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First Contact Goes Awry: The Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

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First Contact Goes Awry: The Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

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First Contact Goes Awry: The Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

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Published on April 25, 2019

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In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.

Even before the stories were called “science fiction,” authors have speculated on and theorized about contact with alien beings. In 1974, two of the era’s most popular science fiction authors, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, decided to team up and produce the ultimate first contact novel, a tale they called A Mote in God’s Eye. Their different approaches to storytelling ended up meshing quite well; not only did they produce a landmark novel, they started a best-selling collaboration that lasted for decades. The book was praised by Robert Heinlein as “[t]he best novel about human beings making first contact with intelligent but utterly non-human aliens I have ever seen, and possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read.” Today, I’ll look at that original novel, one of my favorite novels of all time, and also its 1993 sequel, The Gripping Hand, which—while some feel that it’s not as strong as the original book—brings the tale to a satisfying conclusion.

Throughout human history, initial periods of contact between different cultures have often been disruptive, and even disastrous, particular for the weaker or less aggressive culture. This sense of jeopardy was palpable in the seminal 1945 story by Murray Leinster, “First Contact,” which gave a name to what has essentially become an entire sub-genre of science fiction (I reviewed that story, and others by Leinster, here). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has an excellent article on the theme of First Contact here.

While the Niven/Pournelle collaboration was successful in capturing the excitement and tension of a first contact scenario, the writing process itself was not easy. In N-Space, his 1990 collection, Niven wrote of the challenges of writing The Mote in God’s Eye, which took years. Niven mentioned that Heinlein, wanting the tale to fully live up to the praise he’d given their efforts, recommended a number of changes to the book, and even copy-edited the final draft. And in his collection Playgrounds of the Mind (1991), Niven discussed writing The Gripping Hand. He had not been satisfied with the ending of the first book, and had long tinkered with ideas for a sequel. The sequel was delayed by the periods of writer’s block that Pournelle suffered from later in his career, but thankfully, he eventually had a burst of creativity that allowed them to finish.

The final products of this collaboration display a remarkable synergy, with each author bringing his unique strengths to the collaboration. The reactionary obsession with order of Pournelle’s Empire of Man was pitted effectively against the chaotic strangeness of Niven’s alien “Moties.” The authors’ collaborations always result in a variety of interesting characters, and I enjoy guessing which author created which character (imagining that the old military guys whose dire warnings are often ignored originate with Pournelle, and the inquisitive types with a disregard for rules originate with Niven, for example). And of course both authors can always be counted on to write gripping tales of adventure.

The critical and fan response to The Mote in God’s Eye was overwhelmingly positive. Some readers have complained that Pournelle’s Empire of Man setting feels reactionary, and indeed, his all-male military and imperial government seems even more quaint today than it did four decades ago. But the craftsmanship, creativity, and attention to detail that the authors brought to the book were widely praised. Reactions to The Gripping Hand were more mixed—perhaps not surprising when you consider the high bar set by the first book. But, taken together, the two novels present us with a remarkable tale, full of adventure and excitement, which grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck and doesn’t let go until the final page is turned.

 

About the Authors

Larry Niven (born 1938) is a noted author of science fiction who specializes in finding fictional inspirations on the boundaries of scientific discovery, and creating unique alien worlds and beings. You can find my review of his novel Ringworld here.

Jerry Pournelle (1933-2017) was an author who focused on both science fiction and fact, whose solo work often featured military adventures. You can find my review of his novel The Mercenary here, and my review of his novel A Spaceship for the King here.

Separately, both Niven and Pournelle had significant writing careers. But for a few decades, working as a team, they were one of the hottest commodities in the science fiction field, with their books frequently appearing on best-seller lists, including The Mote in God’s Eye in 1974, Lucifer’s Hammer in 1977, Footfall in 1985, and (with Stephen Barnes) The Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf’s Children in 1987 and 1995. They returned to the world of the Mote with The Gripping Hand in 1993.

 

The Empire of Man

The “Mote” books were notable for the significant and detailed work that went into building the universe, and, fortunately for those who are interested in the craft of writing, that process was well documented. At the time the first book was written, Pournelle was writing a science column called “A Step Farther Out” for Galaxy magazine, and in the January 1976 issue, he and Niven published a non-fiction article on “Building The Mote in God’s Eye.” This essay was reprinted in a collection of Pournelle’s columns, also entitled A Step Farther Out, and in Niven’s aforementioned fiction and non-fiction collection, N-Space.

The books were set in Pournelle’s “Empire of Man” future history, which is informed by his belief that history is cyclical, with periods of consolidation and destruction, and that empires are one of the forms of government that will reoccur. Mankind, apparently the only intelligent life in the cosmos, first spread to the stars under the leadership of the “CoDominium,” a corrupt alliance of the United States and the Soviet Union, which collapsed, engulfing the colonies in interstellar war. Out of this chaos emerged the First Empire. A rival coalition of worlds, led by the planet Sauron, which practiced genetic engineering, was defeated after leaving the First Empire in tatters, and now the Second Empire is intent on preventing future wars by uniting human worlds under a single, central government.

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A Chain Across the Dawn
A Chain Across the Dawn

A Chain Across the Dawn

There are major two technological innovations that have shaped human civilization. The first is the Alderson Drive, which allows ships to travel instantaneously between star systems that have “tramlines,” or links that exist between certain stars. Some stars have no tramlines, while others have many, and stellar events, such as novas, can disrupt these links. Human civilization is built around these tramlines; systems without them, and the vast spaces between stars, remain largely unexplored. The second major piece of technology is the Langston Field, which creates a sphere that can absorb energy, and can be used to protect both cities on planets and ships in space. The fields, when fired upon, can partially collapse, or burn through, or collapse completely, destroying everything within them.

One area where Niven and Pournelle were prescient in predicting a future development their contemporaries largely overlooked was in equipping their humans with pocket computers, and showing how having a wealth of information at their fingertips would change future decision making.

