Part 3

[Sam]

Discussion thread for part 3

[Sam]

I finished this part the other day, and I quite liked it

Learning more about the Moties was great. I can understand why it might be bad to let them leave their system.

It mentioned that at one point, the Moties had developed a treatment that would keep them from having to constantly reproduce to stay alive. I thought it was interesting that this turned out to be a weakness, since the other factions were able to attack them with greater numbers. It still seems odd to me that such an ancient species hasn't solved the problem. I guess overpopulation always catches up with them first.

I was shocked at the end of the chapter when the midshipmen were all killed. They were some of the more well developed characters in the book, and now they're dead.

I really enjoyed the museum. The ever deepening layers of civilization was a really neat concept.

[Jason]

I didn't enjoy this section as much as the others, in large part due to the action on the planet with the midshipmen which I really did not find too interesting. I'm still not entirely clear on why the Moties are such a threat. Okay, so they must reproduce, and it's easy to get out of control. Could they really reproduce so rapidly that they would overrun every world they inhabit and fully drain its resources? More importantly would evolution produce such a species in the first place (assuming the laws of evolution apply to other forms of life beyond Earth)?

The museum was a neat idea. For a moment I thought they were going to find human artifacts and buildings inside of it. That would have been a twist - that the Moties had orchestrated this from the get go.

The loss of MacArthur was definitely intense. What really bothers me is the reference to the miniatures lacking intelligence. They managed to refit the entire ship, they were able to find weapons (and recognize them as such) and then use them against humans. How anyone on the crew can still think they are not intelligent is beyond me. They are clearly a huge threat and I think they were placed on purpose to sabotage the ship. I have no doubt the Moties will soon develop the Langston Field as a result. I also wonder if Bury's frozen moties were the ones that escaped and caused all of this in the first place?

It should be interesting to see how the rest of humanity views all of this information when Lenin returns.

[Cory]

You didn't enjoy that part? That was the best part of the book far and away for me. I especially liked how the midshipmen were killed. Some nice gravitas/weight to a world that had been sorely lacking it.

[Jason]

Their death was interesting. I guess I didn't buy the whole scenario in which the Moties are suddenly evil but strangely three of them are helping out the midshipmen. It seemed to come out of the blue.