Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle' "The Mote in God's Eye" (novel, space opera): Star-faring humans blockade "Moties" to their home star system

Fast moving story, & among the most famous novels of the genre. But way too long, consequently has occasional boring stretches.

Story summary.

A clearly alien probe is detected in a far-off human ruled star system. Trapping it yields a dead alien who obviously traveled 35 light years in a solar sail powered slower-than-light craft from a certain star system. So two human warships, one with a lot of civilian crew, go to investigate the system. System is "Mote" & natives are "Moties" to humans.

At the heart of the story is the complex FTL technology the humans use, the peculiar biology of Moties, & the peculiar nature of space near Moties' home world:

1. FTL travel is possible only between "Alderson Points", small regions of space near star systems. Some stars have no such point, others have more than one. Travel between points is instantaneous; elsewhere it slower than light.  Each point leads to a specific pre-determined point in another system.
2. Moties are specialized at birth: "Masters" give orders, "Engineers" are good at tinkering with gadgets, "Mediators" specialize in communications, ... And while two individuals of different sexes must mate to produce an offspring, each individual spends part of its life as female & part as male, periodically switching between the two. And while female, it must quickly become pregnant, or the internal hormonal imbalances will kill it. This means practically uncontrollable birth rate. Which leads to a cyclical civilization: rise, fall to primitive level, rise, ... Moties are close to the point where fall must soon occur when humans arrive.
3. Alderson point after the first jump from Moties home system lies in the corona of a star. Human ships can survive here because of a certain shield; unshielded, you get instantly cooked.

Contact is peaceful, with both sides apparently very open, & obviously hiding a lot. Lot of action. Humans will return with three alien ambassadors & still apparently friendly aliens, but only after violently losing one of the ships. Post return analysis will show Moties as a potential serious threat, so human warships will be placed to permanently guard the Anderson Point of first jump off Motie homeworld; if Moties ever discover FTL & don't get cooked in the star's corona where they'll emerge, human warships will destroy them.

Notes.

1. Some reviewers classify it as a first contact story. To me, it read more as space opera than first contact.
2. Moties of different castes - functions - have differently colored fur. I wonder if some of the colors reflect one of the author's personal prejudices: Whites on top, then White+Browns, then Browns.

See also.

1. L Sprague de Camp's "Finished" (download scans as part of a larger package): While Mote ends with a total blockade as the solution to alien threat lest they acquire human technology, Finished offers a glimpse of what can happen after a technology blockade is imposed.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1974.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle.

Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's "Footfall" (novel, alien invasion)

While I found it easy to put it down in early parts, it gets far more gripping once aliens arrive.

Story summary.

Aliens, from somewhere in Alpha Centauri system, begin attacking earth ("Winterhome" to them) as soon as they arrive - after a 12 year stopover in Saturn's rings undetected. Aliens that look like & are the size of baby elephants, only with multiple trunks that one human character compared with tentacles & who have vocal apparatus similar to ours. They call themselves "fi'" (plural "fithp") but Americans call them "Snouts".

Their primary fight is with the US since they recognize it is as the most advanced country, & secondarily with USSR. I'm puzzled why they had to destroy India by throwing an asteroid in Indian Ocean; it wasn't a party at all till then. This asteroid is called "Foot"; throwing it down is "Footfall" ... sort of ... an elephant trampling someone under its foot.

Of course, US military will eventually beat them.

Notes.

1. During the brief discussion of India, there is a curious reference to "Vishnu, the elephant god"! Why quote foreign mythology with such gross errors? Makes me wonder about all non-US references in the book.
2. Story has "shotgun pellets made of spent uranium". I thought "spent uranium" is no longer uranium but is transformed to another element. What have I missed?
3. Story contains a whole chapter named after, & in spirit of, William Tenn's 1963 story "The Men in the Walls" (novel version called "Of Men & Monsters").

Fact sheet.

First published: 1985.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle.

Jerry Pournelle's "Extreme Prejudice" (novelette, extreme engineering, free): An ocean-based permanent habitat

What I read here is the description of a huge water-based human habitat. A little portion of it above surface, most of it subsurface. Located somewhere in the Pacific. Sea farming, sea-bed mining, generating electricity by exploiting the ocean's vertical thermal gradient, tame & talking dolphins, ...

What some others at ClassicScienceFiction seem to have read into it are contradictory & unsatisfactory behavior of key actors & background events. I liked it because I only noticed the engineering aspects; if you're more into characters, your mileage might well vary.

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "The Deep Range": Similar sea-based setup.
   
   The novel is primarily about using whales as cattle - herding, pasturing, milking, & not insubstantial parts about butchering them for meat. Plus bits about deep-sea monster hunting & a bit of Buddhist ideology.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 1974.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1975 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Jerry Pournelle.

Free Fiction: Jerry Pournelle, Tom Godwin

These are 2 or 3 months old links that were lost in my bookmarks.

Via Free SF Reader: 6 stories from Jerry Pournelle's collection "High Justice" at Webscription. Some of these stories have already been online for a while. Some of the links below aren't visible from ToC, but they work anyway (or did when I checked them some months back).

1. "A Matter of Sovereignty" (as by Wade Curtis); download; Analog, January 1972.
2. "Power to the People" (as by Wade Curtis); download; Analog, August 1972.
3. "Enforcer"; download; F&SF, June 1974.
4. "High Justice"; download; Analog, March 1974.
5. "Extreme Prejudice"; download; Analog, July 1974: Nominated for Hugo Award 1975 in novelette category.
   
6. "Consort"; download; Analog, August 1975.

Tom Godwin's short novel "The Survivors" at the Webscription.

Free fiction: Some stories by well known authors from "Imperial Stars" anthology series edited by Jerry Pournelle

Free SF Reader links Imperial Stars 3: The Crash of Empire at Webscripton. 3 stories are free:

1. Gregory Benford's "Pebble Among The Stars"; download.
   
2. Christopher Anvil's "The Claw And The Clock"; download.
   
3. Cyril Kornbluth's "The Only Thing We Learn"; download: This has already been online as part of David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down" anthology: Frontiersmen always return as raiders of their ancient homes...

The series at Webscription has some more free fiction from "Imperial Stars 2: Republic & Empire":

1. Norman Spinrad's "Outward Bound"; download.
   
2. Wayne Wightman's "In The Realm Of The Heart, In The World Of The Knife"; download.
   
3. Hayford Pierce's "Doing Well While Doing Good"; download.