The Imperial government bears no small resemblance to Imperial Britain, right down to its titles and its state religion. The practices and organization of the all-male Imperial Navy are copied, almost intact, from the days of Lord Nelson and British domination of the seas. It is this human society, hierarchal and obsessed with order, that makes contact with the aliens of the “Mote.”

The alien beings, or “Moties,” are largely drawn from the vivid imagination of Larry Niven, whose “Known Space” stories are populated with all manner of distinctly non-human beings. They are strikingly asymmetrical, with two small right arms used for detail work, and a huge left arm—the “gripping hand,” whose muscles are anchored to the top of the head—used for heavy lifting. Existing behind the Coal Sack, in a system not easily reached by the Alderson Drive, the Moties had been previously undetected by humans. The authors do not give much information on the aliens in their Galaxy article—understandably, since unraveling the secret of their society and nature is at the core of the book.

The Mote in God’s Eye was edited for length, with one discarded segment—a battle scene that would have opened the novel—later appearing as the short story “Reflex” in Pournelle’s first There Will Be War anthology. 

 

The Mote in God’s Eye

Newly promoted Captain Blaine of Imperial Space Naval Ship MacArthur has distinguished himself in pacifying the rebel world of New Chicago. Now he has been ordered to take his ship to the world of New Scotland for repairs, and then travel on to the Imperial capital on Sparta. He has two important passengers on board. One is Sandra Fowler, an anthropology student whose father is an influential Senator. The other is His Excellency Horace Bury, a trade official suspected of supporting the recent rebellion. Upon arrival in the New Scotland system, Blaine is tasked with intercepting an interstellar vessel, powered by a lightsail, which has entered the system. The ship is unlike anything humans have ever constructed, and it’s clear that this may be a first contact situation. MacArthur is fired upon by a laser, and severs the ship from its sail, unfortunately killing its inhabitant, an alien being.

It turns out that the laser was an automated meteor defense, and not a deliberate attack. The ship originated from a star near the Coal Sack, the “Mote,” whose only tramline passes through the outer shell of a nearby red supergiant star. The Imperial government, eager to prevent further misunderstandings, wants to launch a mission as soon as possible. MacArthur, with a contingent of scientists aboard, will make contact, while the battleship Lenin, commanded by the ruthless Vice Admiral Kutuzov, will stand by and observe. Lenin has orders to take any measures, including destroying MacArthur, to protect the secrets of the Alderson Drive and Langston Field, the cornerstones of Imperial military power. Sandra Fowler insists on being part of the scientific contingent, and Bury comes along as a trade representative.

MacArthur, upon arriving in the Mote system, immediately finds a Motie in a small spaceship who is strangely uncommunicative, but inclined to tinker with every device it encounters. It also has small companions, at first thought to be children, but then seen more as semi-intelligent helpers. The tinkering explains the fact that there were no interchangeable parts on the Motie probe; every piece of technology was custom-built. The humans are contacted by other Moties, and soon realize that there are many specialized subspecies, including the Engineers and Watchmakers they have already met, and also leaders including Mediators, Masters, Keepers, and a whole host of other aliens whose attributes are shaped by the tasks they perform.

The Moties invite a human contingent to their planet, which we follow largely through the viewpoint of MacArthur’s clever and irreverent quasi-civilian “Sailing Master,” Kevin Renner. The contingent also includes a group of young midshipmen, who soon become pawns in a deadly game. The scientists are fascinated by the Moties, and Bury is intrigued by their technological abilities and opportunities for trade. But the Moties are far from united, and their society is a mix of fiercely competing factions. Moreover, they hide a chaotic secret that will horrify the order-obsessed Imperials when it is uncovered. There are plenty of adventures, as well as tragedy and destruction awaiting the humans, and not all will make it out alive. The tale ends with an uneasy blockade of the Mote system, which echoes the Cold War stalemate that gripped our world at the time the book was written, where every day that Armageddon was postponed was seen as a small victory.

 

The Gripping Hand

A generation has passed, not only since the events of the first book, but also in the real world. The sequel is less steeped in Cold War pessimism than the original. It also introduces more female characters (although this step toward inclusion also highlights the fact that Niven and Pournelle are sometimes not at their best when portraying women). Horace Bury has been utterly transformed by his encounter with the Moties: Once a fierce opponent of the Empire, he now sees it as mankind’s best hope against the Motie threat, and with Kevin Renner, works as an Imperial intelligence agent. They travel to a colony world where a Motie expression, “On one hand…on the other hand…on the gripping hand…” has become common, and fear it is evidence that someone has found a way to break the blockade. Although the expression turns out to have come from a more mundane source, they find illegal trade being perpetrated, using an intermittent tramline caused by a nearby variable star. Bury remembers a proto-star that they had been observing during the Mote expedition and begins to fear that a new tramline appearing in the Mote system could bring all their efforts to naught; he and Kevin decide to investigate and visit the blockade.

We again meet former Captain and now Lord Blaine and his wife Sandra, who have outgrown their young adventurous natures, and now dedicate themselves to preserving the status quo while finding a solution to the Motie problem. We also meet their children, Glenda Ruth and Kevin, who have followed in their parents’ footsteps as a biologist and a military officer, respectively. Both of the children were raised with considerable exposure to a Motie mediator brought back by the first expedition, which has given them not only a unique perspective on the aliens, but a preternatural ability to manipulate their fellow humans.

The Blaines have sponsored an institute that has found a possible biological solution to the chaotic nature of Motie society. The Empire decides to send an expedition to the Mote, which arrives just as a new Alderson tramline appears, triggered by changes in the proto-star. Bury, Kevin, and the young Lieutenant Blaine board Bury’s yacht, Glenda Ruth boards a rich boyfriend’s yacht, and together with two Imperial warships, they are all that stands between success and failure, and soon become embroiled in a tense competition between Motie factions with both good and bad intentions toward the human race. There are negotiations, misunderstandings, and some of the most exciting space navy engagements I have ever encountered. The outcome of their struggle lies in the balance right up until the very end, and the tale finishes on a more hopeful note than the first book.

