The Mote in God's Eye: Difference between revisions

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''The Mote in God's Eye'' might be one of the more realistic depictions of a first-contact story, if you buy the premise that creatures that evolved on another planet must necessarily be radically different from us. The discovery of alien life is sudden and unexpected, and most of the book deals with the diplomatic/military/espionage group that is sent by the humans to meet the new species. A great deal of tension arises between the humans and "Moties" who have a very dim understanding of each other at first, and between the xenophiliac scientists and the xenophobic military personnel with the human expedition.

A sequel, entitled ''The Gripping Hand'' (a.k.a. ''The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye'' in the UK, Australia etc.), was published in 1993. A third novel, ''Outies'' (written by Jerry Pournelle's daughter, Dr. Jennifer Pournelle) was published in 2010 and is set during and slightly after the events of ''The Gripping Hand''.

 

 

* [[Alternative Number System]]: The Moties have a total of 12 digits on their right hands and use base 12.

* [[Ambiguous Gender]]: Asach Quinn from "Outies"; this is lampshaded at a desert settlement. Moties see Quinn as "complete", unlike one-sexed humans.

* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Horace Bury after a traumatizing encounter with the Moties caused him to very quickly go from thinking the Moties represented a lucrative commercial venture to being a threat to the entire human race that must be exterminated.

** Justified in that Watchmakers left unattended by Masters or Engineers for too long are {{spoiler|utterly malevolent}}, and that the Moties' {{spoiler|inability to control their population in the original novel}} represented a disaster waiting to happen.

* [[Gadgeteer Genius]]: The Engineer ("Brown") caste of Moties, and also the miniature, non-sentient "Watchmakers", who can understand, re-engineer, and optimize completely alien technologies in minutes.

* [[General Ripper]]: Admiral Lavrenti Kutuzov, you ''do not'' want to be on a rebellious colony when he is around. {{spoiler|Subverted in that he is right, right, ''right!'' in every possible way,}} at least according to his supporters.

* [[Humans Through Alien Eyes]]: We are as strange to the Moties as they are to us, perhaps more so. They don't regard humanity with fear, exactly, but they are confused by our biology and culture. Motie diplomats are trained to think exactly like the person they are negotiating with. Diplomates that think like humans are regarded as having gone insane.

* [[Hyperspace Lanes]]: Alderson points. The one in the Mote leads into a red supergiant.

'''Jock Sinclair:''' [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping|THAT'S A DAMNED LIE!]] }}

* [[Immortal Procreation Clause]]: Inverted. {{spoiler|If the Moties don't get pregnant ''and give birth'', they die young, and horribly.}}

* [[La Résistance]]: In ''The Gripping Hand'', the "Medina Traders" are effectively the [[La Résistance]] against the much larger "Khanate". There's also passing mention of a potential Mormon uprising.

* [[Mate or Die]]: the Moties (technically, theirs is "get pregnant or die")

* [[Mobile Suit Human]]: Some Watchmaker Moties try to pull this off with a spacesuit and a severed head. Bury spots them [[In Space Everyone Can See Your Face|through the faceplate]] and has [[Nightmare Fuel|nightmares for decades]] as a result.

* [[Patron Saint]]: St. Barbara, patron of those in dangerous occupations. One Navy ship has a statue of her with fans to ensure that the candles will continue to burn in free fall.

* [[Ragnarok Proofing]]: The Motie museums.

* [[Solar Sail]]: The Empire first learns of the Moties from a ruined solar sail vessel coming from their star.

* [[Starfish Aliens]]: The Moties are a species that has deliberately evolved into multiple castes, all of which look odd by Earth standards, mostly because they're non-symmetrical. Moties are described as looking something like a bipedal dog with two small, limber arms on one side and one strong, thick arm on the other.

* [[Stern Chase]]: The second half of ''The Gripping Hand'' consists of a series of trips in various directions by the protagonists, to escape being killed or to buy time until the cavalry can arrive.

* [[Take a Third Option]]: The Moties have three hands--two dexterous hands and one strong "gripping" hand, the source of the second book's title. This is exemplified in that the phrase "on the one hand...on the other hand..." is often followed by "on the gripping hand" even though humans can't naturally think that way (having only two hands and all). The Gripping Hand option is often one that overrides the other two or makes them irrelevant.

** And yet, despite not having three hands, humans ''always'' look for the Third Option - to the point where the fatalistic Moties, condemned by their biology to two bad choices, consider us all insane for not understanding and accepting what is and must always be. Their term for humans is "Crazy Eddie", after a character in their folklore who's all about the (often absurd) Third Option.

** Spoiler for the ending of the first book: {{spoiler|The Motie mediators serving as ambassadors to the Empire, unable to talk humanity into letting them out of their system and facing the annihilation of their race, manage to come up with a third option: humanity blockades the Mote.}}

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Some of the scientists on board the ''MacArthur''

** Also seen in the Imperial Space Navy, where [[Word of God]] is that warships have large crews that are primarily there for damage control in combat. When not in a battle, most of what the ratings do on duty is make-work that could be done automatically, but isn't so that they don't get bored. By contrast, a passage in the short story ''Reflex'' (which originally was an early chapter of ''Mote'' that was cut for length reasons) indicates that civilian ships make widespread use of automation and have much smaller crews, something supported by the scenes aboard the "yacht" / auxiliary warship ''Sinbad'' in ''Hand''.

** The same principle is employed in existing navies.

 

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[[Category:Nebula Award]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]

[[Category:Literature]]