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The Mote in God's Eye: Difference between revisions
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''The Mote in God's Eye'', by [[Larry Niven]] and Jerry Pournelle, is a science fiction novel that was first published in 1974. The story is set in the distant future of Pournelle's [[
''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.
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* [[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.
* [[I Resemble That Remark]]: The [[Shout-Out|Scottish]] [[Star Trek:
{{quote| '''Jack Cargill:''' Will you stop talking like that? You talk just like everyone else when you get angry!<br />
'''Jock Sinclair:''' [[Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping|THAT'S A DAMNED LIE!]] }}
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* [[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.
* [[Shout-Out]]: The Scottish engineer...except the authors denied they were trying to "rip-off" Scotty from ''[[Star Trek:
* [[Solar Sail]]: The Empire first learns of the Moties from a ruined solar sail vessel coming from their star.
* [[Spare to
* [[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.
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** 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''
* [[We Will Use Manual Labor in
** 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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