The Mote in God's Eye

Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

Search for Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' has now been on for 3-4 months. Each time I go to Crosswords or the other bookstores, I end up asking about the book and getting disappointed. This brilliant book is always being neglected and new stock never arrives, it seems. The other day, I decided enough is enough and bought "The mote in God's Eye" by the same author (co - author) from a second hand bookshop in MG Road (Brilliant place that is, the proprietor knows almost all the sci-fi authors I heard of..)


Larry Niven is known for his great imagination and hence numerous interesting/complicated worlds that exists only because he chose to write books.


The Mote is no different. Instead of bizarre planetary conditions and physical appearances, he has played with society this time. He introduces to us our first sentient alien race in the year 3017, after human empire has once collapsed utterly and is being rebuilt to its glorious years. The humankind has grown out of our earth in the early 21st century, after Soviet Russia and US creates a CoDominium which jointly searched for solutions to inter stellar travel. A great explorer called Murcheson explored the current limits of outer systems, while many planets were "teraformed" to make them inhabitable. After this happens, the first Empire reaches its glorious years, or golden years, as they call it.

Secessation wars break out after 400 years of peace, after it is found that a system called "Sauron" bred super human clones. It took humanity all of its resources to fight off these Sauron Men, and first Empire collapsed and dark ages followed with many systems isolated and hence turning barbaric.

At these ages, a system called New Scotland, which lies at the outer rim of human empire, noted that a particular star called the "Mote" suddenly shone brighter than its binary counter part the "Murcheson's Eye". After about 150 years the light surge stopped.

During these years, mankind fought back the dark ages and established the second empire. The second empire meticulously brought back the dark planets under its shade, some times by force.
One of these days, Rod Blaine, the young captain battle cruiser "MacArthur" is sent towards the "Murcheson's Eye" to investigate an alien ship approaching the star.

From New Scotland, the view of night sky is filled with the mote and Murcheson's eye against a backdrop of a near by nebula called the 'CoalSack'. This is remembered as the most beautiful sight a man will ever see. It is metaphorised as looking at "the face of God." Hence the name of the book.

Here is the scifi.com review of the book. Do tell me your opinion, if you decided to try it.