Footfall

By Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

A new object appears in the night sky and it becomes apparent that it is no natural object and that it is headed to our planet. Humans are excited and fearful, especially as the object does not respond to human efforts to communicate.
Upon arriving, the object, a massive interstellar spaceship, attacks the space station, killing some of the astronauts and capturing several others, mostly Russians and one American congressman.
The aliens are large beings, looking somewhat like a baby elephant, except they have two trunks and their feet are clawed. They are herd animals and have strong herd instincts, even to going insane if separated from their herd for too long.
The alien home world is in trouble, and this ship has been sent out to establish a new home. They intend to conquer Earth, enslave humanity and incorporate them into their herd.
Their weaponry is better than anything humans have and they pretty much rule the sky, blasting anything that they deem offensive. They establish a beachhead in Kansas and force people to surrender to them. Once surrender is accepted, the aliens expect you to stay surrendered. They are shocked and very angry when surrendered humans launch attacks guerrilla attacks against occupying forces. The aliens respond harshly, destroying everyone they consider to be connected to the renegades.
Meanwhile, the captives from the space station and a few more taken from Earth are put to work on the spaceship doing menial chores, mainly cleaning ducts and working in the garden. They use this limited freedom to spy on the aliens and plot against them.
Back on Earth,  the Americans and Russians pool their remaining resources and launch several nuclear bombs on the alien foothold in Kansas. The surprise attack works and the alien base is destroyed. But in response, the aliens launch a large asteroid against the Earth, which smashes into the Indian Ocean and kills millions and throws Earth's climate into chaos.  They promise to send down more asteroids if humans do not stop fighting and surrender. So humans surrender. Or do they? Maybe humanity has one more act of defiance up its sleeve.

This was an OK story. It was very long and had way too many characters to keep track of. Plus I liked the aliens, I thought they were interesting and had a lot to offer. I would have liked a different ending, with the two sides coming together instead of one defeating the other.

 

The Mote in God's Eye

By Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Set in the far future, at a time when people have spread out into the galaxy, by virture of the invention of an almost instantaneous starship drive, the Alderson Drive. Another piece of priceless technology is the Langston Field, a kind of energy field used to protect ships and cities from attack.
Humankind had never found intelligent aliens before. So news of an alien ship required careful investigation. Sent out to meet the ship is the MacArthur, a battlecruiser. But the alien ship fires on the MacArthur and the alien ship is then captured, but no one is left alive on board.
So the MacArthur and another ship, the Lenin, are sent to the system where the alien ship originated. The MacArthur is to make contact and the Lenin is to insure that valuable human technology does not fall into alien hands, even to the point of destroying both the MacArthur and itself.
Upon reaching the asteroid belt around the home planet of the Moties, as they are being called, the MacArthur is approached by a Motie mining vessel, manned by a lone Motie Engineer and a bunch of small Moties, called Watchmakers. The Motie engineer consents to board the MacArthur and brings along two of the small Moties. These Watchmaker Moties are tinkerers and have a knack for improving the workings of machinery and tools. The humans mistakenly dismiss the small Moties as mere pets of the engineer and are not too concerned when they get loose on the MacArthur.
Meanwhile the ships move in closer to the Motie home planet and are greeted by a ship carrying a delegation of Moties assigned to communicate with and study the aliens (humans) entering their home territory.
At first, it seems like the Moties are gentle and welcoming and many of the human experts feel they are mostly harmless. But some have reservations, especially when a plague of Watchmaker Moties irrupts aboard the MacArthur.
What the humans don't know and the Moties don't want them to know, is that the Moties have a secret, a secret that could threaten the very survival of the human species.

This was a pretty good story, if rather long. It has a kind of sad ending, as the Moties secret results in the humans blockading the Motie system to keep the Moties penned up. Moties are very appealing aliens and it is too bad the authors couldn't think of a happier ending for them.

The Legacy of Heorot

By Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes

Beowulf came to Heorot Hall to fight Grendel, the monster plaguing the people there. He was a professional monster killer and he soon took care of the terrible Grendel.
Like Beowulf, Cadmann Weyland is also a professional, a security expert with a military background. He alone of the 200 people settling on an island of the planet Tau Ceti Four sees a need for caution and defensive measures. But most of the settlers believe they have landed in a near paradise with a benign climate and no predators beyond a pterodactyl-like flying animal. They sneer at Cadmann's warnings and precautions and claim he is creating problems to justify his position.
But after months of calm, Cadmann is proven correct when a monster makes its presence known and many settlers die before it can be overcome.
Once this fierce predator is revealed, the settlers proceed to hunt down and destroy them all. What they don't know is that they have disturbed their island's ecosystem and that, as far as monsters go, they ain't seen nothing yet...

This was an OK story, typical science fiction horror story. It's not a genre I usually read or enjoy. It's a lot like the movie Alien, brave humans struggling to outwit and survive a terrible and strange beast bent on killing them all.