 

Final Thoughts

The Mote in God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand are among my all-time favorite books, and I doubt I’m alone in that opinion. They are packed with action and adventure, and each story moves at a rapid pace that keeps the reader engaged—but they are also books that make you think, and have generated quite a bit of discussion over the years. And it’s now your turn to chime in: What are your thoughts on this unique pair of books? Were you as captivated by the stories and their setting as I was?

Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.

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Alan Brown

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Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
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6 years ago

You know what I hate. People who show up just to correct the author on minutia.

On an unrelated note, which calendar system were you using for Jerry Pournelle (1927-1987)? Because in the Gregorian, the year of his death was 2017.

It turns out I am super-fussy about cover art–the art on the edition I first read is always the right one. In this case that would be Ed Soyka’s cover for the Pocket Book MMPB.

I may or may not have mentioned that the original “Ender’s Game” managed to keep my attention even after I was accidentally set on fire part way through the story. Mote managed to keep my attention despite me having had painful dental work part way through the book. In fact, I read it as I walked from the dentists to the university, which demonstrates both focus and a failure to grasp basic road safety.

Of the JEP/LN collaborations I’ve reread recently (Mote, Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall), Mote by far stands up the best. Granted the politics are reprehensible but not nearly as bad as Hammer, plus there’s none of Footfall’s attempts at eroticism. More positively, it’s a very long book by Disco Era standards but there is none of the padding one would expect in long, post-work processor pieces.

Do you have plans to review the other sequel?

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6 years ago

Jerry Pournelle made it to 2017.

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Admin
6 years ago

@1, 2 – Fixed, thanks!

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6 years ago

I remember reading Mote repeatedly back in the day; and it led me to other Niven & Pournelle collaborations (Lucifer’s Hammer, which probably hasn’t aged nearly as well; Inferno; Oath of Fealty) as well as their solo work.  I think I only ever read Gripping Hand once, around the time it first came out.  Might be getting to be time for a revisit.

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6 years ago

Lucifer’s Hammer, which probably hasn’t aged nearly as well

Can something that was wildly racist and sexist at the time be said to have aged badly, or it is just that its flaws are now more obvious?

I take the moderate position that there was only one JEP/LN collaboration worth reading and that’s Mote. Everything else was increasingly flawed.

In one of those “steamboat time” coincidences, I emailed tor just a couple days ago to ask if they wanted a piece about Mote. I am king of bad timing.

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6 years ago

Can something that was wildly racist and sexist at the time be said to have aged badly, or it is just that its flaws are now more obvious?

I’m going to have to say the latter — at least for me, personally; I was a lot younger and more uncritical back in those days.

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6 years ago

Sorry about that date, it is so blatantly wrong I’m surprised I didn’t catch it before submitting the review. If that typo had been correct, the burst of creativity that allowed Pournelle to finish The Gripping Hand would have occurred a few years after his death. And to make matters worse, Pournelle was born in 1933, so another correction is required as well. I have a template I use as a format for my articles, and the dates (1927-1987) are embedded in that template. It seems that, this time around, I did not modify the dates to fit the author being reviewed. 

(Those dates happen to be the years that SF author Randall Garrett was born and died, in case anyone was wondering.)

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6 years ago

It seems to me 1987 – 1988 saw a bunch of old time authors, some pretty high profile, die. Although in Garrett’s case, death might have been a mercy.

(for the kids: Garrett spent the last eight years of his life in an encephalitis-induced coma)

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Patrick Morris Miller
6 years ago

Pournelle’s daughter has a novel in the setting, Outies, which has been in my get-around-to-someday heap for a few years now.

wiredog
6 years ago

I reread Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall a few years ago, and promptly donated the hardcovers to the local library for their $1 table. 

Mote fixes what was done to Bury’s character (by the authors) in the first novel fairly well, though you can tell it’s a pre 9/11/01 work.  I think I like Hand better than many people seem to. So what if Renner is sometimes a thinly disguised Niven, he’s a fun character and not quite Marty Stu competent.  Jennifer Pournelle’s sequel is ok, I finished it, but it felt too long, with too many threads, and somewhat unfinished.  IIRC, it kind of just stopped rather than ending. Neal Stephenson has that problem with stopping rather than ending, too.  

The Legacy of Heorot is a very well-written SF-horror novel and would make an excellent movie with lots of main characters getting eaten by CGI aliens. The sequel wasn’t particularly good.

Mayhem
6 years ago

On the collaborations front I always liked The Legacy of Heorot, which has at its core that total misunderstanding of ecosystems which is endemic in human behaviour.  

The sequel however wasn’t very good at all, and even worse was rereleased under a different name a few years later so the new sequel I thought might redeem it turned out to be exactly what we already had.  

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6 years ago

I liked Mote when I read it back when it was first published but when I reread it a few years ago I had a rough time dealing with the misogyny. Also the bad dialogue which is a problem with most of Niven’s work. 

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6 years ago

It’s a shame about Lucifer’s Hammer because I remember it had some genuinely great widescreen disaster pr0n moments, but the bad stuff was so bad that it’s probably not salvageable.

(Although it seems like it’d be ripe for a very, very, very, very loosely-adapted Netflix miniseries or somesuch, that keeps the cometary impact but loses the racism and sexism.)

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6 years ago

@5,6 Those aspects of Lucifer’s Hammer set my teeth on edge even when I first read it in 1978. I listened to the audio book a couple of years ago, and it was even more painful.  Too bad, because there was a lot in that book that I liked.

@10 I loved the way Bury and Renner grew and changed between the two books. That’s one reason I consider the sequel an important part of the work. Bury went from being a one-dimensional greedy villain to a real and complex human being.

@11 Of all the Niven/Pournelle collaborations, after the two Mote books, I think The Legacy of Heorot is my next favorite. There was also a novelette set between the first book and the sequel which I found recently in audiobook format (The Secret of Black Ship Island), and after listening to it, the sequel made more sense to me.

