History Literature / TheMoteInGodsEye

''The Mote in God's Eye'', by LarryNiven 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 {{CoDominium}} universe, and charts the FirstContact between humankind and an alien species. The title of the novel is a wordplay on Luke 6:41-42 and Matthew 7:3-5. ''The Mote in God's Eye'' was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards in 1975.

* AristocratsAreEvil: Subverted in ''Mote'', in which [[TheGoodCaptain Captain Blaine]] is a nobleman (heir-apparent to a Marquis), and is a decent guy.
** WordOfGod is that ''Mote'' is set in a time when the Empire is in a dynamic, expansionist phase, with the aristocrats generally more concerned with duties than privileges. By the time of ''Hand'', there are references that may indicate that the reverse is gradually becoming true, and the Empire is starting to exhibit signs of decadence (at least on the capital world). Blaine himself is still a decent guy, though.

* BizarreAlienBiology: Moties have an asymmetrical anatomy.
** Also, their reproductive system. Spoiler alert. [[spoiler: All Moties of all types are born male. After a while, they change genders and become female (except the Keepers). If they don't get pregnant and give birth, they die. If they do get pregnant and give birth, they become male again. This cycle repeats - no one's quite sure how old a Motie can get if they keep with the cycle.]]

* CasualInterstellarTravel: Due to the Alderson Drive.
** Not quite casual. Travel between stars is instantaneous, but is only possible along certain "[[HyperspaceLanes tramways]]" ending near a star, and ships spend days or weeks travelling interplanetary distances getting from one endpoint to the other, or to the target planet.
* ColonyDrop: the Moties got this one covered by virtue of there being no fissionables left in their star system. Luckily, there were plenty of asteroids around.
* CoolShip: Crazy Eddie Probe, the ''[=MacArthur=]'' and the ''Lenin.''
** The Crazy Eddie ships in ''Hand'' suddenly become less a lot less cool. Turns out there's a reason for this.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive, subverted: Horace Bury funds a war in ''The Mote In God's Eye''. But in ''The Gripping Hand'' it's [[RetCon retconned]] that he was only doing so because he wanted his planet to have religious freedom. He still has shades of being a greedy bastard, however.
** Even in ''Mote'', Bury is shown eventually developing goals aside from his own personal profit and power.
* CowTools: The toolroom "IQ" test.

* DepopulationBomb: Admiral Kutuzov has a certain reputation for this one. [[NeverLiveItDown One planet! Once!]] Sheesh, you kill a few million people who were going to start a civil war that would rip apart a sector, and people think you depopulate planets for a hobby!

* FantasticRacism: 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.

* HeelFaceTurn: Horace Bury.
** There is no doubt that his priorities switch from What Benefits Bury Most to What Benefits Humanity Most, i.e. ensuring that [[spoiler:the Moties NEVER escape quarantine.]]

* HumansThroughAlienEyes: 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. Diplomats who think too much like humans are regarded as having gone [[HumansAreInsane insane]] - see above.
* HyperspaceLanes: Alderson points. The one in the Mote leads into a red supergiant.

* LaResistance: In ''The Gripping Hand'', the "Medina Traders" are effectively the LaResistance against the much larger "Khanate". There's also passing mention of a potential Mormon uprising.
* MarketBasedTitle: ''The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye'' in the United Kingdom and some other countries, presumably to evade the MoralGuardians.
** Can someone explain this? ''Moat'' is the alternative title for ''The Gripping Hand'' ... is that a very rude phrase in Welsh or something? I could understand if it were the alternative title for ''The Mote in God's Eye'', but this is not the case.

* NuclearWeaponsTaboo: the Moties don't have nukes, though not by choice, as their system has run out of fissionables. Not to worry though, [[ColonyDrop they found something just as good as nukes.]]
** [[spoiler: Subverted in the sequel, in that when the Imperial Navy employs a thermonuclear device in trying to contain the Moties who have recently gained a new means out of their system, they're quite shocked/impressed with its capabilities.]]
** Several [[spoiler:thermonuclear weapons, actually]], and most of them [[spoiler:fired by Bury, who bought them for just such an occasion. Each is fifty megatons at least.]]
* OnlySmartPeopleMayPass
** The "museums" on Mote Prime have complicated locks requiring you to solve scientific puzzles to gain entry, to ensure that barbarians won't get in before they can comprehend the contents.

