adrenaline spike in response to some events in the plot. I didn't want the aliens to visit human civilization because they could render the whole settlement useless. Yes, the first contact alien race is super intelligent and super good at using tools but they are madly involved in endless cycles of self destruction and repopulation. First, an alien artifact enters human inhabited system and they find its sole inhabitant dead. They identify the source planet of its origin to be a dust particle like Mote in a God's eye resembling star. Humans have evolved to the point where they have terraformed and colonized multiple planets and mastered speed interstellar travel using an Alderson drive. They make it to the Mote and make contact with Moties. The Moties show only positive side to their nature and become excessively friendly with the crew. Few of their Mediators and ambassadors travel back with the humans as they make a hasty escape back home. On the outset, the aliens pretend they want trade deals and all that but they are hiding some very dangerous information about their race. How the human rule makers stumble upon these information and how it was previously disclosed to us .. the reader .. made me go wow wow. So what do the humans decide to do because now that they have experienced and got exposed to so much of the alien system, there is no going back to before. It will be like an incurable itch and the solution they come up with .. I felt ok with. 

These aliens .. there are some interesting facts about them. They can dismantle and reassemble any device real quickly. The Browns .. who are like worker class .. change their gender from male to female and all of them can breed. Without having sex, they are at a threat of dying (yes, ridiculous!!)so they do it with compulsion. They have wiped themselves off many times and re-emerged with few survivors.. so they are not as advanced as the consistently working human race. Obviously, they have been cooped up on their one planet for all time. They have perpetual smiles plastered to their faces but they are a bit more conniving than appears on the surface. Some of the crew become so enamored with the aliens that they risk their reputations and relations to defend their innocence. Lol 

Must read for all scifi fans. The character development is superb .. not just for the humans but the Moties too. I didn't feel them to be threatening at all. Only consumed by madness and like helpless. True in some sense, they are like us .. but we could never survive taking our lifestyle to their level of chaos!!