The Mote in God's Eye

A first contact story set in the Coalsack nebula, where a light sail of alien origin arrives at a human colonized world after millennia of travel. It's method of travel puzzles the human colonists since it doesn't use a hyper drive. This leads to an exploration team, led by members of the human empire, seeking out it's point of origin within a secluded part of the nebula that has never been visited before.

There's a huge gap in quality here, between the form and the function of the novel. The function, the ideas, the plot, the alien species, are executed to a point close to mastery. I've personally never read such a well-formed alien civilization before. Complete with its own history, culture, castes, politics, and problems. The 'Moties', as they are called, are a shinning example of how to write aliens as something distinctly different from humans, but still beholden to all of the same challenges that would face any sentient life tries to expand and preserve their place in the universe. These types of comparisons between the Moties and humans were where the book really shined, showcasing how similar we really are, even if we balk at trying to understand them. The ending conclusion was also satisfying, wrapping all the loose ends together neatly.

Most of my gripes come from the form of the book, the way the book is written. Most of the time the prose is workman-like. Standard fare that only serves as stop gaps between lengthy portions of dialogue between a host of characters. The characters themselves also happen to be mostly shallow and uninteresting, only serving to push their own view of events, recommending one unwavering path forward as they negotiate with the Moties. The one woman described in the entire book is unfortunately treated much the same way as many other during this period of SF writing. The writing certainty left me wanting more, and ended up making me slog ponderously slow through the book. Despite how much I enjoyed the Moties and their world, I never really felt myself compelled to read more of it.

The Mote In Gods Eye is held up as a classic of the genre, and while I can't argue with that on some fronts, I don't think I could recommend this book to someone with little background the genre, or someone that doesn't already have a passion for it. A classic, perhaps, but a flawed one that takes commitment to get through.