About the Name, and the Story.
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More that 300,000 horses suffered and died in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902. So many, in fact, in that one war, that a monument was erected in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on their behalf, honoring their sacrifice. Consider then, all of the horses that have perished in all of the wars throughout human history; all of the fallen steeds who galloped into the teeth of Hell, along with their human compatriots, never to return. It is a ponderous number of gallant equine souls. That kind of courage would be a formidable challenge to any would-be foe. If you're like me, perhaps you too are a little skeptical of the prevailing belief that humans are inherently superior to all other life forms. Their opposable thumbs and voice box gives them an amazing advantage in the competition for global dominance. What if, by some fluke of errant bio-engineering, humans undid themselves, like letting a genie out of a bottle, they created an intelligence pill, but it only worked on animals. What if that happened? This is the quintessential purpose of science fiction, to pose a 'thinkable unreality,' and then imagine the consequences of its details. This trilogy stems from my belief that animals are far more intelligent than humans or science gives them credit for being. In recent years, research and random videos have provided numerous examples of inexplicably intelligent behavior in animals. From dogs who vocalize; to a parrot who could discern the difference between individual items, colors, shapes and had an extensive vocabulary; to signing apes that learned to use verbs; to videos of elephants grieving over lost relatives; to the obvious distress of a mother Orca being separated from her calf. Dogs dream, cats learn from one another, birds solve problems, lions remember and feel affection for people who have been kind to them: these are facts, not fictions. My trilogy takes the concept of animal intelligence and forces the reader to accept it as fact, in a fictional sense, and then lays out the consequences of such a fictional reality, for both humans and animals. More important to me than conceiving the consequences of such a reality, is that the story gives the animals something they’ve never really had: A voice, options, self-actualization, a real seat at the table, perhaps the head of the table. And why not? After all they’ve done for us, after all they've endured? Why not? |