The Mote in God's Eye

By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

Narrated by: L J Ganser

Length: 20 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

Writing separately, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are responsible for a number of science fiction classics, such as the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Ringworld, Debt of Honor, and The Integral Trees. Together they have written the critically acclaimed best-sellers Inferno, Footfall, and The Legacy of Heorot, among others.

The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of mankind's first encounter with alien life that transcends the genre. No lesser an authority than Robert A. Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read".

©1991 Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• All-Time Best Science Fiction Novels (Locus Magazine)

Bit dated but good listen

Some aspects of the book haven't aged very well, mostly in regards to gender roles and technology, but the book is still worth a listen. The story is surprisingly believable in how pragmatic the characters are and everything doesn't always end well.

A great read!

The Mote in God's Eye, set far in the future, tells the tale of humanity's first contact with an alien species. Despite being first published in 1974, the science holds up fairly well. There are a few funny oddities that show the story's age, such as the mention of "microwave ovens" and "pocket computers" as if we would be shocked by their ubiquity, but these are rare. However, in this tale, the science isn't the star of the show. Rather, it's the nature of humanity and how that nature compares to the Moties who represent a unqiue threat.

The characters, while not of any great depth, are passable for sci-fi. Some reviewers may complain about this but, as an avid sci-fi reader, I have seen much worse. I never really developed any strong attachment to the characters, but I did get to know them well enough to keep the story engaging.

This is a moderately paced story with some parts moving rather quickly and others trudging along. There are a handful of dull portions, mostly involving Empire politics or background exposition, but just when I started feeling bored, the story picked up. The plot, while sometimes predictable, still leaves enough mystery to keep you reading. The story is long, perhaps a bit longer than it needs to be. For example, I think Horace Bury's character added nothing to the story and could have been cut entirely.

I don't understand why some reviewers disliked the narrator. Personally, I think LJ Ganser does a superb job. Ganser can handle a room full of similar characters while giving each one a unique voice. His narration of Admiral Kutuzov deserves a freakin' medal. His reading never once interfered with my ability to absorb the story.

Overall, I'd say this is a great read. It isn't the best first contact story, and it isn't the best sci-fi novel ever written, but it's fun, engaging, and memorable.

Book gets a 4, reader gets a 2

When I first read this book seventeen years ago it was the most realistic and impressive Sci-Fi that I had read to date and Moral of the story seemed all too true. Unfortunately this book now seems a little dated and simplistic compared to Dan Simmons and Peter F. Hamiltions works for example. This is really too bad since this is one of the books that I have been wishing would come to audible for ever since I became a member.This is still an excellent story and the Motie Aliens are as well thought out as the Kzinti or Puppeteers, (two of Nivens other alien creations). The only real complaint about the writing is the pacing of the story, it seems to climax halfway through, get lost for a while and then come to a resolution.
The reader on the other hand, (The gripping hand as the Motie's would say) is a real annoyance usually I don't care that much about the narrator when I'm picking out audiobooks, its the book that's important, not the reader. But this audio book makes me wonder if I've been spoiled by audible's other narrators. The voice is understandable and the speed and emphasis is fine but this man is just no fun to listen too, particularly for twenty hours. I can't come up with any better description, but this is the first time reader has been bad enough to be distracting.

Good book, slightly empty

I got this book by suggestion of the TWIT podcasts.

My basic conclusion is that the book has some interesting things to talk about, but in audio form it's somehow hard to follow things that are said.

Many of the non-essential characters are too similar, such as the crewmen who are always contributing to conversations. I still have absolutely no idea who's who. It doesn't ultimately matter, but it's frustrating to know in the back of your mind you have no idea who half of the cast are.

After finishing the book, I had to listen to the first segment all over again because of the above problem. Had I read the words on a page, I might have remembered that the opening quote is by a man later introduced in the story. I might have understood better the early hints and discussions concerning Rod's royal family. Somehow I didn't properly digest that fact until the third part of the book.

