The Legacy of Heorot
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''The Legacy of Heorot'' is a
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
novel by American writers
Larry Niven Laurence van Cott Niven (; born April 30, 1938) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known works are ''Ringworld'' (1970), which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards, and, with Jerry Pournelle, ''The Mote in God's Eye'' ...
,
Jerry Pournelle Jerry Eugene Pournelle (; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s ...
, and Steven Barnes, first published in 1987. Reproduction and fertility expert Dr Jack Cohen acted as a consultant on the book, designing the novel life cycle of the alien antagonists, the grendels. This is the first book in the
Heorot Heorot (Old English 'hart, stag') is a mead-hall and major point of focus in the Anglo-Saxon poem ''Beowulf''. The hall serves as a seat of rule for King Hrothgar, a legendary Danish king. After the monster Grendel slaughters the inhabitants of t ...
series. It concerns the establishment of the first human colony on Avalon, the fourth planet of
Tau Ceti Tau Ceti, Latinized from τ Ceti, is a single star in the constellation Cetus that is spectrally similar to the Sun, although it has only about 78% of the Sun's mass. At a distance of just under from the Solar System, it is a relativ ...
.


Plot summary

Two hundred colonists arrive on Avalon, having made the 100-year journey from
Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
in
suspended animation Suspended animation is the temporary (short- or long-term) slowing or stopping of biological function so that physiological capabilities are preserved. It may be either hypometabolic or ametabolic in nature. It may be induced by either endogen ...
on the starship ''Geographic''. The colonists, selected for their outstanding physical and mental acuity, make a terrible discovery: the suspended animation has damaged their intellect and reasoning skills. Some are only mildly afflicted, while others have serious
intellectual disabilities Intellectual disability (ID), also known as general learning disability in the United Kingdom and formerly mental retardation,Rosa's Law, Pub. L. 111-256124 Stat. 2643(2010). is a generalized neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by signific ...
; eight cannot be reanimated at all. The colonists build a settlement on an isolated island, and begin growing crops and stocking the nearby waters with
terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
species to complement the ''samlon'', a local aquatic species. The colonists become overconfident in their security, to the frustration of expedition security officer (and former soldier) Cadmann Weyland. When unsettling events begin to happen – missing animals, fences torn down – the colonists' impaired minds prevent them from properly analyzing the situation. Weyland is suspected of sabotage to further his agenda of building up defenses. He is drugged and restrained, when a monster attacks the settlement, killing ten colonists. Resenting his treatment, Weyland retreats from the colony to an isolated homestead on a mountain near the colony. Mary Ann, a colonist with a romantic interest in Weyland, convinces him to allow her to stay with him, and conceives his child. Ultimately, Weyland agrees to assist the colony in its defenses. The colonists are confounded by the ecology of the island, as there does not seem to be a sufficient food source for the creatures to inhabit it. An autopsy reveals that grendels (as the creatures are now known, in reference to ''
Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
'') are
crocodilia Crocodilia (or Crocodylia, both ) is an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles, known as crocodilians. They first appeared 95 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period ( Cenomanian stage) and are the closest living ...
n in appearance and behavior, with powerful jaws and claws, and a sense of smell better than a
dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...
's. Its brain shows it is at least as intelligent as a
gorilla Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...
. It possesses a snorkel enabling it to lurk under several feet of water. Its
cardiovascular The blood circulatory system is a system of organs that includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood which is circulated throughout the entire body of a human or other vertebrate. It includes the cardiovascular system, or vascular system, tha ...
system and
musculature Skeletal muscles (commonly referred to as muscles) are organs of the vertebrate muscular system and typically are attached by tendons to bones of a skeleton. The muscle cells of skeletal muscles are much longer than in the other types of muscle ...
give it strength and stamina far beyond that of humans. A grendel can release a super-oxygenated blood supplement into its blood that does to it what
nitrous oxide Nitrous oxide (dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide), commonly known as laughing gas, nitrous, or nos, is a chemical compound, an oxide of nitrogen with the formula . At room temperature, it is a colourless non-flammable gas, and has a ...
does to
internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combus ...
s – enable short bursts of speed in excess of 100 miles per hour. This trait makes the grendels devastating, but is also the key to their destruction. Using the supercharger causes the grendels to heat up so rapidly that they die if they do not immediately return to water to cool off. With this knowledge and their technology and tactics, the colonists are able to wipe out the grendel population of the island within several months, making Weyland a hero to the people who previously turned on him. Some months later, the colony's scientists come to a disturbing realization: the grendels and the aquatic samlon are the same species. Their