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6 years ago

Would it be bad form to point out that the battleship is Lermontov, not “Lermentov”?

BMcGovern
Admin
6 years ago

@7, 15: Dates and “Lermontov” spelling updated!

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6 years ago

I read Mote a few years ago, and it was really tough getting through the casual misogyny throughout the entire thing. It really soured me on wanting to read any more of the series. The single female character exists only to fall in love with the main character. And all the men in the book are annoyed that a woman had to come along at all.

In my mind it took a step past “a bunch of dudes going on a quest” to “ugh, who let a girl in my clubhouse?”

Anything interesting that happened in that book ended up being tainted by that to the point that I couldn’t enjoy it.

 

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6 years ago

I continue to use the “on the one hand…on the other hand…on the gripping hand” expression.  That, and an occasional thought (less frequently acted upon) that I should clean my coffee-making apparatus more carefully, are probably my two strongest remaining take-aways from these books.  I enjoyed them when I read them, and I must have re-read Mote at least once, but I have not re-visited them in a while. 

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6 years ago

@17 In defense of the authors, I would point out that there were no women aboard US naval vessels at the time they wrote The Mote in God’s Eye. And people doubted that would ever change. All male military expeditions were simply the way things were, back in those days. When the changes came, and more and more military roles were made available for women, old norms crumbled at a rapid rate. At my age, it is sometimes dizzying to look back at the way things were in my youth, and compare them to the way things are now, even when you consider those changes steps in the right direction. 

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6 years ago

I remember reading this book in college and thinking that the protagonists are obviously the baddies.

They believe in “unifying” human space through force, and they murder entire planets for daring to rebel.  Admiral Kutuzov is basically Grand Moff Tarkin, except that George Lucas had the good sense to have his protagonists fighting against Tarkin rather than teaming up with him.

On the bright side, their strategy for preventing future wars is generally successful; once you nuke a planet to the point that it can’t support human life, no one is going to be fighting over that planet in the future. 

 

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6 years ago

@19/AlanBrown: “In defense of the authors, I would point out that there were no women aboard US naval vessels at the time they wrote The Mote in God’s Eye. And people doubted that would ever change.”

This shows how progressive Star Trek was.

Weren’t the Moties all-female?

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6 years ago

I feel that Pournelle in particular, is vastly overrated.  Most of what he brings is an overwhelmingly reactionary set of values to nearly every aspect of characterization and plotting.

In fact the one thing he “did” that I used to be willing to credit him for were action sequences.  I forget when it was I first learned how much of his actual battle scenes and military structure was re-skinned After Action Reports from US Military history, but soon after I realized that the stadium massacre in one of the Falkenberg stories was not loosely, but rather PRECISELY based on the 1973 massacre at the Estadio Nacional de Chile executed by the forces of Augusto Pinochet.  And in reading the rationale he attached to that behavior in novel, I realized, 1) he’s not very inventive and 2) he was justifying something he pretty clearly approved of on some level.

At that point it became difficult not to spit when his name was mentioned. It still is.  Like Mel Gibson or Roman Polanski movies, his works are simply something I can’t separate from the moral reprehensibility of their creator.

Mayhem
6 years ago

@21

Not quite – they alternated between male and female each time they gave birth, which they had to do fairly often from memory, and the Mediators and certain others were neutered. 
Gender was effectively ignored by the Moties, but the castes were hardwired in. 

@22

Interesting, that would be the first SF stadium massacre I can think of then that wasn’t based on the Nika riots, which is the usual go to. 

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GEOFFREY R KIESER
6 years ago

@22 –  but rather PRECISELY based on the 1973 massacre at the Estadio Nacional de Chile executed by the forces of Augusto Pinochet. 

 

I always thought that it was based on the Nika riots in Constantinople during Justinian’s reign. 

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6 years ago

You know what I’d like to see some day? A space opera that borrows shamelessly from Byzantine history in          which the heroic central figure is a thinly disguised Theodora. 

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pecooper
6 years ago

I loved The Mote in God’s Eye when I first read it. I had just come off a hitch in the navy, doing patrols on a ballistic missile sub, so all male military crew seemed perfectly believable to me. I found it still to be pretty good, when I reread it, again, a decade later.

 On The Gripping Hand, on the […] hand, strikes me as an example of why authors should resist the temptation to revisit a successful milieu. The first book said everything it needed to say and finished things up nicely. The sequel just feels like it is putting curly-cues on things that are already fine and doesn’t do it particularly convincingly.

 I know I am in the minority but I still consider Inferno to be Niven and Pournelle’s finest book, even better than Mote in God’s Eye. It is still on my list of best fantasies of all time. It’s sequel, Escape from Hell, however, is an even better example of why you shouldn’t mess with a winner. I found it unreadable. When you have summed it all up, walk away from it.

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6 years ago

One of many interesting shifts in perspective between the first and the second is the degree of threat the Moties represent. In the first book they’re smarter and technologically superior to humans (except for the force field tech) and better fighters; humans are only are in a better position due to many pieces of considerable luck, and continued human survival is again only due to that luck. By the second book, a civilian yacht can hold its own in combat with Motie warships and humans have solved a biological problem that Moties couldn’t for millenia. It feels like this must be connected to right-wing drift and a Humans By Which We Mean Americans Are The Best attitude that really wasn’t present in early Niven. 

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Raskos
6 years ago

@10

I agree with you about The Legacy of Heorot being a good read, superior to what Niven and Pournelle did on their own, but the addition of Barnes, I think, made a lot of difference. He seems to be sensitive to aspects of life that just pass Pournelle and Niven by. And they took the precaution of getting advice on biology from Jack Cohen, who is a biologist, and for once the extraterrestrial biology made some sense, which is something that you really can’t count on with Niven. The opposite, actually – I found the Moties to be in many regards pretty unconvincing.

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Beta
6 years ago

The Motie Mediators remind me of public schoolteachers, who play at being helpful and sympathetic but ultimately exist to serve the desires of their Masters.

