In the far-distant future humanity has spread into the stars and colonized interstellar empires through the use of faster-than-light technology. The human race has seen incredible astronomical phenomena, endured planet-shattering wars and continued to wrestle with old and new moral quandaries, but they have never encountered another intelligent race.
Until now.
While transporting captives freed from a recent interplanetary war, a battleship encounters an automated probe from a truly alien civilization. The attempt to make contact results in disaster and the deaths of the hibernating crew aboard, but furnishes information leading to the explorers home system. A spot in the sky that has long ago been nicknamed “The Mote in God’s Eye.”
A tenuous expedition is organized to make contact with the aliens, to determine if their civilization is benign to humanity or poses a threat to the race, and to act accordingly. The ambassadors find a fascinating, complex culture that is both eerily similar and shockingly different from humanity in many ways. The aliens – dubbed “Moties” by the humans – have evolved into a caste system with different races of the species ‘specialized’ to perform a variety of diverse tasks.
They appear friendly. They appear peaceful and eager to coexist peacefully with humanity. In most cases they are.
But the Moties have a secret. A terrible secret built into their very genetics, one that precludes coexistence and will inevitably lead to utter extinction for one race.
The only hope is an ancient but persistent idea. A meme expressing the yearning inborn to all sentient creatures to defy the fated collapse of civilizations due to entropy and warfare. An idea embodied in the translation “Crazy Eddie.”

Niven and Pournelle have written what may arguably be the single greatest science fiction novel set in the future and dealing with first contact with an alien species. They put forward intriguing concepts related to human nature and culture in its intersection with advanced technology. In many cases, cultures and traditions have been strengthened rather than erased by these advances as – much like the Europeans who once set up colonies in North America where they might live as they pleased. There are entire worlds, for example almost exclusively colonized by Scotts and with a prevalence of Scottish culture.

This method has its inherit drawbacks as well, such as the abovementioned wars.

The most groundbreaking aspect of the book, though, is the Moties themselves. The authors have postulated a completely different race evolved to meet completely different situations and they are as believable as the Martians in H.G. Wells’ trailblazing “War of the Worlds.” The Moties, however, are no monsters but an intelligent, advanced, race with a fully-realized culture and the capacity for love and compassion – as well as destructon – that matches humanity’s. Thus the conflict is tragic with no easy answers.

We can only hope there’s a little Crazy Eddie in all of us.

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Created Nov 05, 2007 at 1:32am • Submit your own review...