Archive for the ‘Larry Niven’ Category
The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
published in 1974
Where I got it: Might have swiped it from my Dad
why I read it: was in the mood for some good old hard SF.
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Even in the 1970’s, hard science fiction and first contact stories were nothing new. But the masterpiece by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God’s Eye, was something brand new. Sure, it had spaceships and aliens and detailed explanations of FTL travel, but it had something more, something new, something unexpected. The aliens in this ultimate first contact story were nothing like anything ever seen before.
If you’ve ever read any of the Pournelle CoDominion books, you’ll be in familiar territory, as The Mote in God’s Eye takes place on the edge of CoDominion space. Although teeming with futuristic technologies, the empire is saddled with a bloated aristocracy and an old fashioned view towards women. Old fashioned and futuristic all at the same time, does that make this book horrifically dated, or did Pournelle purposely design it into the original CoDominion novels?
The six word sentence plot summary of The Mote in God’s Eye is: Aliens are weirder than we thought.
Making Monday suck less
Posted on: November 21, 2011
Mondays suck, don’t they? Let’s have some fun stuff instead!
If you’ve been following Angry Robot on twitter, or the feeds of plenty of folks in the blogosphere, you know Angry Robot Books has recently made two huge, massive, wonderful announcements: First, they’re starting a YA imprint called Strange Chemistry. Great news for all you YA fans looking for what Angry Robot tends to specialize in: SF, F, and WTF. And the second announcement? Even better than the first! Guess whose heading up the new YA imprint? Again, if you’re active in the SF twittersphere or on heavily trafficked SF blogs, I’ll be you already know her. In fact, you may have already congratulated her. If you haven’t, get your butt over to Floor to Ceiling Books and congratulate the blogosphere’s own Amanda Rutter. She’s shutting her blog down, but you can still catch her on twitter.
Huh, maybe I should have left that for last, since the rest of this post is just random inconsequential fun stuff? ehh, whatevs.
Teh random fun stuff:
I recently picked up Cory Doctorow’s Context from the library. This is a collection of essays he’ written over the last few years on everything from kids and the internet to copyfighting to politics and parenting. Some have appeared on BoingBoing, others in Locus, others in The Guardian, and yet others were articles published on Publishers Weekly while he was self publishing With a Little Help. There’s a lot of good stuff in this little volume, I’ve been flipping through the pages and reading essays here and there, and all have been informative, well written, and entertaining. If you’re a fan of Doctorow, this is definitely a little book that’s well worth seeking out.
Random item number two, is what should you do if you’re the first human to have contact with aliens? Appropriate to think about, since I’m slogging through the Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle epic space opera first contact story The Mote in God’s Eye (ok, I should say slogging, but it’s not a fast read. Imagine if 2 seasons of Battlestar Galactica were mashed up with 3 seasons of Deep Space Nine, take out all the romance, and then cram everything that’s left into 500 pages. It’s a lot!). I think I’ll take this guy’s hilarious and helpful advice.
wanna see some fun artwork?
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With Larry Niven’s Betrayer of Worlds hitting shelves this week, I figured I better post my review of his Destroyer of Worlds. I originally published this review here.
Larry Niven’s lastest Known Worlds novel is fun, fast, and full of the remarkable aliens his fans have loved for years. Niven has always been known for his wonderfully freakishly alien aliens, and Destroyer of Worlds gives readers the opportunity to intimately know a new bizarre alien race. For readers new to Niven’s Known Worlds series, I suggest starting at Fleet of Worlds, the first book in this mini series, and you can go from there. And if you’ve ever read Niven’s classic SF novel Ringworld, it’s not deja vu, this is a prequel series.
We start off right where we ended in Juggler of Worlds - The planet New Terra is supposedly “free”, but their former Puppeteer masters don’t trust them, don’t want to help them, and still treat them like expendable servants. It is a precarious relationship indeed, as the overly cautious Puppeteers rely on the humans curious nature and the humans rely on the Puppeteers advanced technology.
As we saw in Fleet of Worlds and Juggler of Worlds, the supernova explosion at the center of the galaxy is spreading its waves of radiation, killing and sterilizing everything in its path. The humans and Puppeteers alike will need each others help to escape it and find new worlds to colonize. The radiation wave is moving fast, near light speed travel is faster, but the galaxy is bigger than you can imagine, and it still takes a long time to get anywhere. It may be generations until the wave reaches where the Fleet is right now, but Puppeteers have always been long term thinkers.
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