Science Fiction and Animals: from Jonathan Swift and HG Wells to Star Trek and Doctor Who; with Sherryl Vint, Robert McKay, and Tara Lomax
Description
Science Fiction and Animals
From Jonathan Swift’s talking horses to Star Trek’s Vulcans, from HG Wells to the Wachowskis, science fiction tackles the big questions about our relationship with other animals.
Join the experts who investigate where animal studies meets media theory. Discover the themes in famous books, film, and TV – as well as the cult sci-fi stories that examine food ethics, the boundaries of humanity, and alternative ways of living.
Discover what the experts really think of Planet of the Apes; what Soylent Green used to made from before they started using people; and hear everyone’s favourite Time Lord try to talk a monster out of eating humanity in our Doctor Who sketch.
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Play or download (18.5MB MP3) (via iTunes)
Guests
Dr Sherryl Vint
Sherryl Vint edited the Animal Studies Issue of the Journal of Science Fiction Studies and has written Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal.
She is a professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she reads science fiction and popular culture. She previously lectured at Brock University in her native Canada, which is a centre of animal studies theory.
She calls herself a “vegetarian with vegan tendencies”; those tendencies include eating vegan apart from honey, alcohol filtered in non-vegan ways, and similar exceptions.
Dr Robert McKay
Robert McKay lectures in English literature at the University of Sheffield, England, specialising in animal studies and literature after 1945.
He is part of the UK’s Animal Studies group, and contributed an essay to the collection Killing Animals. The Introduction and Conclusion by Erica Fudge are available to download via Academia.edu. He is vegan.
Tara Lomax
Tara Lomax is a PhD candidate in screen studies at the University of Melbourne, and a vegan activist. She is currently working on a conference paper on animal issues in Twleve Monkeys.
Tara is vegan and a campaigner.
Books, Films, and TV cited
Gulliver’s Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Jonathan Swift, 1726
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley, 1818
Sherryl Vint mentions that the creature was made of human and non-human animal parts.
When petitioning Victor Frankenstein to create him a bride, the creature promised to take the vegan pledge:
If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again: I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty.
To be fair to to Victor Frankenstein (and to angry torch-wielding mobs everywhere) the creature had already killed at this point. Hat-tip to Philip Armstrong for the quotation.
Mary Shelly was almost certainly vegetarian (although I haven’t tracked down a citation that would give me absolute confidence). Her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, was an advocate of Rousseauist “back-to-nature” vegetarianism under the mentorship of her father. After Percy’s early death, she was best known for publishing his works, including pro-vegetarian poetry.
Island of Dr Moreau
The Island of Dr Moreau, by HG Wells, 1896
Our hero Prendick returns home distrustful of other humans:
Then I look about me at my fellow-men; and I go in fear. I see faces, keen and bright; others dull or dangerous; others, unsteady, insincere,—none that have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale.
War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds, by HG Wells, 1898
I mentioned that – despite comparing the carnivorous Martians to humanity’s own habits – HG Wells mocked vegetarians. For example his 1908 novel Ann Veronica features parody vegetarians Mr & Mrs Goopes.
Sirius
Sirius: a Fantasy of Love and Discord, by Olaf Stapledon, 1944
Beyond Lies The Wubb
Beyond Lies The Wubb, short story by Philip K Dick, 1952
- Beyond Lies the Wubb at Project Gutenberg
- Beyond Lies the Wubb at Wikipedia
- Reading of “Beyond Lies The Wubb” by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau as part of her podcast Vegetarian Food for Thought
I ended up leaving this out of the show, even though it includes a conversation about food ethics very similar to our Dr Who skit.
To Serve Man
To Serve Man, short story by Damon Knight, 1950
To Serve Man, Twilight Zone episode, screenplay by Rod Serling, 1962
Doctor Who
The clip is taken from:
The Bells of Saint John, written by Steven Moffat, 2013
- The Bells of Saint John at bbc.co.uk
- The Bells of Saint John at IMDB
- The Bells of Saint John at the Tardis Wiki
The Doctor himself turns vegetarian in 1985’s The Two Doctors. A 1986 comic has him lapse; but Paul Cornell’s 1995 novel Human Nature (adapted for TV in 2007) suggests that he’s still vegetarian in his subsequent, seventh, incarnation. Either way, he was not vegetarian on his return to TV in 2005.
Planet of the Apes
The franchise begins with Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel. Tara Lomax and Sherryl Vint specifically discussed …
Planet of the Apes, screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, 1968
- Planet of the Apes shooting script
- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.o
United States
