Written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, audiobook narrated by L. J. Ganser. I’ve read it in the audio form.

This is a novel about a first contact. It is also quite old (1974) and set in a universe that has been depicted in quite a few preceeding and following books. I didn’t know any of that when I started reading.

The Plot

The events take place in a Big Interstellar Empire of Men that rose from the ashes of Even Bigger Interstellar Empire of Men which fell apart and brought the human colonies right into a dark age. Brings back fond memories of Asimov’s Foundation.

In the beginning, a ship called McArthur is sent to investigate an object that must be of alien origin because it is deccelerating upon it’s arrival to the Territory of Men. Another fond memory: this time of Clarke’s Rama.

The ship, with its mixed crew of scientists, navy officers, Scottish technicians, nobles, Russians and an Arabic traitor/trader, embarks on a sail to unknown waters (seriously: navy? In space?) to answer the essential question about the alines: are they friendlies or baddies? And how can we benefit?

Eventually, they meet them, advance the plot and find out.

The Book

It’s always interesting to see how writers tackle the difficult problem of creating and describing an alien life-form. It must be, well… alien and yet believable. And at least on some level, the reader must be able to empathize with it.

And I must admit, the gradual discovery of the aliens’ nature, history and culture is one of the reasons you won’t willingly put the book down. Moties are a rich, impressive, intriguing and scary race.

In fact the whole book is very well written and plotted. The story moves forward at just the right pace — never boring, but steady enough not to feel overwhelmed by abundance of characters or events.

Audio

At the very beginning, the narration was a rather negative experience. The voice didn’t suit me well and I wasn’t even sure I’d continue listening to it.

However, when Mr. Ganser read the first line of a dialog, everything changed.

The characters came alive. Each one with their own unique voice, accent and a personality. When people talked, they talked. I have never really learned names of some of them — but I could easily recognize them by their voices.

In the end, the superb audio performance pushed the whole reading experience forward.

Summary

If you read this book, you’ll discover that humans are Crazy Eddies, that Scottland can be Great, that an antropologist can get away with calling a sentient race “Moties” and that the question of God‘s sex will have a clear answer in the future.

And if that’s not worth spending 30 hours of your life in a made-up world, what is?