5/13/2023 0 Comments Jo walton's tooth and clawIf social rank in Victorian society sometimes was a metaphorical case of "eat or be eaten," Walton's version takes this notion quite literally. The biology in question is that of dragons. This novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like if they were, if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology." Indeed, Walton maintains she wanted to write a comedy of manners in the style of Anthony Trollope that would correct what she terms "core axioms" of the genre that are wrongheaded. While not science fiction, Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw is about another alien perspective - the views of social class, manners, and propriety commonly depicted in Victorian novels - which contemporary readers could easily find a bit silly, if not wholly alien. More recently, advancements in biotechnology and cybernetics have allowed humans to become the aliens they once could only imagine, and fictional depictions of people who are bio-enhanced, genetically sculpted, or resurrected by cloning aren't all that far away from what's technically feasible. Their ears or appendages or super power provide the means of contemplating the human condition from an "alien" perspective. With certain notable exceptions (Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco, for example, which satirizes the whole notion of First Contact), that's fine because the aliens are frequently supposed to be representative of human beings anyway. The aliens in science fiction tend to be humans with pointy ears or extra appendages or some kind of super power.
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