Victoria BC science fiction book club discussion

Discussion for part 2: The Crazy Eddie Point

This part reminded me of Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's game. It had that same 'here's some weird aliens, why are they weird?'. I really enjoyed that in Speaker, and I really enjoyed it here.

I really enjoyed the parts from the perspective of the aliens. There doesn't seem to be much metal around. Have they mined all the metal in their system? There doesn't even seem to be any left to recycle. They have an interesting approach to technology: building the devices they need as they need them.

Nice to know the significance of Crazy Eddie.

I feel like we haven't seen the last of the little Moties. They seem pretty difficult to get rid of. The Moties sex changing is interesting. I don't think we've encountered any male intelligent Moties. I wonder what's up with that.

I liked this section better and I like the Moties a lot. I'm still struggling a bit with the writing though. My favourite parts are those from the Motie perspective.

It seems like their race is faced with some severe problem related to procreation. The engineering caste seem to breed regularly and probably have short lifespans. I'm not sure why this is a big secret that can't be shared. Some of the Moties wanted help from humans on this "cycles" issue.

If the ship has a Master on it, do you think there'd be some Warriors too? Are only the Mediators and the Masters considered intelligent? Or is that only the Engineers are dumb?