After looking at that list of top sci-fi book I was pretty excited to read one that I hadn't read before and picked one that I knew nothing about, The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The set up is pretty simple, it is a thousand years in the future and mankind has spread out through space and there are hundreds of populated planets. Then we finally make first contact with an alien species which everyone refers to as the Moties. The Moties are pretty weird looking beings with three arms and asymmetrical bodies. Then the expedition that has met them has to decide what to do about them... should they be peaceful and try and trade? or should they just try and eliminate them now before they endanger human civilization.I thought this book was just okay. The set up is pretty intriguing but the characters are all pretty bland and hard to differentiate, really I'd prefer to have read a Star Trek book instead. The topics of the debates are interesting but it seems like none of the characters make very in-depth arguments for their side... it is just "they'll wipe us out" or "no, they are peaceful beings". At one point they hint at the interesting theological debates that would occur if we met space aliens, but nothing comes of it. And the ending is all a bit anti-climatic too. Overall a bit of a disappointment for a book that appears on so many lists. I'll give it a B-.
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