Book Review: The Mote in God's Eye by Niven & Pournelle (1974)


The last book I read was such a deeply soft sci-fi book I felt like going in the opposite direction for my next novel, the hard sci-fi classic The Mote in God’s Eye. Published in 1974, this is an epic, galaxy spanning, militaristic story that finds humanity making first-contact with aliens in the year 3017 after mankind has spread through several other solar systems. I did feel like the first two chapters of the book were a bit of a drudgery but the third chapter picked up business long enough to pique my interest and propel me the rest of the way. Sure, but did I like it? This book is somewhat vexing. Well-written most of the way with an interesting-at-times but also too-familiar take on the mostly humanoid aliens, the book is occasionally ahead of its time (pocket computers, the Langston Field) while simultaneously being a product of the era it was written in (largely traditional patriarchal male/female roles and notes of feudalism, where a ‘romance’ that feels tacked on and immaturely presented at best). There are also long sections of the book that don’t serve much of a purpose, for instance, several human midshipmen crash-landing on the alien’s home planet and their subsequent demise, which is a shame because one of the characters could potentially have been the best character in the book. This is the book’s greatest weakness as few of the characters are fleshed out beyond their caricatures and this gives us little reason to care what ultimately happens to them. I found myself reading to the end only to see how things would turn out with the aliens given how much the aliens and humans try to hide from each other. The negotiations between the aliens and humans that runs through the final act while mildly interesting doesn’t give us much of a climax or even food for thought. All said and done, the book isn’t as far ahead of its time as it might have seemed in the 70’s, which should be a hefty part of any book that proposes to be set a thousand years from now. With the book being a chore to read at times, we’re looking at a middling ‘classic’ if we’re reading a classic at all.

Final Score: 6/10

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