Legacy was published by Tor Books in 1995, and it returns to the universe of Eon and Eternity from a completely different angle. Rather than the epic geopolitical scope of the earlier novels, Legacy is an intimate story set within one of the Way’s “gates” — portals to pocket universes that the Thistledown civilization has seeded with human colonies.
Olmy Ap Sennon, a young woman (not the Olmy of the earlier novels), enters the gate to Lamarckia — a world where evolution operates on Lamarckian rather than Darwinian principles. Organisms on Lamarckia pass acquired characteristics to their offspring, and the planet’s biosphere is organized into vast, interconnected “ecoi” — super-organisms that cover continents and engage in slow, titanic struggles for territory. The human colonists have adapted to this world by developing symbiotic relationships with the native organisms, and their society reflects the biological principles of their environment.
The novel is Bear at his most ecologically inventive. The description of Lamarckia’s biology — organisms that grow cities, that absorb and reconfigure other life forms, that communicate through chemical signals across vast distances — is detailed, plausible, and genuinely alien. The human story, of a woman caught between conflicting factions in the colony, is simpler than the biology that surrounds it, but it provides the emotional center that the ecological speculation requires.
Collecting Legacy
First edition (Tor Books, New York, 1995): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Paperback editions: $5–$10