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6 years ago

I was quite happy with the Legacy of Heorot so long as I could read it as a one-off take on Beowulf: a hundred people on a new world who haven’t thought up any systematic way for making decisions beyond having a king and a town meeting. The sequel was interesting but did rather expose the fact that the growing colony of people still didn’t have any ideas about government or politics.

I kind of sort of enjoyed The Mote In God’s Eye, but the sexism and reactionary feudalism was just too silly. The moments in TMIGE that were really effective were all those where humans and Moties are interacting outside the realm of empire, and the whole story of how Horace Bury went from mildly-profiteering outsider to absolutely freaked-out horrified loyalist – the scene I always remember is when Bury realises the spacesuit next to him is occupied by Watchmakers.

While TMIGE is certainly an enjoyable read with a practiced squint to skim over the sexism, it would never occur to me to place it anywhere on my list of favourite SF novels.  The aliens and their society are well-created, shame the human characters and human-society background are so shoddy.

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DG
6 years ago

@30 “whole story of how Horace Bury went from mildly-profiteering outsider to absolutely freaked-out horrified loyalist”

And, in fact, such a loyalist, that it freaks out the protagonists, who are loyalists, but are deeply uncomfortable around fanatics like Bury (eventually) or the commander of the Lermontov. 

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6 years ago

@@@@@ 8, James Davis Nicoll

It seems to me 1987 – 1988 saw a bunch of old time authors, some pretty high profile, die.

It seemed so to the community of writers. There were many calls, “Have you heard, we’ve lost another one.” Their common watchword became, Timor mortis conturbat me.

Although in Garrett’s case, death might have been a mercy.

I hope not. I hope there was no one home during those years.

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6 years ago

@25 J. D. Nicoll, Guy Gavriel Kay did Byzantine Empire in Sailing to Sarantium and its sequel, but in parallel worlds rather than in Space.

 

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6 years ago

@19 Alan Brown
It is possible to defend the lack of female characters in the book that way. But that monarchy is a shitty form of government was well known in the 1980s. The “Space Empire of the Future ruled by a heriditary monarchy” trope is something that really gets on my nerves in any science fiction book that pretends to actually be scientific.

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Beta
6 years ago

@34,

Wealth and power becoming concentrated in the hands of a few families – it will never happen.

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ajay
6 years ago

But that monarchy is a shitty form of government was well known in the 1980s. The “Space Empire of the Future ruled by a heriditary monarchy” trope is something that really gets on my nerves in any science fiction book that pretends to actually be scientific.

To quote Niven (in “N-Space”): “Do we think [future monarchy] is inevitable? Of course not. Do we think it’s desirable? We don’t have to say. Do we think it’s possible? Damn straight.”

Just because a form of government isn’t good doesn’t mean it won’t be around in the future. Hereditary monarchy is one of those things that keeps coming back: lots of ostensible republics have handed on power from father to child. And hereditary constitutional monarchy has a lot to be said for it, considering the alternatives…

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6 years ago

@35
In most of these cases we are talking about interstellar empires of trillions of individuals. Concentration of power is extremely likely – but in the hands of a single person? I doubt that.

@36
Everything is “possible”. Just not very likely. And that the interstellar empire of the future works just like the british empire is simply lazy.

The actual states on earth that have an actual or disguised monarchy are either disfunctional autocraties that suppress their citizens and barely avoid collapse or keep the monarch as a powerless ceremonial figure.

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6 years ago

… that the interstellar empire of the future works just like the british empire is simply lazy.

I am not the biggest fan of Pournelle’s fiction, but I don’t believe it was lazy. Just a conscious homage to certain historical fiction tales of the Royal Navy in a certain period.

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6 years ago

@36/ajay: “And hereditary constitutional monarchy has a lot to be said for it, considering the alternatives…”

The alternatives being what?

The constitutional monarchies in Europe are, to all intents and purposes, democracies.

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6 years ago

The empire as described in The Mote In God’s Eye and The Gripping Hand (I’ve never read any of Jerry Pournelle’s other novels and didn’t realise this was an empire-background he’d used before til reading this post) doesn’t, in any way but the superficial, resemble the British empire.

To the point, again, where I didn’t realise until reading in this blogpost that the British system of constitutional monarchy/aristocracy, and the history of the British empire, was supposed to be a model for Pournelle’s Space Empire.

wiredog
6 years ago

One point made in, IIRC, Gripping Hand is that no one family, no matter how large, can exert too much power because of distance and travel time issues.  By the time the Imperial Capital is even aware of a problem it’s often been solved one way or another.  

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6 years ago

@38

I am not the biggest fan of Pournelle’s fiction, but I don’t believe it was lazy. Just a conscious homage to certain historical fiction tales of the Royal Navy in a certain period.

This may be, but, alt least for me, this backwardness of the setting clashes heavily with the very interesting first contact story that is actually beeing told.

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6 years ago

@7, @8: Randall Garrett has to be one of my favorite authors, certainly my favorite forgotten author.  Lord Darcy and the Gandalara cycle are so different and yet both approachable and complex.  Small though it was, his description of the priest repeating his prayers while getting dressed is one of my all-time favorite minor character vignettes. 

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6 years ago

I liked The Mote back in the day, and I also think it is the best of the collaborations.  I also agree that Gripping isn’t as disappointing as some people make it out to be, and that it follows logically from the first novel.

Where I get disappointed re-reading this is, after the Internet started killing off printed computer magazines, I followed Pournelle from his Chaos Manor column in Byte magazine over to his blog.  There he was much more free to explore political topics.  That made me reinterpret the Mote from being just an enjoyable and exciting first contact story, to a “keep out the masses of East Asia” story and it lost much of its lustre.

wiredog
6 years ago

@44

After 9/11 Pournelle started to get even more authoritarian, although he was still somewhat rational (very anti-birther for example) into 2009 or so, but then a literal brain-eater got him in his last few years.  

