What ship is that on the cover?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0671741926.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

It doesn't look like the _MacArthur_ or the _Lenin_, and looks a bit large
to be a message courier. In fact, I can't imagine a design like that being
used anywhere in that universe.

What are the wing-like extensions for? If the ship spins, as they did in the
novel, wouldn't the gravity be excessive in the wing tips and|or piss-poor
in the central part?

5 responses total.

What makes you think cover artists read the stories they are painting for?

I remember reading someone talking about writing a magazine story from the
cover.  At least the artwork matched. :)

I would have thought it would make sense to read enough of the book to get
an idea of what the ships look like. You don't have to read the whole thing
for that much. I wonder what Niven and Pournelle think of this.

Re the magazine story: Do you mean the same cover?

The editor said something like, "Here's the picture that's going to be on
the cover.  Write a story for it."  I *think* the editor was John Campbell,
but I don't remember the author.

Stories written to fit previously-painted magazine cover art were a 
science-fiction commonplace in the 1930s-50s.  One story that I remember 
offhand fell into that category is "Founding Father" by Isaac Asimov.

Hmmm, I like the way the interlacing spirals of stars in that painting
form the image of an eye.  But, if you read the book, that isn't at all
the way "The Mote in God's Eye" looks, and that particular formation of
stars seems astronomically improbable to boot.

Note that the ship in the paint appears to be boosting *away* from the
Mote (or braking as it approaches the Mote?).  But it doesn't look much
like the solar-sail powered Motie ship either.

What the heck, the cover contains at least some accurate information -
it suggests that the book is classic "hard science fiction" with space
ships exploring distant stars (a fact that the title does not exactly
make obvious).  It hints that "the mote" is a star formation that looks
eye-like.  That much of an accurate representation of the contents of
the book is more than I usually expect.  And it is a reasonably cool
looking cover.

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