He needs to report on a trade convocation, but his paper's been barred from the proceedings. Cue the attack of the miniature unicorn. The President is hosting this convocation, and she keeps unicorns as pets. She never seems to notice how many of them are wandering around the palace, so it's an easy matter for my reporter to get his special friend smuggled in. Where he will listen to all the conversations and stream them telepathically to my barred reporter. Problem solved.
Another trope I've recycled in Genehunter is the lion-predator. My alien Yull is certainly big, powerful, and predatory, but that's not all he is. His people live in prides like lions, although there are many males in a tribe. And they elect their leader in a democratic process, not by fighting. They have written and oral language, and a fair degree of tech too. And they have two arms and hands in addition to their four legs. Yull is a complex, intelligent being, with his own problems and challenges.
And I think that's the key to successfully recycling old tropes. We usually think of unicorns as fantasy creatures, but my story is firmly SF. We're on a different world, and the unicorns are natives there. With Yull, I've retained the lion's pack-hunting way of life on the savannah. I researched lion hunts, and found that they too have their favourite positions. They have their flankers and the individual who goes in to make the kill. That was something I could easily adapt for the Ur-Vai.
So although unicorns and talking lions might be old ideas, there are still new ways of using them within a story. And now I just hope that Villjo survives his fight with the upstart Ur-Vai Ahri.
Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives. Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com
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