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Niven and Pournelle venture into the world of 3000 years in the future by using stories of the Napoleonic English Navy as the framework for their story of the first contact between humans and non-humans. Against this background of continual wars against the Empire by it's citizens, the crew of the MacArther and the Lenin venture into a world unlike anything they've ever encountered. The authors did a great job of trying to figure out how to describe a culture that's not human, using human motif's and concepts. The last 1/3 of the book really starts to move the pace along and the inevitable violence that ensues as the motives of both parties are completely revealed is sobering in it's implications for our own human future. There are so many characters that for the most part they're very two dimensional, and the depictions of the place of Women in the Empire in the context of today is striking to modern readers.
If you ever enjoyed C.S. Forrester, Patrick O'Brian, or Bernard Cornwall you might find something familiar in this story.

I think this is one of Anderson’s first full length novels and it’s something of a retro-fest to read it for the first time almost 70 years after publication. As a 21st century reader for a very 1950’s outlook story, the characters are very predictable, and the whole story is very archaic in it’s view of women and cultures outside of conservative white technocrats. I think this is really the barest outlines of the book he wanted to write to examine what humanity would be like if we rid ourselves of the desires that cause so many wars and human conflicts. Again and again he muses on the effects of the change in society caused by the the sudden increase in the abillity of all creatures mental capabilities. But Anderson never really grapels with the true measures of what this would entail, and the result is a very disjointed, almost outline level discussion of the ramifications. Our sci-fi book club read this for our selection this month and the discussion was almost universal in it’s wish that he would have picked one topic of the many he introduced and stuck with it. My feeling is that he did what he needed and was told to write, to get a first novel published. His later works that I recall reading were much more refined in their viewpoints of women and society. But, I’m glad to have read it.

Niven and Pournelle venture into the world of 3000 years in the future by using stories of the Napoleonic English Navy as the framework for their story of the first contact between humans and non-humans. Against this background of continual wars against the Empire by it's citizens, the crew of the MacArther and the Lenin venture into a world unlike anything they've ever encountered. The authors did a great job of trying to figure out how to describe a culture that's not human, using human motif's and concepts. The last 1/3 of the book really starts to move the pace along and the inevitable violence that ensues as the motives of both parties are completely revealed is sobering in it's implications for our own human future. There are so many characters that for the most part they're very two dimensional, and the depictions of the place of Women in the Empire in the context of today is striking to modern readers.
If you ever enjoyed C.S. Forrester, Patrick O'Brian, or Bernard Cornwall you might find something familiar in this story.

Interesting take on the first contact with a non-human intelligence. Niven and Pournelle have tried to retell English Napoleonic sailing stories of first contacts with south Pacific peoples in a 3000 thousand year leap into the future. This story would have trouble finding a publisher today with it's misogynists take on the female half of humanity, but see my comment above out the cultural period they seem to be trying to recreate. The characters are all very human in their depictions, if a bit thin as there are so many spread throughout the book. The "Moties" as the story assigns the new species name, while very different in thought and structure, are revealed as not so very different from humans . The way they use this idea in how the Mediators assigned to the human characters eventually become their humans is striking as the story nears it's end. I can't say this would ever be a book I'd re-read or even necessarily recommend, but it's a good touchstone for some of the writing of the period.