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Summary: The Ultimate Earth Invasion Book
Review: This book probably spawned the idea for Independence Day. Aliens resembling elephants and with interesting rules of fair play, invade the Earth. All countries on the Earth must work together if they are to stand a chance. Intriguing reading.
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Summary: believable aliens
Review: i thought this book did a good job of presenting non-friendly but also multi-dimensional aliens. the book struck me as similar to the "uplift" series by david brin. the basic plot is where humans encounter aliens that are further advanced, but have acquired their technology through means other than self discovery --- therefore, even though humans are less advanced they manage to triumph because of their ingenuity. it's a good line, and it works for me ... i think this line of reasoning pulls us out of being proud to be some ethnicity, beyond being proud of our country, to being proud to be homo sapiens for all that we've managed to accomplish, all on our own.
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Summary: Great...but dated material
Review: I read this a few months ago, and needless to say, it still is a wonderful sceince fiction novel. The alien culture is absolutely incredible. They're quite believeable, and very vividly created. I could almost picture them. I found it funny that the remnants of humanity chose to look to hard science fiction writers for help in dealing with the aliens. But it seems a very plausible situation if it should ever arise. The whole story behind the alien invasion though is the Cold War. It's very prevalent, and quite interesting to point out all the similarities between what the US and Russians view the aliens...as their rival superpowers. Very interesting to see how a nuclear war could've ravaged the planet. Though it's dated, it's still a good read.
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Summary: The Cold War meets War of the Worlds
Review: Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series was an alternate-history alien invasion: what if aliens invaded the Earth during the middle of WWII? Looking at Niven and Pournelle's Footfall from the year 2002, we can view it as another alternate history. What if the Communist Bloc didn't collapse at the end of the 80's, the Cold War continued for another decade or so, and then the aliens invaded?Okay, so alien invasions are old hat. Niven and Pournelle knew this, and acknowledged it in the dedications. Now that that's out of the way, what we really have is a story about the Cold War and how people viewed the threat of rival superpowers and nuclear destruction during the Eighties. Pournelle's years of research into military technology and Soviet ideology show through everywhere in the book. The Russians as "aliens" are just as fascinating and well thought out as the invaders from Alpha Centauri. The aliens invade Earth with almost the same technology that we have, but with one major advantage: control of space. As many Cold War military theorists argued, once you dominate space, the planet is at your mercy. And the invading aliens pull no punches with this. The devastation visited on the United States (and incidentally the rest of the world, although not much is shown of this) is similar to what would be suffered in a nuclear war. And the characters in the book react similarly to how people in the 80's expected to react to nuclear war. You have your survivalists in their bunker, your National Guard doing their best to defend the nation, your opportunists looking to make their fortunes from other people's misery, and your government nearly overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. And of course your ordinary people just trying to live their lives amidst the devastation. Having mentioned Turtledove's Worldwar series at the beginning of this review, I'd like to say that the aliens' strategy and use of weapons are much more realistic in this book than what Turtledove portrayed in his series. If you want to neutralize a planet-bound opponent and take over their world, meteors will do the job a lot better than nukes. For a near-future novel written almost two decades ago, this holds up surprisingly well, especially as a retrospective look at Cold War attitudes.
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Summary: Baby elephants?!!?
Review: Someone asked me on the Metro the other day what I was reading and what the story was about. I replied "Imagine Independence Day on steroids". This a fun book!! I've read a couple of reviews that indicated the readers thought the begining is too slow. Maybe so, what with all of the characters and different plot lines that only come together as the book progresses, but it is well worth getting past the first couple of chapters. This is a very imaginitive book, having lots of background on the aliens and explaining their strengths and weaknesses. The book reminds me of several of Tom Clancy's novels, especially Red Storm Rising. My only complaints with the book are 1) its too short (although I have no complaint with the ending) and 2) like the Clancy novels, too many of the characters are somehow related to one another or know one another when it really isn't that small of a world! This is a book that is well worth the purchase price.
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Summary: Worth the read
Review: What if when aliens finally visit they are not peaceful and seek only knowledge, this is what is dealt with in this story. How would we react in a first contact situation? This is a good, but sometimes silly read.
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Summary: Once you get past the way-slow beginning....
Review: ...then you're off and running. Laugh at the premise of the aliens if you wish. The fact is, Niven and Pournelle make them *quite* believable, even enjoyable with their vast descriptions of the newcomers' background. Indeed, if you're a fan of Niven's "Known Space" universe, the aliens in Footfall seem to share a history not unlike the Kzinti -- namely, they didn't create [most of] their own technology. Lar and Jer also make use of real-life tech now available to us if we so desired to take advantage of it! The ending will not let you put the book down until you're finished w/the last page.
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Summary: Too long, too slow, too dull!
Review: Sorry, after 250 pages, I finally gave up and skimmed the rest of this book. (The ending was actually very good!) I found the alien dialogues hard to understand, and with SO MANY human characters, none of which you ever get to really know or understand or care about, (Explaining why there's a character list at the front of the book!), I just couldn't get into this book at all! And I really wanted to! Hey, I gave it 250 pages! The pacing is unbearably slow. I've heard about "Lucifer's Hammer" for years, but now, I am really not sure that I'll read it if it's anything at all like this book!
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Summary: Worthy of the title Classic!
Review: This is a stupendous novel. I decided to read this novel after finishing "A Mote in Gods Eye". Mote was my first experience reading Niven and Pournelle as a team and I was suitably impressed. This book was even better in my most humble opinion. Footfall tells the tale of an alien incursion to Earth in a manner which Hollywood and most authors today never could. There is no pretense, no presuppositions of actions and conduct. The aliens are alien and not just funny almost humans as so often happens in Science Fiction today. The motivations for the aliens are superbly drawn yet completely foreign. The society is bizarre but believable. Wonderful indeed. The invasion is not a rehash of the same tired story told in Independence Day and many other such tales. Why should aliens come to this planet with the same motivations we would approach other planets? Why should aliens be interested in our culture and society in the same way in which we would be interested in theirs? Niven and Pournelle do an excellent job in portraying a realistic scenario that is spellbinding in its breadth and stupendous in its readability. I can't tell more without giving away too much of the tale but rest assured this is a novel worthy of the title classic. Excellent and worth every one of its five stars.
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Summary: This book is laughably silly
Review: Ok. Elephant-like aliens come to conquer earth, using paragliders. Riiiiiight. This is one of the worst Niven-Pournelle books. There are no mind-stretching ideas here as in "The Mote in God's Eye" or "Inferno". The aliens are laughable. N&P politics are again a major issue - this time, pro-nuclear-testing-in-space is the theme of the day. As usual most of the characters are modeled after N&P's real-life friends, but they don't sem to have gained any new friends since they wrote "Lucifer's Hammer", so prepare yourself for the same characters with new names. For me, this is the book that turned me off Niven. I'd advise you to read his previous books - but keep away from anything written after this one.
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