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Mote in God's Eye. The Mote ... war. The main theme in The Mote in God?s Eye
is humankind?s first contact with sentient aliens. The ...
... are guilty of far greater offenses against God and man ... humorous analogy, there is
in his eye a beam ... cannot see properly, therefore, to remove the mote-the sliver ...
Submitted by matt814 on January 20, 2008
Category: Miscellaneous
Words: 1227 | Pages: 5
Views: 28
Popularity Rank: 101,349
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The Mote in God’s Eye, written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is a science fiction novel generally regarded as one of the greatest ‘first contact’ stories ever written. The story takes place in outer space during the year 3017. The protagonist of this book is Roderick Blaine, the captain of the Navy spaceship MacArthur, who is asked to intercept an alien probe entering his empire’s solar system to determine if it is friendly . The antagonists are the race of aliens (called Moties) that the crew encounters. While technologically less advanced, the Moties are frightening in their raw ability to learn and adapt.
The major conflict in The Mote in God’s Eye involves Captain Blaine, his crew, and the crew of another Navy warship, Lenin, struggling to discover the true nature of the Moties, and then trying to escape from the Moties’ solar system to warn the empire of the aliens’ frightening capabilities and nature.
The novel begins just after the human race has recovered from the Secession Wars, a long period of interplanetary civil war that destroyed the First Empire of Man. Captain Blaine’s ship, INSS MacArthur, is sent to investigate a strange sighting nearby. The object turns out to be an alien craft using a light sail to travel. It took the alien vessel 190 years to get to where it currently was. The alien ship is slow compared to human ships using the Alderson Drive, an engine that allows near instantaneous travel between two certain points, called Trojan Points. The alien vessel’s automated defensive systems shoot at MacArthur, but MacArthur sustains minimal damage, and captures the alien spacecraft. When Blaine takes the vessel back to the Navy base on New Caledonia, the alien pilot is found to be dead.
The ship came from an area of space known as the “Mote,” and as such, the alien is called a “Motie.” The commander of the Imperial Navy orders MacArthur and the battleship Lenin to go to the Mote and search for any signs...
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