Gripping Hand [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Niven (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1993

Twenty years after quarantining the Moties within their own solar system, thewall standing between them starts to crumble.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This sequel to the authors' 1974 classic The Mote in God's Eye takes place some 25 years after the events of that book. The alien "Moties" remain quarantined in their own system, but the formation of a new star nearby suggests an opportunity for the Moties to escape into the galaxy, where their explosive population growth and the efficiency of their specialized subspecies--Engineers, Mediators, Warriors, etc.--may challenge the survival of the Empire of Man. Imperial scientists, however, may have found a way for the Moties to control their population and thus reduce their threat enough to allow them to become the Empire's allies. Led by Horace Bury and Kevin Renner (veterans of the first Mote expedition), a hastily assembled Imperial force struggles to contain the Moties long enough to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Though the first third of the book drags, once the action moves to the Mote system, readers will be hooked. Some of the intriguing subtexts, such as the prevailing xenophobia, are disturbing, while others, including warnings about overpopulation, enlighten. But Niven and Pournelle ( Footfall ) don't explore these ideas deeply enough to make their story any more than a perfectly adequate, largely irrelevant sequel.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

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.END --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Audioworks; abridged edition edition (February 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671791109
• ISBN-13: 978-0671791100
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,469,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars From the Mote in God's Eye to a Pain in my...., March 20, 2007

By 

Daniel Shaw "Religion Professor" (Colorado Springs, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gripping Hand (Mass Market Paperback)

What a tremendous disappointment! I have read "The Mote in God's Eye" perhaps a dozen times over the years. When I recently discovered an old copy of this sequel I was delighted. Until about the fifth page. After that, it just kept going downhill. Gone from this is any concern for character development which so enlivened the first book. Gone are intuitive and creative insights into the minds of the moties (remember how the first novel gave us large sections of their thinking in italics?). Gone is any sense of a coherent plot (whatever happened to Jennifer and her colleague trapped aboard the Khanate mother ships?). Perhaps most sadly, gone is any sense of the danger and mystery of these strange creatures. There is nothing surprising or interesting or frightening about them any more. They are more like a plague of ants than a fearsome race that actually could destroy mankind. It reminded me of the difference between the creature in the movie Alien who was impossible to kill, compared to the way the sequel, Aliens, showed them dying left and right as though they were mere bugs.

What has replaced these wonders from the first book are: more of the authors' juvenile sexual fantasies (yes, again, we see young girls being forced to strip in front of moties, a promiscuous Kevin Renner moving from one meaningless lustful relationship to another, even poor Horace Bury has a concubine/MD/amazon guardian who actually lays on top of him in the final scene!); a boring and really bad "chase sequence" (really dull); incoherent dialogue; tedious allusions to a "gripping hand;" broken plot lines and dropped characters (why introduce Sarah if she's going to just disappear halfway through the novel for no reason?); and endlessly boring Nivenesque discussions of space travel and starship warfare and the mechanics and mathematics thereof.

I actually threw the book across the room when finished. So disappointing.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, December 6, 2001

By 

"publius21" (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gripping Hand (Mass Market Paperback)

A very disappointing sequel. Like many others who have commented, I am a big fan of "The Mote in God's Eye", and although sequels often fall short of the original, this one fell shorter than most. It has flaws that would discredit a first novel by an unknown author, quite frankly: characters are introduced and developed, made interesting, and then dropped without explanation and never referred to again. Same for subplots. The dialogue is confusing, and the protagonists make leaps of logic that I found impossible to follow.

Perhaps worst of all, I did not recognize the "Empire" of this story as being the same "Empire" from TMIGE. Certainly, 30 years had passed, but too many things had been stood on their heads, and none of the characters seemed to have noticed. It was as if the authors decided that the social and political background of the first book was no longer commercial, and so they performed major surgery on it -- unfortunately doing a sloppy job and killing the patient in the process.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Moties are Back!, April 21, 2004

By 

J. Vilches (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Gripping Hand (Mass Market Paperback)

In this sequel to The Mote in God's Eye, humans and the alien "Moties" once again come into contact with dramatic results. The Empire of Man has a blockade to keep the Moties bottled up in their own system because the Moties are explosively expansive and would quickly overrun the Empire. Horace Bury, an Imperial Trader, and Kevin Renner, his pilot, travel through the Empire helping Naval Intelligence quell rebellion. But Bury and Renner, veterans from the first contact with the Moties, have another goal: to make sure that the Moties stay penned up in their system. When they find possible evidence that the Moties may escape, they pull all the strings they can find in order to visit the blockade. Events unfold quickly and they end up once more in the Mote system, trying to prevent a disaster. They have help of Chris and Glenda Ruth Blain, the two children of the first expedition's captain. The Blaine's have unique insight into the situation because they grew up around the only Moties allowed into the Empire.

The tension is thick at times, and the space battles are well plotted. However, there are large stretches consisting of political intrigue and Motie history lessons that slow down the plot considerably. I think the sections are interspersed well enough to hold the reader's interest. Some of the plot twists were hard to follow, especially once the Moties are involved. However, considering the chaos involved during battles and throwing in completely alien thought patters, it's probably fair to have some confusion in the plot. The characters are engaging, but I found it a little annoying that some of them just drop out of the story at the end without resolutions.

The Gripping Hand is definitely easier to read if you have the background found in The Mote in God's Eye. However, like most sequels, it doesn't live up to the promise of the first book. It's entertaining, but not destined to be a classic.