The Legacy of Heorot, by Niven, Pournelle & Barnes

[Omphalos]

I can clearly remember that at one particular point in my life when I decided that I loved SF and that I would do my damndest to read as much of it as possible. It was the day that I finished, for the first of many times, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s colonization and biological SF blockbuster, The Legacy of Heorot. I was in my early teens, and had read plenty of SF stories and books before I picked it up, but I have to say that it was this book that got me hooked on SF for good. I loved this thing seven ways to Sunday for years and years. Now I’ve read it over a dozen times already and suffice it to say, the gloss has worn off. But I could still see myself reading it again, and I probably will.

The back-story is pretty scarce in this book, and what historical context we are given is underwhelming, to say the least. Specifically, it’s a colonization novel, but we are given very little information about why the colony was sent out in the first place. People on Earth were fat, rich, happy and lazy. No big problem...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..