Going into this book, you should keep in mind that the story is not meant to dazzle you at thrilling pace with a home run ending fit for pop culture. The book is very much the story of first contact with an alien race. Note that that's very different than being a story about a life-and-death war with an alien race which the humans almost lose their homeworld. If you understand the kind of story being told, the story is excellent.

My only wish is that the writing style would be more explicit about certain things. After the book takes you through in-depth description of a major event, 2 minutes after the event supposedly ends a character suddenly reveals that the event actually extended hours longer with bits it never even suggested had happened. I sometimes found myself actually tilting my head in my car and saying "..wha?" aloud. I had to rewind a minute or so and listen again to make sure I wasn't going crazy, that I really didn't fall asleep during my commute.

Good book though. I give it my rating with the glass half full, not half empty.

A dated tale

This story is showing it's age in attitudes toward women, and in it's science. The characters, even the scientists, expect aliens to have have the same motivations and concerns as humans. It is distracting.

The alien race is very original and the story is epic in scale. If you have an interest in older sci-fi, it is worth listening to.

The aliens are more interesting than the humans

I've read a lot of Niven and Pournelle's collaborations over the years, and at the height of my Very White Space Opera phase (i.e., when I was a teenager with no taste and liked anything with spaceships and aliens in it) Niven was one of my favorite authors.

The Mote in God's Eye was their first collaboration, and never having read it before, I was expecting something like Footfall. It kind of is, but of course it was written over twenty years earlier. This shows mostly in the fact that like most 70s science fiction, computers are still big clunky shipboard installations, and interstellar communications are formatted like telegrams and decrypted on tape machines. Other than that, though, the SF holds up pretty well; Niven and Pournelle have always written relatively hard SF, and their close attention to astrophysical, engineering, and biological detail makes this a book that, aforementioned computer/communications issues notwithstanding, reads like a fairly contemporary work.

Sci-fi-wise, that is. Character-wise... oh boy, that's another matter.

So, let's start with the setting. It's the Empire of Man, some millennial after humans left Earth and began colonizing the stars. There have been collapses and previous empires before now, and the current Empire actually has technology inferior to what bygone space empires had. But in all these centuries, no sentient alien race has ever been discovered. Then an Imperial warship encounters a probe launched from a star system that is a "mote" in a stellar nebula; the probe contains a dead alien pilot, and results in a ship being sent to investigate the system it came from. The crew discovers a race which the humans call "Moties," who appear to be friendly and peaceful and highly civilized. They are actually superior to humans, mentally and technologically, their only disadvantage being that they haven't yet figured out how to build working faster-than-light starships, so they are still trapped in their home star system.

The rest of the book is mostly told from the human point of view, but sometimes switches to the Motie one. We learn that the Moties, well, aren't so peaceful (surprise!) and they have a few secrets they are trying to keep secret from the humans.

As a First Contact novel, this is a very good one. The aliens are alien, and don't fall into any easy roles. They're not malevolent, per se, and individual Moties can be friendly (and refreshingly, they are individuals - Moties, like humans, don't all think alike or subscribe to the same philosophies and racial strategies), but they are definitely a threat. When the humans finally figure out the truth, they face a real moral dilemma.

Where The Mote in God's Eye fails, though, is characterization of the non-aliens. The humans are all straight, and I mean straight, out of 70s Central Casting. You have heroic square-jawed aristocratic naval officer Roderick Blaine, ruthless planet-killing Admiral Kutuzov, the sleazy bad guy Horace Bury who of course is a Muslim Arab, and Lady Sally Fowler, a noblewoman, anthropologist, designated love interest, and the only woman in the book, who at one point informs the Moties that humans have birth control technology but "decent women don't use it." We're supposed to admire the generally lawful and benevolent Empire of Man, even though it's about as socially progressive as Victorian England, and like Victorian England is in the middle of colonizing other human worlds by force. The stereotypes would have been less grating if the characters weren't also so flat; they did little but play their roles.

