In the female-dominated culture of Children of Time, a male spider can be killed and devoured without impunity or deliberation. The male spiders’ struggle for survival and gender equality was captured beautifully in this thought-provoking space opera. Clarke Award-winning novel Children of Time (2017) charted the rise of a space-faring ant-and-spider civilization, and imagined a non-anthropocene world order aided by human- and AI-engineered genetic code. Dogs of War could be read as a long legal argument in favor of his non-human subjects-bioforms, insects, animals. The author’s one-line bio on the book’s jacket doesn’t give much information about his legal background that seem relevant to the themes and characters of the novel, but according to Wikipedia, Tchaikovsky studied zoology and psychology, and now works as a legal executive in England. The novel is as much about the legal imperative to define and create laws that would ultimately govern artificial intelligences and lifeforms as it is the ethics of creating them in the first place.
162)Ĭourtroom drama plays a critical role in Dogs of War. And the courts that were made to punish genocide are going to be making it happen. From concentration camps to gas chambers. Looking into that brutal, bestial face, his heart sank, because how could this thing ever be seen as anything other than a threat? They’re going to exterminate them, Aslan knew then. I work for the International Criminal Court.” After all, nobody would have thought it was very important. Some clerk had mixed up the records, Aslan guessed. Murray only had the one Multiform pack, and the names of the rest checked out. “My squad was Honey, Dragon and Bees, but I was leader.”īack to the notes. “I was leader.” It spoke carefully, stressing the words strangely. Now the International Court of Justice has to decide whether Rex is a dangerous weapon to be decommissioned, or a living being with the right to life and liberty. When the world uncovers the heinous details of the genocide, Murray is tried as a war criminal. Indeed, Rex and his multiform assault unit-Dragon, Honey and Bees-have been at the forefront of a dirty war in Campeche, south-eastern Mexico he has indiscriminately killed men, women and children because Murray said that they were “enemies.” Rex couldn’t decide for himself, or sever his feedback implants and override encoded hierarchies. Rex is an armed and bulletproof bioform engineered to be a good dog, and follow Master’s commands. The days of Doctor Moreau’s pure research are long past, and a new scientist, Murray, has found a commercial use for the advances in vivisection and bioengineering. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Dogs of War is an action-packed science fiction novel featuring genetically engineered creatures bred for war.
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