life cycle Life cycle, life-cycle, or lifecycle may refer to: Science and academia *Biological life cycle, the sequence of life stages that an organism undergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the production of the offspring * Life-cycle hypothesis ...
is similar to that of terrestrial
frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...
s – the
herbivorous A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpart ...
samlon are in fact the juvenile form of the
carnivorous A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...
grendels. The juvenile samlon are male, and become female when they mature. Interaction is unnecessary, as the grendels continually lay unfertilized eggs in the water for the samlon to fertilize. Like some species of frogs, the grendels are
cannibalistic Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...
– if no other prey is present, they will eat their own young. On the colony's island, all other prey sources were previously exhausted, and the grendels have turned to cannibalism as the rule rather than the exception. The colonists have exterminated the adult grendels. But as there is now no check at all on the samlon population, they all become grendels, meaning that instead of a few dozen grendels, there are now thousands. Weyland again asserts control. The colony's pregnant women, children and essential specialists are evacuated to the ''Geographic''. The grendels cannot hunt far from water, so most others are evacuated to Weyland's mountain camp. Combat is joined. At first, the colonists' technology and tactics serve them well. Weyland observes the grendels' behavior and discovers that packs of grendels can be sent into a
shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimo ...
-like
feeding frenzy In ecology, a feeding frenzy occurs when predators are overwhelmed by the amount of prey available. The term is also used as an idiom in the English language. Examples in nature For example, a large school of fish can cause nearby sharks, such a ...
by spraying them with blood taken from dead grendels, especially if it is laced with the "supercharger" chemical. Tracer bullets are used to ignite the supercharger gland in their bodies. But as the grendels' numbers fall, their individual strength rises, as every dead grendel is food for the rest. Eventually, all that remain are the strongest and fastest fully grown grendels, and the colonists make a planned retreat to Weyland's mountain retreat. As the horde approaches, the colonists spray them with more superchargers, sending them into a frenzy once more. When they begin climbing the bluff, Weyland sets off a deadfall trap, killing even more. The grendels, though not as smart as humans, are smart enough to learn, given time and much experience. Their behavior changes as they realize the remaining colonists are not worth dying to reach when there are other grendels to kill. The colony is saved. One year later, the grendels are being driven to extinction. Now that the grendel life cycle is known, the colonists continue the hunts, but this time the samlon are targeted as well. The new tactics, supercharger spraying and recorded grendel challenges, make them almost a routine chore. The terrestrial fish are gone, and will not be reintroduced, forcing the grendels to help drive their own species to extinction through cannibalism. Now rebuilding can begin. The battle against the grendels has left the colony with a surplus of women, and a new social organization based on polygamous marriage is taking shape. The mainland is being explored, and the colonists have high hopes. The colonists hope the story of their battle will inspire Earth's population to restart its nascent colonization program.


Reception

''
Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' panned the novel as "exciting for about half, thereafter increasingly gory and tedious", with "absurdly pretentious quotes and allusions" and "too much brawn, not enough brain." However, the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' wrote that the novel "undertakes that presumptuous exercise eworking the Beowulf legend in science fictionnot only without disappointment but with substantial success."
Dave Langford David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'', and holds the all-time record for mos ...
reviewed ''The Legacy of Heorot'' for ''
White Dwarf A white dwarf is a stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very dense: its mass is comparable to the Sun's, while its volume is comparable to the Earth's. A white dwarf's faint luminosity comes fro ...
'' #91, and stated that "Despite the resulting thrill of tens of thousands of superpowered flesh-hungry newts interminably assaulting Mr Macho's survivalist stronghold, I was tormented by the nagging thought that this would have read better at one-third the length. So it goes." J. Michael Caparula reviewed ''The Legacy of Heorot'' in '' Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer'' No. 85. Caparula commented that "this a life-or-death struggle for both species, and it is this double tension that makes the book stand out. Recommended."


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Legacy Of Heorot, The 1987 American novels Collaborative novels Novels by Jerry Pournelle Novels by Larry Niven 1987 science fiction novels Simon & Schuster books Science fiction horror novels Fiction set around Tau Ceti