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The Mote in God's Eye' is acknowledged as one of the classic science fiction masterpieces; first published in 1974, it was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award in 1975. In my opinion it is the best of the several excellent novels written collaboratively by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Like many classics', the story is well worth a re-read; although I don't keep count, I'm sure that since first reading it in 1978, I have returned to this novel at least five times, probably more.

Niven is most famous for his Known Universe' stories, including Ringworld' and its sequels. Pournelle is best known for his contributions to the military science fiction sub-genre, the Janissaries' series and a brilliant novel set in the same Universe and time period as The Mote' called King David's Spaceship'. The blending of their talents has worked exceptionally well.

The story is about the first contact between humans and an alien sapient species whose civilization and history has been constrained to a single star system, despite their intelligence and technological capabilities, through a twist of fate. In a rather unique reversal from many first contact stories, the humans visitors, initially presuming technological dominance, are the potential saviours of Motie civilization; providing them with an out' from a predicament that has generated repeated cycles of development and collapse for thousands of years.

Interstellar space is instantly traversed by using an Alderson' drive from one specific location within a star system to instantaneously relocate a starship to another loci within a neighboring star system. The Moties' system has only one such point, already known to them, that they call the Crazy Eddie' point. Crazy Eddie is a mythological being to the Moties, his actions are always well intended but always result in catastrophe.
No starship that they have sent through the Crazy Eddie point has ever returned. Unbeknown to them, this is because the other end is located within the photosphere of a nearby red giant star. The unshielded ships that their periodically technologically advanced civilizations have sent through the Crazy Eddie point have all been immediately destroyed upon emerging into a region of extreme heat.

The Motie civilization is caste based, but with a difference. Each caste is physiologically differentiated, essentially different but related sub-species mutated from a single ancestor species. They are dominated by the Master class, all

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