* RagnarokProofing: The Motie museums.
* ShoutOut: The Scottish engineer...except the authors denied they were trying to "rip-off" Scotty from ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''. They simply made him Scottish because historically there have been many Scottish engineers. Ironically this is the reason Gene Roddenberry made the Enterprise engineer Scottish in the first place.
* SolarSail: The Empire first learns of the Moties from a ruined solar sail vessel coming from their star.

* StarfishAliens: 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.

* TakeAThirdOption: 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.]]
* TooDumbToLive: Some of the scientists on board the ''[=MacArthur=]''
* WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture: The Runner, Farmer and Engineer castes on Mote Prime. Engineers in particular are pretty much treated like portable autopilots. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the Moties bomb themselves back to the Stone Age every five generations or so, are aware of the fact, and keep the old methods around as preparation for the next time.

** The same principle is employed in existing navies.

* GeneralRipper: 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.

* ExplosiveBreeder: [[spoiler:Every species of Motie - except the Mediators and Keepers (Mediators are sterile physically-female mules; Keepers are sterile males]].

* ExplosiveBreeder: [[spoiler:Every species of Motie - except the Mediators and Keepers]].

* CoolShip: Crazy Eddie Probe, the ''[=MacArthur=]'' and the ''Lenin.''

** WordOfGod is that ''Mote'' is set in a time when the Empire is in a dynamic, expansionist phase, with the aristocrats generally more concerned with duties than privileges. By the time of ''Hand'', there are references that may indicate that the reverse is gradually becoming true, and the Empire is starting to exhibit signs of decadence (at least on the capital world).

''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.

* DepopulationBomb: Admiral Kutuzov has a certain reputation for this one. [[NeverLiveItDown One planet! Once!]] Sheesh, you kill a few million people who were going to start a civil war that would rip apart an entire sector, and people think you're some sort of CompleteMonster who depopulates planets for a hobby!

** When the human expedition prepares to leave the Mote system, the Moties send them a gift ship full of alien technology. The human leadership decides to randomly cut up the technology into pieces in case the Moties designed any of it for nefarious purposes. While Lady Sally is directing the procedure she flips a coin to decide how many times to cut -- because of the fear that the Moties could have been smart enough to predict how the humans would destroy the devices.

** When the human expedition prepares to leave the Mote system, the Moties send them a gift ship full of alien technology. The human leadership decides to randomly cut up the technology into pieces in case the Moties designed any of it for nefarious purposes. While Lady Sally is directing the procedure she flips a coin to decide how many times to cut.

** Not quite casual. Travel between stars is instantaneous, but is only possible along certain "tramways" ending near a star, and ships spend days or weeks travelling interplanetary distances getting from one endpoint to the other, or to the target planet.

* HumansThroughAlienEyes: 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.

** Several [[spoiler:thermonuclear weapons, actually]], and most of them [[spoiler:fired by Bury, who bought them for just such an occasion. Each is fift megatons at least.]]

* IResembleThatRemark: The [[ShoutOut Scottish]] [[StarTrekTheOriginalSeries engineer]], when the first officer complains about his accent.

* ShoutOut: The Scottish engineer...except the authors denied they were trying to "rip-off" Scotty from ''StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''. They simply made him Scottish because historically there have been many Scottish engineers. Ironically this is the reason Gene Roddenberry made the Enterprise engineer Scottish in the first place.

--> '''First Officer:''' Will you stop talking like that? You talk just like everyone else when you get angry!
--> '''Engineer:''' [[OohMeAccentsSlipping THAT'S A DAMNED LIE!]]

** Justified; how could you avoid taking over a planet that has just bombed itself into the stone age?
* HumansThroughAlienEyes: 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, and at least one Motie was driven insane by prolonged exposure to humans.
** Motie diplomats are trained to think exactly like the person they are negotiating with. Going mad was because they tried to think exactly like another species.
*** Tried ''and succeeded''. All humans are mad, by Motie standards. So any Motie mediator who learns to think like a human, is going to be crazy.

* MarketBasedTitle: ''The Moat around Murcheson's Eye'' in the United Kingdom and some other countries, presumably to evade the MoralGuardians.

* NuclearWeaponsTaboo: the Moties don't have nukes, though not by choice as their system has run out of fissionables. Not to worry though, [[ColonyDrop they found something just as good as nukes.]]

** Several [[spoiler:thermonuclear weapons, actually]], and most of them [[spoiler:fired by Bury, who bought them for just such an occasion. Each is FIFTY MEGATONS AT LEAST.]]

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

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