Talk:The Mote in God's Eye

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Assessment comments

Someone just created an article for Crazy Eddie... unreleated, of course. ;-) AdmN 01:35, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Award Nominations should also be mentioned in the Opening Line

This is pretty standard with articles. The award nominations are key descriptors for the primary subject.

Sean7phil 05:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio?

This article reads like a typical book review, which has two problems (1) people don't usally write book reviews for Wikipedia, so this may be a copyvio, and (2) it's not NPOV. I'll try to tackle the latter, but does anyone know where this may have come from? -- Kaszeta 16:22, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The edit history shows this was mostly written by anons. I'll do some googling to see if there's any copyvio here. func(talk) 16:43, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Well, that was quick. :) All hits from the original version lead to Wikipedia and her mirrors, so thi wasn't a copy and paste job from the 'net. func(talk) 16:49, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out that the Hugo Awards page contains a link to edit a page for this same title. IOW, the Hugo Award ought to point here. g


I wrote this article originally. It's not copied from anywhere, I wrote it entirely myself.

[edit] Edited by Heinlein

Under the Larry Niven entry, it says Heinlein contributed significantly to the book, yet the actual book page makes no mention of this. I find it odd that Heinlein would contribute a lot and then praise it so heavily. Clarification would be nice; enquiring minds want to know. -Luke

from a usenet discussion:
From _N-Space_, p. 335-6:
"Jerry sent our 'finished' mansucript to a friend: Robert Heinlein. Robert told us that he could put one terrific blurb on the cover _if_ we made some changes. The first hundred pages had to go . . .
"And we did that, and re-introduced characters and moved back- ground data from the last prologue to a later scene set on New Scotland, and did more chopping throughout. 'There's a scene I _never_ liked,' I told Jerry, and our whole relationship changed. This was when we learned not to be too polite to a collaborator; it hurts the book.
"And we sent it back to Robert, _who did a complete line-editing job_.
"I know of a man who offered Robert Heinlein a reading fee! The results were quite horrid. But in the case of _Mote_, Robert hadn't expected us to take his advice. Nobody ever had before (he told us). But if "Possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read" were to appear on the cover above Robert Heinlein's name, then the book had to _be_ that.
"It took us forever to write. We won the LASFS's 'Sticky' Award for 'Best Unpublished Novel' two years running. It was worth every minute."
A comment later in the thread says, "Larry Niven said that RAH's comments on _mote_ ran to 70 pages single spaced." I don't know if that's also in N-Space.
—wwoods 01:56, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A noteworthy element

The handheld computers in this 1975 novel are quite close to the capabilities exhibited by PalmOS 4.1, released circa 2001, when the PDA operating system gained the Notepad application that can store sketches and handwriting, but can't translate handwriting to editable text.

[edit] Heinlein quote

User:Night Gyr questioned,

' Robert A. Heinlein called the book "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read"[citation needed]'

That quote is on the cover of my copy. —wwoods 23:40, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

It's on the front cover of my copy as well, which I believe to be the original hardcover edition, and also has an extended version of the quote on the inside liner notes. Can the cover of the book itself be used as an indirect citation? I'd be more than happy to provide a cover scan, which I think would be nice to add to the article anyway. - Pacula 13:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Hopefully done correctly, I've uploaded a scan of the original edition's cover, made a note that this is the source of the quote, and removed the 'citation needed' tags. - Pacula 13:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1975 → 1974

Unless about 40-odd independent booksellers are wrong, the first edition of this novel was published in 1974, not 1975. I've edited the article to reflect this (including its categorization). Antepenultimate 04:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No "Spoilers End Here" Tag

I'm not entirely sure where to insert it, but maybe someone with more familiarity with the book can?

[edit] Edition differences?

Are there differences between the US and UK editions? For example in the museum section the article says that the keeper was introduced in the book- (s)he certainly wasn't in the UK version, except insofar as (s)he didn't want a battle to wreck the museum. The article also refers to two mediators being killed in the firefight- I don't think that's right, Whitbread's mediator was excuted later but the others survived.

Also there's something about Charlie asking for asylum- not in the UK edition there isn't, where one of the mediators summons a (human) guard to determine the correct word to represent a military blockade. --MarkMLl (talk) 23:25, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:The Mote In God's Eye - original hardcover edition.jpg

Image:The Mote In God's Eye - original hardcover edition.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 16:04, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought that there -had- been a fair-use-rationale posted wit this. Even setting aside the issue about low res scans should be fair or not, there is another issue here - the front covour is the only source for the quite from Heinlein.... - Pacula (talk) 07:04, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Blaine's Mediator

Infected by Blaine's optimism? I'll have to check, but I thought Blaine's mediator went insane because he couldn't comprehend the human chain-of-command. Schoop (talk) 16:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)