A sub-genre in SciFi is about the first contact: the first time mankind meet an intelligent alien life form. Creativity blossoms in this sub-genre: what do they look like, how to they govern, how does mankind measure up, how can both sides communicate, etc. The most important question is, “Are they friends or foes?” This is also the genre Larry Niven is nearly the king of, evidence by his Ring World series.
The Moties, the intelligent life form who live on a planet of the Mote Prime star, are different in pretty much every aspects from Human. After the capturing a probe from Mote, human sent a ship to investigate. There are two critical pieces of technology to enable this trip: an instant drive that allow a ship to jump from one point of the universe to the other instantaneously, and a protective shield that protect the ship from galactic elements or attacks. Those are also the key technologies for human to colonize many star systems and formed an empire of huge proportion. The initial exploration showed that Moties lack either technologies, but were much superior in several other areas. Both sides faced the same questions: Can we trust them? Would they destroy us? How to learn from them without revealing much of us?
The brilliancy of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is in the gradual revelation of how human Moties are. When drilled down to the core, the survival of the race is paramount, followed by the survival of the empire, planet, country, ship, and the individual. But the thriving sequence can be just the opposite (the thriving of the individual is more important than, say, the empire.)
The story line took very creative turns and eventually we understood ourselves better. I couldn’t help thinking of Rendezvous with Rama that came out two years earlier in 1972. Arthur C. Clarke’s brilliancy was that we would never met Rama.
The point of SciFi is to make the reader reflect on now and here. More than 40 years later, Niven’s work still does.