So, this is good science fiction, but hardly great literature. If you want interesting aliens and an examination of civilizational ethics, with a decent amount of spaceship action thrown in, enjoy, but there isn't a lot of depth, nor characters you're really going to care about.

Great book...so-so narration

"The Mote in God's Eye" was written to be the classic "first contact" novel, and it truly succeeded. The technology and society are interesting, the "Motie" aliens are well-imagined and the thoughts and actions of the characters (both human and alien) are consistent and believable. Although this is a long book, it moves along and there aren't any slow bits or parts to easily omit without changing the story.

"Mote" is one of my favorite books in dead-tree version and the story is amazingly good. It might not be in the rarified air of sci-fi's top-5 classics like "Dune" or "Brave New World," but it's definitely one of the greats.

OK. If this is such a great book, why only 4 stars in this rating? The narrator. Ganser's narration is passable (you can understand all of the words and that), but his reading is somewhat flat and jarring in a few places.

I rate the book at 5 stars but the narration at 2 or 3. Overall rating probably 3.5 stars, but I decided to be generous and round up to 4.

A classic First Contact story

Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.

The Mote in God’s Eye, co-written by frequent collaborators Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is a classic First Contact science fiction story which Robert A. Heinlein called “possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read.” The story takes place in 3017 AD in the future of Jerry Pournelle’s CODOMINION universe (though it’s not necessary to have read any of those books to enjoy The Mote in God’s Eye). Humans have developed the Alderson Drive which allows them to immediately jump to certain points in space. Thus they’ve been able to colonize many planets which are ruled by a single government similar to the British monarchy.

Up to this point humans have assumed they’re the only intelligent species in the universe, but an alien spaceship has just been detected near the Mote system. The spaceship MacArthur, captained by Lord Roderick Blaine, is dispatched to intercept the alien. Besides its regular crew, MacArthur has a couple of civilian passengers temporarily on board: Horace Bury, a trader and political prisoner, and Sally Fowler, a cultural anthropologist (how fortuitous) and senator’s niece.

It turns out that the alien in the probe ship is dead, but the humans figure out where the home planet must be, so Roderick Blaine, Sally Fowler, Horace Bury, a priest, the crew of MacArthur and a team of scientists are sent on a diplomatic mission to the planet they call Mote Prime. The ship Lenin is sent for back up. It’s captained by Admiral Kutuzov, a ruthless but effective man whose job is to not let the Moties learn anything that could help them build an Alderson Drive and escape the bounds of their own solar system.

Upon arrival at Mote Prime the diplomats find that the Moties are friendly and want to be allies. An alliance and trade agreement with the Moties would be beneficial to the human empire because, except for the lack of an Alderson Drive, the Moties are far more technologically advanced. But that means they’re also a threat. The diplomatic mission must discover all they can about the Motie society so it can make a recommendation to the empire about how to deal with this species they’re sharing the universe with. This, of course, is not as easy as it seems. Do the Moties really have pure intentions toward the humans, or are they deceiving them for some reason?

The Mote in God’s Eye, published in 1974, is a nice change of pace from most of the human vs. alien science fiction that had been previously published. Niven and Pournelle create a truly alien society and explore its evolution, history, sociology, and motivations. The story is compelling because Niven and Pournelle capitalize on the mystery, leaving the reader as much in the dark about the Moties’ true intentions as the human characters are. The truth is surprising (though, I thought, not completely believable).

Niven and Pournelle write unique stories but they’re not superior stylists; I read their books for the plot and ideas — not to admire their use of structure or language. This particular story is interesting, has a few great characters (Blaine, Kutuzov, the priest, and the Brownie aliens), and has an occasional nice touch of humor, but it sometimes suffers from shallow characterization, excessive dialogue, and an old-fashioned feel. The action is exciting, but limited. There is a lot of the normal “hard SF” explanation of drives, fields, stars, ships, etc, but there are also a lot of meetings in which the humans (or aliens) are trying to figure out what the aliens (or humans) know, assume, intend, and plan. Some of this was amusing (for example when the aliens are trying to figure out some aspects of human behavior) but many of the discussions just go on too long. Also, for a story set in 3017, ideas about birth control, sex, and women’s roles in society feel rather quaint.

