he First Empire of Man had long fallen, and the Second Empire had risen on its ruins, before humans had any contact with an alien race: a strange light-sail probe, launched from a lonely world nearly hidden in the dark Coal Sack nebula.
Though ferrying a noblewoman and a suspected traitor, the INSS MacArthur is the nearest ship, and its freshly promoted captain, Rod Blaine, is sent to intercept the probe. Inside they find a dead ambassador whose chief physical dissimilarity is the arms: two on the right, thin for delicate work, and one on the left, huge and powerful.
Stormy debate ensues; ecstatic scientists and traders urging immediate relations clash with military leaders sensing a threat to the Empire. Finally a mission is sent, led by Blaine, whose MacArthur is stuffed with scientists; but he's subject to the famously heartless Admiral Kutuzov aboard the Lenin. Kutuzov's orders are to destroy MacArthur if the "Moties" gain possession of its technological secrets.
In the system they meet and bring aboard a single Motie, whose fascination factor is exceeded only by the miniature Moties she brings along. An embassy ship appears, and the humans learn that Moties are highly specialized, even physically, and include Mediators, Masters and others besides the Engineer and Watchmakers they'd already met.
As cordial relations develop, leading to a landing party on the aliens' ancient and overpopulated home world, the miniatures on the ship break free and vanish. At first the problem is treated lightly, but breeding like wildfire they engulf MacArthur until at last Blaine must evacuate and destroy it. The Moties report that three of Blaine's midshipmen, escaping in life rafts, burned up in the home world's atmosphere.
The midshipmen survived, however, and on Mote Prime they learn the Moties' terrible secret...
Hard choices
Arguably the most successful pairing of writers since Ellery Queen, the collaborative team of Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Jerry Pournelle has produced several remarkable works, including the popular Lucifer's Hammer. The Mote in God's Eye may be their finest achievement, blending a richly textured alien culture with an array of carefully drawn characters placed in complex situations with no easy solutions.
The focus begins and ends with Rod Blaine. Readers learn a great deal about his multifaceted character before they ever meet the aliens, as he deals idiosyncratically with a world rebelling against the Empire. Later, in the Mote system, readers experience his progressively more painful decisions, and--as he is the front man for the Empire--it's clear that these are harbingers of the difficulties that will be faced by all those admirals, scientists and politicians back home for whom the upright but imperfect Blaine must pave the way.
The real star of the novel, though, is the carefully crafted and gradually revealed Motie civilization--and the Moties themselves, as individuated as their human counterparts. The idea of an alien race that poses a threat not because its people are evil or power-mad but simply as a result of a biological curse is fresh and disturbing. Readers' responses to their plight may be as diverse as those of the humans who encounter them.
If the Motie civilization is the star, the human culture is a close second. From page one the ship name MacArthur telegraphs Niven and Pournelle's intent: Rather than creating a futuristic society out of the whole cloth, they opted to project contemporary humans, with relatively few changes, into the far future. Most science fiction writers foretell a blending of human cultures and loss of ethnicity; Niven and Pournelle propose that humans will keep, and take positive steps to preserve, rich cultural heritages even during expansion into the galaxy. Details of religion and social structure add to the vocational differences in perspective to provide a fertile context for the dramatic encounter with the aliens.
Because its humans are easy to recognize and identify with, The Mote in God's Eye tells a great deal about how humans might meet a crisis like a dangerous first contact--and how they deal with crises in general.
