The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye by Larry…

The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye (edition 1994)

by Larry Niven

Series: The Mote in God's Eye (2), CoDominium Internal Chronology (9)

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
2,479	27	6,026	(3.54)	20
Robert Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read." The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published." Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award winning authors of such bestsellers as Footfall and The Legacy of Heorot, return us to the Mote, and to the universe of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury, of Rod Blaine and Sally Fowler. There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered-- a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function. Master, Mediator, Engineer. Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed-- or die. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble.… (more)

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Member:	non-apejase
Title:	The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye
Authors:	Larry Niven
Info:	Collins (1994), Paperback, 480 pages
Collections:	Your library
Rating:
Tags:	None

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The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven

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The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven (Anonymous user)
Anonymous user: The original work to which The gripping Hand is a sequel.
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Outies by J. R. Pournelle (J.R.Pournelle)
J.R.Pournelle: Authorized sequel, by Jerry Pournelle's daughter.

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English (23) Italian (2) Dutch (2) All languages (27)

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Showing 1-5 of 23 (next | show all)

I can't really say that I loved this book, the way I loved The Mote in God's Eye, but the second half kept me turning pages and in many ways the storytelling is quite inventive (i.e., we return to the Mote but what we find when we get there isn't at all what our first visit might have led us to expect). It also makes an effort to avoid and in one case actually undo some of the dated colonial cringeyness of the beloved first novel of Mote, (

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clong | Jan 30, 2022 |

The Gripping Hand had a long setup that took up more than half the book. It has a lot of characters and deep undercurrents. This part of the book was not easy to read. Then people start reaching the Mote system and the book takes off like a rocket. The more you read the harder it is to put down and the more all that stuff before comes back into your head. Until the last few pages you are not sure who lives or dies. In the end, who really won? (

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nab6215 | Jan 18, 2022 |

if I had not read the first novel, "The Mote In God's Eye", I would not have finished this one. Good ending but uninteresting beginning. I like "Mote" better. (

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ikeman100 | Apr 9, 2021 |

A 25-year-old blockade of an alien star system is suddenly obsolete.

2/4 (Indifferent).

There's some suspense, and interesting space-battle tactics. But it's extremely badly-written. For instance, the dialog is regularly incomprehensible, in a way that could have easily been fixed with a little formatting. Did they even have an editor? But even without the problems, it was never going to be a good book; it has no reason for existing except that the first book was popular. (

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comfypants | Nov 17, 2020 |

The first book in the series, The Mote in God's Eye, was excellent so was looking forward to reading this. But alas I didn't.

The story concerns the Moties, the alien race discovered in the first book, and blocked into their star system have escaped. Some of the characters were the same as the previous book, but with a number of new ones. They were difficult to engage with, and there seem to be a lot of them, so it was never easy to work out what was going on.

part of it were good, the space battle for example, but it is such a shame given how good the other one was. (

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PDCRead | Apr 6, 2020 |

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▾Other authors

» Add other authors (4 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Niven, Larry	—	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Pournelle, Jerry	—	main author	all editions	confirmed
Harris, John	Cover artist	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
MacLeod, Lee	Cover artist	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Series and work relationships

Belongs to Series

CoDominium Internal Chronology (9)

The Mote in God's Eye (2)

Belongs to Publisher Series

Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy (5180)

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Canonical title

Original title

The Gripping Hand

Alternative titles

The Moat around Murcheson's Eye

Original publication date

People/Characters

Kevin Christian Blaine

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Epigraph

Dedication

For Marilyn and Roberta, those most patient of ladies...

First words

A severed head spun across black sky. He had been a Marine: square jaw, closed-cropped blond hair, glittering dead eyes.

Quotations

Last words

Disambiguation notice

Published in the US with Title "The Gripping Hand"; Published in the UK with Title "The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye"

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Original language

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▾Book descriptions

Robert Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read." The San Francisco Chronicle declared that "as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published." Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award winning authors of such bestsellers as Footfall and The Legacy of Heorot, return us to the Mote, and to the universe of Kevin Renner and Horace Bury, of Rod Blaine and Sally Fowler. There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered-- a race divided into distinct biological forms, each serving a different function. Master, Mediator, Engineer. Warrior. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For the Moties must breed-- or die. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble.

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