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Zeke
6 years ago

I enjoyed Mote way back when, and thought that the somewhat cliched Space Opera Empire was chosen for contrast with the very unconventional Moties. The lack of women in the Imperial Navy did seem off even in the 70’s, for a kid who’d been raised on Star Trek.  

Also, I could have sworn that the battleship on the Mote expedition was called Lenin, not Lermontov. Was that changed in a later edition? 

Captain Button
Captain Button
6 years ago

Lenin was the battleship, because the priest was bemused at the Russian icon being displayed. 

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6 years ago

Pournelle’s First and Second Empires are both totalitarian regimes that look good only in comparison to the alternatives. The First Empire was a reaction to the chaos caused by the CoDominium collapsing into warring factions, which led to things like the obliteration of the Earth. The First Empire soon faced a revolt led by the planet Sauron, a planet that genetically engineered their people for warfighting, and as their name shows, openly embraced evil. The Empire defeated the Saurons, but it was a pyrrhic victory that left civilization in tatters. The Second Empire saw their efforts as kind of a holy crusade to prevent another outbreak of war and chaos, “peace through strength,” as it were. Pournelle’s works contain admirable individual people, but he was a sceptic on any and all political systems, including democracy–rarely did he portray any political system as admirable.

Original Trek is often mentioned as a bastion of progressive thought, but I would point out that women on those vessels were limited to support roles; yeoman, nurse, communications officer, etc. There was still a lot of segregation of women into their traditional roles on those shows.

And the work of Randall Garrett being mentioned fondly reminds me that it is well past time that I visited his work. Watch this space!

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6 years ago

@48/AlanBrown: Yeoman, nurse, communications officer, lawyer, doctor, psychologist, engineer, scientist, first officer, historian, anthropologist, IT specialist, helmsman,…

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Gareth Wilson
6 years ago

I’m not sure the Second Empire monarchy adds much to the Mote story. We never even meet the royal family, the decision to launch the expedition is made by an appointed governor. Even Blaine could just come from a wealthy family. As I understand it Niven wanted to collaborate on a first contact story, and he realised the Second Empire setting could easily hide a whole developed star system. It was the physics rather than the politics that interested him. On the other hand, without the Second Empire setting they’d use Niven’s humans, and everyone would behave like 1970s Californians. 

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Zeke
6 years ago

@48: I agree that TOS is far from perfect in its treatment of women, but at least they were present as integral parts of the crew, which was ahead of real-world navies of the 60’s. The Mote navy, as far as I remember, hadn’t even caught up with 1945 to have something like the WAVES.

And Wikipedia appears to agree with Captain Button and me that Kutuzov’s battleship was the Lenin. IIRC, there was a cruiser named Lermontov that tried to intercept the lightsail ship, but couldn’t get there in time, and I don’t think it was mentioned again.

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6 years ago

@49 When I referred to Original Trek, my intention was to refer to the three seasons of the TV season, which appeared before The Mote in God’s Eye, and not to the movies, which all appeared after The Mote in God’s Eye, and in a time when the role of women in the military in the real world was beginning to grow. And I was thinking more of the core and recurring cast than guest stars. If you look at that core and recurring TV cast, you find only three women, Yeoman Rand, Nurse Chapel and Comms Lt Uhura. I don’t ever remember a woman at the helm in the three TOS TV seasons, but I could easily be wrong. I do admit that I had forgotten the female Executive Officer, Number One, from the pilot.  

 

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6 years ago

@52/AlanBrown: All the examples are from the TV show. The woman at the helm was Lieutenant Rahda in “That Which Survives”.

Sure, they’re all guest stars, but these guest stars were important to me when I watched TOS as a kid. Without all these women in all these different professions I probably would have liked it a lot less.

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Beta
6 years ago

@50 Gareth Wilson,

“… 1970’s Californians …”

Or, if filmed today, by 2010’s middle schoolers. I’m feeling like science fiction has pretty much exhausted its potential. I’d rather see a series about a hunter gatherer tribe than one about whiz bang magical science and humanity constantly being in need of saving.

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Damien
6 years ago

“One point made in, IIRC, Gripping Hand is that no one family, no matter how large, can exert too much power because of distance and travel time issues.  By the time the Imperial Capital is even aware of a problem it’s often been solved one way or another.”

Somehow SF authors (including Traveller) always use that as a justification for vaguely feudal empire, not for federalism, or outright independence.

 

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Patrick Morris Miller
6 years ago

 @52: If you extend your consideration to the animated series, Uhura got to take command of the Enterprise in at least one episode.

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Patrick Morris Miller
6 years ago

@55: Don’t the archdukes in Traveller have considerable autonomy?  If nothing else, I wouldn’t be surprised if a Frontier War had been won by the time news of it reached Capitol.

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6 years ago

If I remember correctly, chimpanzees are mentioned in the present tense. I get the sense nuclear war was not good for Earth but it didn’t sterilize the place.

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6 years ago

@53 I stand corrected. There are certain characters that always stand out to us for role models. For me it was Scotty.

@46,47 And since I am admitting to the limits of my memory, you also are correct. Lermontov was the cruiser backing up MacArthur when she intercepted the Motie probe. Lenin was the battleship who accompanied her into the Mote system. 

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6 years ago

:

To the point, again, where I didn’t realise until reading in this blogpost that the British system of constitutional monarchy/aristocracy, and the history of the British empire, was supposed to be a model for Pournelle’s Space Empire.

I don’t think it was. I think the reference was to the Empire’s space navy being modeled on the Royal Navy of a certain period, including its officer designations (e. g. “Sailing Master”).

 

:

Pournelle’s works contain admirable individual people, but he was a sceptic on any and all political systems, including democracy–rarely did he portray any political system as admirable.

Which of his novels was it in which his heroes massacre a mob of welfare queens? They don’t even use high tech, they  shoot them down with rifles literally by the hundreds of thousands. (Millions? It has been decades.) Then the planet’s legitimate political leader thanks the mercenary leader for massacring the worthless welfare-users of his own nation.

