posted 10-02-2001 22:01            

Fyunch(clicks) are from The Mote in God's Eye!

posted 10-02-2001 23:33            

Hey, I'm happy to have read something that other nerds have read. Usually you guys talk about dumb games and shit and I just scroll on past.

I gotta say, the Mote was better than the Gripping Hand. But not by much.

By comparison, I thought the Integral Trees was an interesting concept but written very lacksadaisically. Niven can be damn awesome when he's motivated.

posted 10-02-2001 23:37            

It was interesting.. it wasn't a particularly good book, yet it was great sci-fi. What does that say about science fiction?

posted 10-03-2001 14:01            

Let me see if I can remember dude's full name - Horace Hussein al-Shamlan Bury, Imperial Trader and Magnate, CEO of Imperial Autonetics.

Yaay, I'm a nerd!

(Ok, I re-read both of them about 30 days ago, so I'm a cheater, not a nerd.)

posted 10-03-2001 19:43            

I dunno, some site said that there were fourteen books dealing with the "future history" introduced in Mote. Maybe not all by both authors tho?

posted 10-03-2001 20:04            

Of course, its been a while since I've read Niven heavily... the last thing I read was the integral trees for christs sake.

posted 10-03-2001 20:53            

And the other books set in Pournelle's universe by and large had little to do with the Mote novels - the events in the Mote novels were barely a splash in the overall "future history" laid out for that universe, and thus had minimal impact on the stories set in other eras in that "future history."

posted 10-07-2001 23:36            

Second, it only has one sequel by Niven and Pournelle that I know of, the Gripping Hand I think? There might be a third, I forget. Anyway, Gripping Hand is quite entertaining, but probably not so breathtaking as Mote, and incidentally it deals far more with the logistics of space battle.

Third, Fen, how can you be so unimpressed with Mote? You've got a classic array of characters, a truly unique alien race, an assortment of believable scientific advances, and nifty ending. What else do you want? If you only read sci-fi for the writing, go read Heinlein - there's nothing there but writing.

Fourth, okay, Niven has a habit of doing sequels. But, consider the number of huge, multi-culture, multi-era internally consistent universes he's produced. Ringworld's first sequel came like 10 years after the original; I think the Gripping Hand postdated Mote by 20 years. He's had a helluva long career, how can you not revisit your past successes to try out new things with your favorite characters?

Fifth, have you read "Ring" by Stephen Baxter? Hot damn, now that's hard science fiction.

posted 10-08-2001 19:08            

I really like you.

posted 10-08-2001 22:21            

quote:

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Originally posted by weis:
Hmmm... First of all, Larry Niven is one of the finest writers in modern science fiction ...
Second, it only has one sequel by Niven and Pournelle that I know of, the Gripping Hand...
Third, Fen, how can you be so unimpressed with Mote? You've got a classic array of characters, a truly unique alien race, an assortment of believable scientific advances, and nifty ending. ...
Fourth, okay, Niven has a habit of doing sequels...
Fifth, have you read "Ring" by Stephen Baxter?...

---

Wow, weis back on the boards.
Fifth: Nope.
Second and Fourth: I don't know anything about sequels. I just heard somewhere that there were a ton of books in this series, and that's often a bad sign.
First: That may well be.
And finally, Third:
I liked the book- I read it very quickly, mostly because it flowed well. But I wasn't that happy with the ending.. Once the crashed crewmen die on Mote, everything rather slopes off. Sure, there was a full range of characters, but they were all completely static- cardboard cutouts, excepting the change of heart for Bury, which was a shade hard for me to buy. The stern Admiral, the affable senator, the pretty wants-to-succeed-on-own-merits chick, the science-above-all guy, the *cough* scottish engineer, etc. Kind of the rough stock of classic scifi- as I said, it was a good science fiction book, but not a good novel.

I don't know, maybe those characters weren't hackneyed when the book was written, I can only read it as a modern person. And just as Bronte's once-fluid prose seems stilted to me, prediction-based science fiction seems odd to me when interspace communication cannot include punctuation, when the language and culture (and religion) of humanity have not changed even a smidgeon in a thousand years (the same stern russians, stubborn scots, crafty arabs, etc), and ships are called MacArthur and Lenin- apparently no-one who lived between 2000 and 3000 was worth naming things after except Murcheson.

I'm not saying it was bad- I enjoyed it. But to me, it doesn't compare with, say, Neuromancer for example, which incidentally I will invoke if you should venture to argue that writing in science fiction is necessarily second-rate (a claim that many have made about Mystery, incidentally).

Actually, a lot of what Chandler had to say on this subject probably applies here, especially "The Simple Art of Murder", (apparently not pub-domain, but here are quotes: http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv124.html - just do a =~/mystery/sci-fi/tr)
Chandler used to point out that those mystery writers with the most writing talent (i.e. Hammet, Dorothy Sayers) were the ones who paid the least attention to the actual crime, its solution, and the details thereof. (Want proof? Okay, who, exactly, killed Miles Archer [Spade's partner] in the Maltese Falcon?) Inversely, those writers who paid the most attention to the details, clues, alibis and so on were often the least interesting to read- you could translate a whole book into detailed lists of information with losing anything important.
Perhaps the same is true, to some extent, of sci-fi?

To recap, I liked the book. Answer my email.

posted 10-09-2001 08:50            

quote:

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Originally posted by weis:
Hmmm... First of all, Larry Niven is one of the finest writers in modern science fiction due to his seamless welding of incredibly hard science with an engaging an intriguing style... You've got a classic array of characters, a truly unique alien race, an assortment of believable scientific advances, and nifty ending... Niven has a habit of doing sequels.

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What you're holding up as praise for Niven is the exact reason some of us can't stand him. Ringworld reads like several episodes of Star Trek strung together. All of the characters are ridiculously overblown stereotypes of some single-minded philosophy or emotion ("classic array" my butt), and the "plot" consists of rushing from one neato science thingy to the next with the occasional fighting or fucking to add conflict. Trek also has the habit of doing sequels; and why not do them when all the closure of most books/shows/movies amounts to is "We ran out of alien races/quantum rifts/mystery particles to discover"? The door is always open for another chapter, because the door never closes - everything is a loose end that is run away from rather than explored in depth.

posted 10-09-2001 19:39            

READABILITY HAS A LOT TO DO WITH GOOD NOVELS STOP
ONE THOUSAND YEARS AND WE STILL CANT DO BETTER THAN MORSE CODE AND TELETYPERS STOP
I LOVE IT WHEN THEY INSIST ON SAYING THE STOP AT THE END OF A SENTENCE IN OLD MOVIES STOP

posted 10-09-2001 19:45         

quote:

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READABILITY HAS A LOT TO DO WITH GOOD NOVELS STOP

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posted 10-09-2001 23:43         

like those ebook stuff. oh well

later
trey