From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: THE GRIPPING HAND by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Date: 6 Jan 93 17:34:12 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.misc
Organization: <none>


            THE GRIPPING HAND by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
                     A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		      Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This is billed as the "long awaited sequel to THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE."
Some things aren't worth the wait.

     This book has, so far as I can tell, nothing to recommend it *except*
that it is the sequel to a popular novel.  The plot is contrived, the
solution pat, and the characters flat.  This is also the most sexist (and
heterosexist) book I have read in a long time.  A thousand years in the
future all the secretaries and receptionists are women (who wear skirts -- we
know this because the clothing and appearance of every woman is described
for the reader, while the men could be globs wrapped in circus tents for all
we are told about them).

     The Navy does seem to have one woman officer, but everyone uses the
phrase "Navy men" to refer to any Navy unit.  (They also refer to someone as
a "career woman," a phrase that one doesn't hear even now, and seems
unlikely to return.) The woman officer, by the way, is shunted aside when
the action begins, while the eighteen-year-old heiress is allowed to tag
along on what is at least a quasi-military expedition.  She does this by by
batting her eyes and stamping her feet, and then has a long discussion with
the only other female character of note about whether she should have sex
with her boyfriend, providing Niven and Pournelle an opportunity to insert
Heinleinesque speeches about sex and morality.

     All the women in the book are someone's "love interest" and everyone is
of course heterosexual, and everyone assumes everyone else is as well.
People will still use condoms (although there are also pills--but I guess
all those implants are just a passing fad).  Everyone drinks coffee and many
smoke tobacco.  You'd think in a thousand years something new would be
discovered--neither of those were enormously popular a thousand years ago.
In fact, think about how different society was a thousand years ago, and how
different it would be in another thousand.  Niven and Pournelle seem to
think it would be like the 1950s with spaceships.  Except for the politics,
which are from the 1980s--the Arab Liberation Organization (ALO) and bomb-
throwings on New Ireland.  Arabs still hate Jews (apparently), and as much
as I am a pessimist about the Middle East, even this seems unlikely without
Israel to fight over in 3080 or whenever.  Several authors and philosophers
are quoted, but none are from after 1992.  (Try not quoting anything written
in the last thousand years for a while and you'll see how unlikely this is.)
There's also the "Crazy Eddie" references, which to West Coasters may be
okay, but here in the New York area, all they conjure up are images of the
stereo dealer named that who was a staple on television for years.  I don't
know if this is intentional, but it's annoying as hell.

     In case you haven't figured it out, I do *not* recommend this book.  In
"Niven's Laws" he says, "It is a sin to waste the reader's time."  This book
constitutes a major sin.

%T      THE GRIPPING HAND
%A      Larry Niven
%A      Jerry Pournelle
%C      New York
%D      January 1993
%I      Pocket Books
%O      hardback, US$22
%G      ISBN 0-671-79593-2
%P      401pp
%S      Mote in God's Eye
%V      2

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   ecl@mtgzy.att.com