Re: Grendels was: FT-Fighters and SG-aliens

>Absender: beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au
>  >It's by Jerry Pournelle (and a co-author, IIRC).  I'd
>  >give you the ISBN but my copy is in a box in transit
>  >to Texas.
> 
> That's OK give this lot half an hour and I'll not only have the 
> author,  ISBN and publisher details but 7 posts of spoilers and a 
> whole thread arguing its worth ;)
> 
> In other words can some nice body give me the details John can't 
> furnish please ;)
> 
> Beth

OK, here comes :

The Legacy of Heorot
by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes
Pocket Books; ISBN: 0671695320

- And a second volume:

Beowulf's Children (The Dragons of Heorot)
by Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes, Larry Niven
Tor Books; ISBN: 0812524969

- This was published under those two different titles at different 
times. Bought it twice, thinking it was a different, third book in the 
series :-(

Spoilers follow below ;-)

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The story and biology in short:
In the first book, a Terran expedition travels in a sublight colony 
ship to a recently discovered earth-like planet. They first settle on a 
island off a large continent. The island was chosen because it looked 
harmless and offered protection from any threats from the unexplored 
mainland. 

Unfortunately, the rivers of the island are home to the 'Grendels', a 
large and dangerous amphibian species.

The ecology of the Grendels is peculiar. They are the only animals 
living in the river and the areas nearby. Their very numerous larvae
fill 
the role of small fish, growing through various stages filling the large

fish niches, up to the large adult grendels, which are comparable to 
crocodiles. 

The adult Grendels are vaguely frog-shaped. They are fairly intelligent 
(somewhere between ape and human) and of an extremely fierce 
disposition. They will eat Grendel larvae (indeed, that's their main
food) and are 
solitary outside of the mating season. They have no technology.

They have a gland that produces a kind of super-adrenaline. For a short 
period, this makes a Grendel extremely strong, impervious to pain and 
allows them to move very fast - indeed, too fast for dogs or even rifle 
armed humans to react to their actions.

The humans finally overcome the threat, but not without making some 
serious errors on the way that result from their not understanding the 
ecology of the Grendels.

Overall, liked the book. The colony ship, the way the colony is 
established, the characters, and the tensions between the various groups
in the 
colony are well worked out. The Grendel ecology is interesting (and 
backed up in the appendix by quoting some real-life examples). However,
I 
don't really buy the super-adrenaline of the Grendels in the context of
a 
Hard-SF book. It is just too powerful and smacks too much of a literary 
device to make no-tech aliens a 'believable' threat to high-tech 
humans.

The second book is set a number of years later. It deals with the first 
steps onto the mainland, where more peculiar biology is found 
(meat-eating swarms of wasps, ultra-large herbivores). Thought it OK,
but not a 
must-read.

Greetings
Karl Heinz