I have no idea why this should be a no-no. True, if you're going to replace talking fluffy bunnies with fluffy cute kittens it's likely your story won't have the edge it needs. But what about if those cats are pony-sized lion-cats with arms and hands as well as four legs? What if they have language, culture, religion, their own technology? Ŵhat if they're a fully-rounded, intelligent, alien species that just happens to have evolved from a big cat species rather than an ape one? I think that's a wholly different story.
This is what I am doing with Genehunter. The point of creating the alien Ur-Vai was to give me a chance to comment on humans and their beliefs and culture. For example, do we ever wonder about the feat of balance we perform every day just walking down the street? From the viewpoint of a four-legged cat, bipedal locomotion should be hard. After all, humans have no tails to help them balance.
My talking cats are real people. Their pelt and mane colours differ, as do the shades of their eyes. They're individuals, Yull, my viewpoint cat, has eyes of different colours. The Ur-Vai show the complexity and diversity of form that evolution would produce. And they have different political and personal opinions, as any highly-intelligent race would. There are cats friendly to my human characters, cats hostile to them, and there are traitors to their own people.
So I'll leave that jaded and cynical editor's advice about no talking cats behind me. Every trope can be done successfully if we find a fresh angle on it, tell a great story, and give our talking cats real problems and challenges.
Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives. Find out more about her at www.wendymetcalfe.com
No comments:
Post a Comment