In the year 3017, humanity is slowly recovering from an interstellar civil war that tore apart the first Empire of Man. An upstart religion, the "Church of Him", which was founded when the Mote became intensely bright and was regarded as part of the Face of God, is shown in decline, its founder having committed suicide when the light from the Mote went out. The people of the planet Dayan are Jewish, while Horace Bury is a Muslim business magnate from Levant. The Empire is predominantly Christian, but other religions are more or less tolerated. The aristocrats themselves tend more towards duty than privilege.
Those who prove themselves worthy can be promoted into the aristocracy. Many, but not all, humans are part of the Second Empire, held together by an interstellar navy modeled on 19th century British lines, with all-male crews, a highly competent officer corps grown from midshipmen recruited in their teens and trained on the job, and well-armed and -organized Marines to carry out ground missions. There is a reference to these events in Pournelle's novel King David's Spaceship. The Mote in God's Eye (originally titled Motelight) is set in Pournelle's CoDominium universe, where a union of the United States and the Soviet Union produced a world government and a number of colonies in other star systems, followed by nuclear war on Earth and the rise of the First Empire based on the planet Sparta several centuries before the events of the novel. The Mote in God's Eye was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards in 1975.
The title of the novel is a reference to the Biblical " The Mote and the Beam" parable and is the nickname of a star. The story is set in the distant future of Pournelle's CoDominium universe, and charts the first contact between humanity and an alien species. The Mote in God's Eye is a science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, first published in 1974.
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