The Mote in God’s Eye was published in 1974 and nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. Nearly 20 years later Niven and Pournelle published a sequel called The Gripping Hand. It was not well received so, in 2010, Jerry Pournelle’s daughter J.R. Pournelle wrote and published another sequel called Outies.

I listened to Audible Frontier’s audio version of The Mote in God’s Eye. L.J. Ganser does a great job with the narration. This title has recently been released in CD format by Brilliance Audio.

Engaging ideas hampered by dull writing

Niven and Pournelle imagine a first encounter between humanity and an intelligent alien species taking place in the far future, after mankind has established a series of empires throughout many star systems. The humans, having had a long history of wars within their own species, are wary, while the aliens are friendly, but not so human. After a fairly innocuous first contact, things begin to go wrong, and it becomes clear that the aliens are hiding something important.

I will say that I enjoyed the detailed conception of the ???Moties???, who are just similar enough to humans to be relatable, but have minds, societies, and issues that are pretty alien. And I appreciated the moral dilemma that their nature created.

However, I thought the story revolved around a tiresome trope that's been overdone in science fiction. Think of every sci-fi movie you've watched in which there's some peacenik character who makes repeated naive declarations such as "but these aliens are *peace-loving*, why would we want to bring *weapons* to their planet and show them how *unenlightened* we are?" This straw man, of course, is answered by a square-jawed military character who says something like, "I just have a bad feeling -- better safe than sorry". Prepare for many pages of this cardboard exchange. Also, the characters are a collection of uninteresting stereotypes, from the hard-nosed Russian admiral, to the dutiful young captain, to the self-important but astonishingly naive scientist, to the duplicitous merchant, to the absurdly Scottish ship???s engineer (hmmm, I wonder where that idea came from).

Finally, the novel just feels dated. The 1974 vision of technology is showing its age, as are some of the cultural sensibilities. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the loving tribute to a male-centric, Cold War-era navy -- I just can't imagine that a 31st century space navy would be anything like that.

All in all, perhaps worth a read if you???re a science fiction fan and happen to find a cheap copy, but, in this reader???s opinion, its significant weaknesses hold it back from ???classic??? status.

A decent story in general

I think the narrator was perfect for this book. His narrative voice fit the tone and style of the story and his character voices were quite well done. He did a good job with accents and interpreting moods and vocal inflections from the text.


The story was interesting but took quite a long time to get to rolling. At times it seemed as though the authors had been writing separately or would edit the other writer's previously written paragraphs. There were occasions where it felt as though something was thrown in to remind the reader that "hey this is SCIENCE fiction". For example in describing an aspect of a naval ship's defense systems: "...an efficiency proportional to the cube of the incoming velocities..." was like stubbing your aural toe on a long walk.


The human race in this story felt as though they lived in an interstellar British Empire from a century or so past. As you go through the book you learn that there had been rises and falls in the human race and it made the social attitudes (and technological anachronisms) a bit more easy to understand. However, the humans all seemed to be conveniently ignorant, irrational, or simply foolish. Scientists making assumptions and drawing conclusions that made me grit my teeth. Military commanders making choices that no sane person would make. All of which allowed the story to progress of course. It took nearly the entire story for the humans to smarten up and within a very short period of time they figured everything out. The alien race felt overly intelligent. My greatest complaint is that they were able to pick up the human language and communicate without a flaw in a matter of months from a handful of people. The aliens lost their "alien-ness" early on.


In general I liked this story but everything about it seemed very contrived. Almost as if the authors were working on a puzzle; the picture was there they just had to make it all fit together.