Beasts (Crowley novel)

Beasts (ISBN 0-385-11260-2) is a novel by American writer John Crowley, published in 1976 by Doubleday.

First edition, cover art by John Cayea[1]

Plot summary

Beasts describes a world in which genetically engineered animals are given a variety of human characteristics. Painter is a leo, a combination of man and lion. Reynard, a character derived from medieval European fable, is part fox.

Political forces result in the leos being deemed an experimental failure, first resigned to reservations, and later to be hunted down and eliminated. A central element of the story is the relationship between Painter and Reynard, who acts as a kingmaker behind the scenes.

Reception

New York Times reviewer Gerald Jonas praised Crowley's "prodigious inventiveness", describing the novel as "a memorable tale that ends too soon."[2]

Brian W. Aldiss and David Wingrove reported that "for all the poetry in Crowley's writing, Beasts treats its subject matter in a realistic mode that gives the book a resonance and a relevance it might otherwise have lacked."[3]

gollark: Even if we assume I'm 6 OOM off, which I don't think is likely, *that is too big*.
gollark: But it's within a few orders of magnitude.
gollark: Also, I could exploit symmetries.
gollark: This isn't actually right. Some states are impossible because they contain multiple winning lines, for example.
gollark: Hi Zachary!

References
  1. drsleep. "John Crowley: The Books". Webpages.charter.net. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-04-18.
  2. "Of Things to Come", The New York Times, November 21, 1976
  3. Aldiss & Wingrove, Trillion Year Spree, Victor Gollancz, 1986, pp. 456–57


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.