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6 years ago

@@@@@ 52, AlatBrown

When I referred to Original Trek, my intention was to refer to the three seasons of the TV season, which appeared before The Mote in God’s Eye, and not to the movies, which all appeared after The Mote in God’s Eye, and in a time when the role of women in the military in the real world was beginning to grow. And I was thinking more of the core and recurring cast than guest stars. If you look at that core and recurring TV cast, you find only three women, Yeoman Rand, Nurse Chapel and Comms Lt Uhura. I don’t ever remember a woman at the helm in the three TOS TV seasons, but I could easily be wrong. I do admit that I had forgotten the female Executive Officer, Number One, from the pilot.  

Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, told Martin Luther King she was thinking of leaving the show. She was never going to be promoted and play a senior officer.

Kind urged her to stay. Just her presence in the show was a wonderful example for young black girls. So Nichols did keep the part.

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6 years ago

Poul Anderson’s Flandry books assumed a interstellar Terran Empire. He patterned the imperial court’s progress on a historical sequence of Roman empires. I forget which ones.

Flandry was highly aware that it was a terrible system. He defended it because it was better than the Dark Night that would replace it.

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6 years ago

@57 — My Traveller books are currently inaccessible, but I think it was the Fourth Frontier War where yes, an armistice was signed before the news had reached Capitol and instructions had come back.

captain_button
6 years ago

@60 That was one of the CoDominion/Falkenberg shorter works, set on the planet Hadley. Later collected or made into a fixup in “The Mercenary” with two other stories. Again included in “Falkenberg’s Legion” and “The Prince“.

Edit: Digging around, I am not sure if the Hadley section was ever published on its own or not.

Edit2: I am pretty sure it was “only” tens of thousands killed. You can only get so many people in a stadium after all.

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6 years ago

@60,64 Falkenberg’s adventures on Hadley appeared in the novella “The Mercenary,” originally published in Analog. It then formed the core of the fix-up novel of the same name, which I reviewed here. It was among the grimmest of the many tales Pournelle wrote.

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ad
6 years ago

@27

If not for those changes, The Gripping Hand could hardly have had a hopeful ending. Which may be why I preferred Mote: It accepted that the consequences of its premises would not be happy ones.

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6 years ago

Really enjoyed reading this article and all your comments.  I read Mote for the first time last year and greatly enjoyed it.  Thought it was a perfect standalone (especially after I had heard Gripping Hand was inferior).  Reading these comments have confirmed my decision to not read Gripping Hand.  Mote though – has to be one of the greatest first-contact novels I’ve ever read.  Much enjoyed.

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6 years ago

I read Mote when it first came out and loved it. many years later, I decided to reread it. The misogyny hit me in the face and I just dumped the whole thing. It really demonstrated how far we had come in the attitudes towards women, because, at the time it came out it wasn’t too outrageous in how women were treated, but 20 years later, it was AWFUL.

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6 years ago

@29, being a public schoolteacher, I  ammore than slightly insulted.  I shan’t bother to investigate why you believe such nonsense . 

 

I actually found Renner to be the most interesting human character in The Mote in God’s Eye.  Every other one was a cardboard cutout, and Bury was a particularly offensive one. Despite this, it was a decent read. 

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6 years ago

@55/Damien: Federalism or independence or any kind of loosely connected alliance in between? Some do, e.g. Ursula K. Le Guin in her Hainish stories.

@59/AlanBrown: Scotty was also my brother’s favourite character. 

I came here to find out more about The Mote in God’s Eye, because I’ve never read it and I wondered if I should. I like inventive aliens and first contact stories, but the all-male authoritarian empire doesn’t sound good.

Mayhem
6 years ago

@70

The All Male Authoritarian Empire is window dressing more than anything significant to the plot.  For Mote anyway.  They needed a setting and borrowed an existing one. 

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Beta
6 years ago

@71,

I don’t think the plot of Mote could have taken place in the Star Trek Universe (or its like). The Federation would never have considered the possible solution that drove the plot. I’m not sure they would even have chosen the solution that was actually found. Instead they would have found a ‘Crazy Eddie’ solution of their own, which would be to assume that everything would work out all right in the end.

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6 years ago

In one of those meaningless coincidences, Mote in God’s Eye and Hal Clement’s Cycle of Fire are surprisingly similar for books that are not similar. Stealing from my review of the latter:

Both books feature a first contact situation, although in CoF, the humans have previously encountered other intelligent beings.

Both feature junior officers marooned on an alien planet and thought to be dead by their superior officers.

Both involve a main-sequence star in association with a non-main sequence star: in CoF’s case, it’s one of the Pleiades and in MIGE it’s a fictional red giant. In both cases this means that the long-term habitability of the Earth-like world is dubious (although as far as I recall, the eventual supernova didn’t cook Mote Prime in the sequel).

Both CoF and MIGE have aliens who are subject to civilizational cycles. Both sets of aliens have taken steps to mitigate this. In both cases the cycles are caused by factors the aliens (rightly) believe to be outside their control.

Both settings feature a multi-species civilization, with one species enjoying a position of authority over the rest. The various species are interdependent. The aliens in charge are not sympathetic characters; the lower-status aliens are.

In both books, the aliens who are first encountered are seen as potential friends. Later on, something is discovered about them that makes the aliens appear to be a significant threat. As a result, someone proposes a blockade to contain the aliens for the good of humanity.

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6 years ago

@@@@@ 48, AlanBrown

And the work of Randall Garrett being mentioned fondly reminds me that it is well past time that I visited his work. Watch this space!

I hope you pay attention to Garrett’s earlier work. Here are a few examples that I enjoy:

Quest of the Golden Ape: An old-fashioned pulp novel. Swing whip-swords!

Or Your Money Back: A short story from Campbell’s Psionics period

Nor Iron Bars a Cage: A police procedural with a touch of elegance

Despoilers of the Golden Empire: A space opera in new realms

(Does anyone know what “an old-fashioned look,” looks like?)

