Animal Alterity ─ Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

Animal Alterity uses readings of science fiction texts to explore the centrality of animals for our ways of thinking about being human. It argues that the academic field of animal studies and the popular genre of science fiction share a number of critical concerns: thinking about otherness and the nature of human being; desiring communication across species difference; and interrogating the social and ethical consequences of changes in science and technology.

We are living in a complex set of contradictory and confilicting relations with non-human animals. This book maps this complex terrain, arguing that we are better able to perceive options for a transformed politics if we perceive our various material relations wiht non-human animals withing a deeper understanding of the functions of the category `animal'.

`This book challenged my thinking and extended my reading pleasure, and you can't ask for more than that.'

Professor Philip Armstrong, Co-director, New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, University of Canterbury

`Animal Alterity is an engaging, intelligent study which is perceptively and accessibly theorised, and refreshingly innovative.' Dr Peter Wright, Edge Hill University

Sherryl Vint is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Brock University. She is the author of Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, and Science Fiction (University of Toronto Press, 2007) and co-editor of the journals Science Fiction Film and Television (Liverpool University Press) and Extrapolation (University of Texas Press).