Talk:The Mote in God's Eye

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

Contents 1 Award Nominations should also be mentioned in the Opening Line 2 Copyvio? 3 Edited by Heinlein 4 A noteworthy element 5 Heinlein quote 6 1975 → 1974 7 No "Spoilers End Here" Tag

[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?