The Mote in God's Eye: Difference between revisions

=== Tropes that appear in this work include: ===

 

* [[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.

** 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.

* [[Faster Than Light Travel]]: Alderson Drive, which operates more like a [[Our Wormholes Are Different|wormhole]] system, but not quite.

* [[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.

* [[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.