Mayhem
6 years ago

@72

They needed a setting that fit certain parameters, chiefly the ability to blockade the Moties at the end, which means wormholes.  The CoDominium’s Alderson Drive is the key technology of the setting granting limited travel between solar systems.  Without that tech, there’s nothing to prevent the Moties going anywhere at any time, which negates the whole Crazy Eddie concept.  It’s such a useful plot device for constraining free movement it crops up again in a bunch of different places – especially tabletop space games, most notably the Starfire series which was novelised by Steve White and David Weber.  Any setting that revolves around Jump Gates and fixed tramlines is drawing from the same idea. 

The whole story wouldn’t work in the tech of the Star Trek setting – warp drives are well known tech, independently discovered, and they give unlimited travel in any direction at vast speed.  The Alderson drive gives instant travel between certain systems but no speed advantages within them, there is no FTL option.  It’s a totally diametric paradigm. 

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6 years ago

@75,

 

C J Cherryh’s jump system, which I think predates Mote, works vaguely similarly in that only some stars have entry and exit points.  This is one of the rreasons Earth doesn’t figure to heavily in her books, except as a far off-scene presence, once FTL is developed:  no FTL entry or exit points in the Solar System. 

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Damien
6 years ago

76: It’s been a long time but that’s not how I remember things.  The jump points themselves were masses, usually stars but sometimes what we’d call brown dwarfs now.  Ships had to be some distance out (flat space-time?) to jump but the jump area was very broad.  Also you re-emerged with some huge velocity that had to be dumped, for no particular reason; no one seemed to use this as a power source…  Mass/engine power ratios mattered, so lean military/hunter ships could jump earlier and further than merchant ones, and knnn could jump further than anyone.  Earth was sidelined because of SF prejudice against cities and populations action shifted to Pell and Cyteen: planets producing ‘biologicals’ meant the ships and stations weren’t dependent on Earth.

(More rational, IMO, if because the stories were focusing on the exciting cinematic but fringe population of Alliance/Union while the bulk of humanity went about its business.)

Captain Button
Captain Button
6 years ago

@76 I don’t agree about jump in Cherryh’s Union/Alliance/Chanur books. Jump has to end at a particular distance from a deep gravity well*. But anywhere on the sphere around the star works. There is a convention on which hemisphere to jump in and which to jump out for safety reasons.

It looks like a tramline system because the average distance between stars is a bit larger than the maximum feasible jump range. So most routes have to go through brown dwarf or rogue planet systems. Which are hard to find and therefore of great strategic value if secret.

But you can’t blockade a point like you can in Mote.

* Knnn and Fleet navigators can play some fancy games with this, but most people don’t know how.

 

 

captain_button
6 years ago

I agree with you about jump.

 

In the most recent book “Alliance Rising” we learn that for many decades after FTL was discovered there were no known interim points between Sol and the nearest station, so trade was badly limited by that.

In the STL era, the Earth Company had a monopoly of cool planet stuff, so they charged monopoly prices and wielded political clout from it. The discovery of earthlike planets broke the monopoly. Instead of being good free market guys who cut prices to compete, they were selfish jerks who tried to tax the stations and supervise policy decisions with a decades-long time lag. Without first ensuring that they had the military clout to enforce their will. Events ensued.

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6 years ago

Bujold’s Vorkosigan series depends on jump points. You go where the jump point takes you, and nowhere else. The whole history of Barrayar is shaped by the collapse of their only jump point. Throwing them on their own limited resources. By the time the jump point to Komarr opened, Barrayar was a feudal culture using horse cavalry, lances, and swords.

Those books were written after Mote. The structural similarities are still strong.

wiredog
6 years ago

Scalzi’s Interdependency series has the jump points/tramlines between various star systems going away as the major plot driver.

Captain Button
Captain Button
6 years ago

Another tramline only universe is the Shaa/Praxis series by Walter Jon Williams.

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Beta
6 years ago

@75,

The point I was trying to make is that if you put the Enterprise, or crews brought up with the Federation ethos into that situation, even if they had only Codominium technology, they would not have been able to consider genocide as a solution to the problem, and so it would not have been possible to create the kind of plot tension that existed within the novel.

You could of course still write a story about first contact with the Moties, but in the Federation Universe, or set of cultural assumptions, there would have been an assumption that the Motie problem was solvable, that they did not pose a threat, and thus we have a very different story being told. That is what I was referring to as “Crazy Eddie” thinking, as the Motie Mediators described it.

Of course, it would be entirely possible to tell the story that Niven and Pournelle had in mind within the ST Discovery Universe!

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6 years ago

Earth was sidelined because of SF prejudice against cities and populations action shifted to Pell and Cyteen:

I was rather surprised when the second Cyteen book gave sufficient information for me to calculate Union’s population is roughly the same as modern day New Zealand, scattered across many systems and however long it takes to travel between them. Earth not having convenient access to the stars would explain why FTL was not followed by Earth crushing Union.

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LizardBreath
6 years ago

(Does anyone know what “an old-fashioned look,” looks like?)

You mean in a sentence like “George gave him an old-fashioned look”?  If the context is right, it’s mid-20th C UK for “side-eye”.  A skeptically judgmental look.

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6 years ago

@@@@@ 85, LizardBreath:

You mean in a sentence like “George gave him an old-fashioned look”?  If the context is right, it’s mid-20th C UK for “side-eye”.  A skeptically judgmental look.

From the contexts in which I’ve encountered it, skeptically judgmental seems right.

I had no idea what such a look—well—looked like.

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Cosmotrope
6 years ago

Is there a jump/tramline system that predates Heinlein’s Starman Jones?

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Travis
4 years ago

The attack on the MacArthur by the probe is deliberate and is effected with focused reflected light from the probe’s solar sail, not a laser. The probe’s passengers, bar one, are jettisoned when the probe’s artificial intelligence determines that the MacArthur cannot be defeated.

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Caitlin
4 years ago

I read the books as a teenager 15 years ago now. I STILL find myself recommending them to others as great intro books into sci fi as they are great books. The story captures you and the books are very well written.