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Originally Posted by AnotherCat
I have finished all eight stories (plus the ninth one). I'll look to maybe comment more after the recommended 30 August.
I know that what people perceive as what is science fiction and what is fantasy is a personal interpretation, however, for me, this book was heavily on the fantasy side. Perhaps because I have a science based background I saw nothing in the stories that was more than shallow references to there being creatures on another planet, transformations from one species to another (e.g. man to lopers), somehow dogs taught to speak and all animals able to chat between species, etc.
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I am often frustrated by the combination of fantasy and science fiction into a single category virtually everywhere. Unfortunately I've been unable to formulate any satisfactory objective criteria for distinguishing them. Abandoning objectivity even "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" is not up to the task. It may be possible to objectively distinguish so-called hard science fiction at one extreme from the other extreme of pure fantasy devoid of any element of scientific speculation, but it would be I think a most unsatisfactory division. This is because there is such a significant degree of overlap. Even hard science fiction usually involves some degree of what could be called fantasy when it seeks to build on existing science to project future developments which may or may not occur.
I agree with you that these stories have many elements of fantasy. Even a little mysticism with a whole new mysterious philosophy. The fantastic elements seem to increase as the book progresses. The animal elements in particular are pretty well pure fantasy, having scant scientific basis when the stories were written. Ironically, some but not all of the animal elements if incorporated in a more recently written piece would now have a scientific basis in genetics. However, the purpose of the animals, the mutants (and to some extent the robots) in the stories is tied up in the importance of a different perspective. Consider the modern emphasis on diversity in this light. The mutants could understand and recreate Juwain's new philosophy from his notes where humans could not. But they had their own perspective and did not share human goals, simply saying they could use it for their own purposes, which they later did. The Census taker would have done better to have shown Juwain's notes to the Dog when he had the chance, since the Dog's had a different perspective but seemed to share human goals more closely than the mutants.
I look forward to reading your further comments after 30 August.