The Mote in God's Eye and it's sequel The Gripping Hand (also known as The Mote Around Murcheson's Eye) tells the story of the first contact between Humans and the aliens known as "Moties", from the Coal Sack Nebula.

The novels were co-written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, and are set in Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium universe.

Artwork for Proposed Mote In God's Eye Movie

This is a a pre-production illustration by Andrew Probert for a film proposal of 'The Mote in God's Eye'... 30 years ago. He also submitted design proposals for the Battle-cruiser: McArthur, a shuttle, and the Moties.

Check out his site, Probert Designs. He has a large and growing collection of his designs for many of the movies and television shows he has worked on.


The Coal Sack as seen from New Caledonia, featuring the bright red supergiant Murcheson's Eye. You can barely make out "the Mote," the Eye's binary companion.
"Since you have images of that Leif Ericson version of the MacArthur on your site, I thought I'd also send you the version I was developing for the film, with it's central hydrogen ram-scoop and over-under main drive engines." -Andrew Probert


Motie Ship


This illustration by John Ottinger depicts a Motie Ship from the Mote in God's Eye. The picture is actualy an acrylic painting 11" X 48" in size.


MacArthur
MacArthur near Jupiter

Paul Lloyd illustrated the images on the left.

Paul writes: "In their essay "Building the Mote in God's Eye", Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle reveal that the INSS MacArthur was based on "a commercial model called "The Explorer Ship Leif Ericson".

So I searched around on the Internet and found this site:

http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~frank/le.html


...which I used as reference for the MacArthur model in the attached JPEGs.

(According to the site, the Leif Ericson - and therefor the MacArthur - was designed by Matt Jefferies... who also designed the original USS Enterprise!)

Anyway, that's Europa in the first JPEG, standing in for the Navy refuelling station on Brigit (texture map by Bjorn Jonsson). The third JPEG is supposed to be the Mac approching the Motie lightsail.

Hope you like them.
MacArthur approaching Motie Light Sail