This reintroduction is long, tedious for someone who has read the original, and probably confusing for someone who hasn't. This sequel picks up the story several decades after the original and spends the first half of the book reintroducing characters, reprising the plot line of the first book, and introducing a few new players (most of them descendents of people in the original). When it appeared it took a truly novel, very anthropological approach to the subject of aliens, and it managed to make the Moties some of the most interesting aliens in the world of science fiction. 'The Mote in God's Eye' is one of my all-time favorite science fiction novels. And now the fragile wall separating them and the galaxy beyond is beginning to crumble. Each supremely adapted to its task, yet doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. 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. There, 25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system.

Now Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, award-winning authors of such best sellers 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. The San Francisco Chronicle declared that 'as science fiction, The Mote in God's Eye is one of the most important novels ever published'. Robert Heinlein called it 'possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read'.

The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven