Review: End of Month Reviews #67 - July 2009 [spoilers]

[Martin Phipps]

On Aug 3, 11:45 am, Saxon Brenton <saxonbren... at hotmail.com> wrote:
> it turns out he takes up a  
> career as a court translator,

Or he could just be an expert witness, something like a psychiatrist
who tells the court what the defendent was probably thinking.  The
defense called him a "translator" to draw attention to the fact that
Rover couldn't speak for himself.

>      Hmm.  Looking at the above list of themes, one thing that strikes  
> me is how far my random babblings have wandered from the twinned contest  
> themes of the second challenge.  So I'll just finish by making the  
> observation that this story doesn't use the concepts of 'superhumans  
> worrying about their children' and 'intelligent animals' equally.  This  
> is neither a good thing or a bad thing.  Considering that different stories  
> have different structural needs, it's actually reasonable enough that some  
> concepts will receive different levels of emphasis.  So, just as a matter  
> of record, I will note that 'Generations' makes strong use of the  
> 'superhumans worrying about their children' theme, but uses 'intelligent  
> animals' as a minor trapping.

I assumed that "intelligent animals" did not necessarily mean animals
who could talk.  After all, it is the lack of vocal cords more than
anything else that prevents animals from speaking.

Martin