When I read Legacy, I was struck by the way it mirrored Greg Bear's previous novel Blood Music -- and by the way both of them, put together, mirrored the first two books of Gulliver's Travels.
Blood Music is about a man who realizes that his cells have become sentient. There is only one of him; there are billions of them; but democracy does not work because if he dies, so do all of his cells. So whose sentience is more important? --Then Legacy is about a man who arrives on a planet with a dozen sentient regional ecologies. Thousands of humans live within one ecology, but which sentience is more important? And if they come into conflict, which one will win?
It seemed to me that this was an extremely insightful retelling of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, and I couldn't wait to see what he might do with Laputa. I wrote him most of a letter of thanks & congratulations & analysis, though I don't believe I ever finished or sent it.
But my reaction was entirely cerebral. It didn't get into Olmy's head at all. The moment of rejuvenation, where one form of dysphoria ("I can't possibly be living in this hell") is replaced by another ("I'm back in my life now, but I seem to be a different age than I remember"), bears a lot of thought.
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When I read Legacy, I was struck by the way it mirrored Greg Bear's previous novel Blood Music -- and by the way both of them, put together, mirrored the first two books of Gulliver's Travels.
Blood Music is about a man who realizes that his cells have become sentient. There is only one of him; there are billions of them; but democracy does not work because if he dies, so do all of his cells. So whose sentience is more important? --Then Legacy is about a man who arrives on a planet with a dozen sentient regional ecologies. Thousands of humans live within one ecology, but which sentience is more important? And if they come into conflict, which one will win?
It seemed to me that this was an extremely insightful retelling of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, and I couldn't wait to see what he might do with Laputa. I wrote him most of a letter of thanks & congratulations & analysis, though I don't believe I ever finished or sent it.
But my reaction was entirely cerebral. It didn't get into Olmy's head at all. The moment of rejuvenation, where one form of dysphoria ("I can't possibly be living in this hell") is replaced by another ("I'm back in my life now, but I seem to be a different age than I remember"), bears a lot of thought.