Footfall Audiobook By Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle cover art

Footfall

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Footfall

By: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
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They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star. The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteriods. Now the conquerors are descending on the American heartland, demanding servile surrender - or death for all humans.

©1986 Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (P)2010 Audible, Inc. Adventure Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction Solar System Military Survival

Critic reviews

“Nobody does it better than Niven and Pournelle. I loved it!” (Tom Clancy)
"Rousing – the best of the genre.” ( The New York Times Book Review)
Unique Alien Culture • Believable Science Fiction • Excellent Character Distinction • Well-developed Aliens • Complex Cast

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I'm really glad this wasn't the first Audible title I listened to; if it had been, I never would have tried another. I read this when it first came out and loved it, so even though I knew there were problems with the narration, I thought I'd still enjoy it. Actually, the narrator did a pretty good job with the alien voices and the alien names. It was the human characters that drove me crazy. I guess there were too many characters for one person to do, but about half way through, I started imagining the characters being done by elementary school kids pretending to be adults – complete with oversized clothing and hats. Most of the adult voices sounded childlike and over the top - especially the "military" voices. My recommendation: skip this unless you are a die-hard Niven / Pournelle fan who is willing to forgive a lot.

Great story - awful narration

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Alien to invasion has certainly been done better, but there are enough interesting ideas in here that it is still enjoyable.

Let’s start off with the pros:

1: The aliens are very interesting. Deviating delightfully from a humanoid shape, the quadrupedal Fipht are a fun look at how real intelligent aliens might act. With an alien psychology, though still familiar enough to recognize as intelligent, they are different from humans but still smart enough to figure us out (just as we figure them out as well).

2: Realistic invasion. Earth Isn’t being invaded for resources, but rather ideological reasons. As the depths of space have more and easier to access resources than earth ever could. This is pointed out many times in the book, and is a breath of fresh air.

3: Mostly interesting characters. All the alien characters and most of the human characters are engaging enough, which is nice.

Cons.

1: Cannot Write Women. The Authors really just can’t write women to save their lives. The only female characters that don’t all revolve around their love interest are either the alien females, or are children and thus aren’t interested in men. If that gets on your nerves, then do be warned it is eye rolling levels of aggravating l.

2: Everyone is Cheating. No one in this damn book is faithful to their significant other, which is suppose must reflect the authors’ own viewpoints on the matter. I know this won’t Botha some people, but for gods sake come on!

3: Egregious Self Inserts. The authors basically write themselves and all their writer friends into the book as the super elite task force the military gathers composed of science fiction writers, and only science fiction writers. You never see any actual scientists advising the president. Kind of silly.

4: USA Centric. Book never really focuses on any other country in any great detail, which is a lost opportunity IMO and it is a little distracting.

Now for some general thoughts.

Since this book is from the 1980s, the Cold War certainly has colored its writing. It is certainly quaint to read about the paranoid rivalry between the USA and USSR that rears its head as the aliens invade. It is rather quaint from the perspective of reading it in 2021, where the world order is generally much less paranoid.

The solution to the alien invasion stretches my suspension of disbelief pretty hard, given it is a large scale engineering project which is pulled off without a hitch, just a little unbelievable even if the end result is pretty cool. Which is why it is a forgivable sin.

As for some of the other reviews on the book, I would ignore the ones saying the silliest part of the book is that the aliens look like elephants and use “moonshoes and hang gliders”. You can tell they are people who rarely read sci-fi if that is silly to them.

My final thoughts are this: An ok book, well worth the read if you enjoy alien invasions. It is however, just a worse version of a series of better alien invasion books. Before reading this I would recommend you to go spend a credit on the first WORLDWAR book by Harry Turtledove. A series in which aliens invade during WW2 and which dives extensively into the consequences of such an action. Basically all my cons I listed are not in that series, and if you haven’t read it already you should do so before reading this.

Worse WORLDWAR

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I listen to the entire book in one sitting with a 2-hour nap so that I didn't pass out at the end. This piece of fiction is satisfying, informative and cathartic. Larry Niven does a fantastic job of intertwining hard sci-fi with believable sociological factors. If only every day can be so amazing.

Superb

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Even while following conventions of the type there is something a little different about this alien invasion yarn and the tone belies a deep undertow of satire. If that's not enough, brilliantly sharing some of the story line from the point of view of the invading species only sets the human condition in high relief. Fun adventure and thought provoking drama mixed with a little hard Sci-fi give Footfall an original approach to well warn pathways.

An odd thing happened on the way to the circus

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Great story by niven and the reader was also excellent. Pulled into the story in the first chapter.

excellent story telling

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