Granta - The Magazine of New Writing 142, Winter 2018 [antikvár]

Introduction Animalia is the Latin term for the animal kingdom, and the most powerful animal in that diverse group of sentient beings is Homo sapiens. Humans in turn have created new forms of life - or 'life' -known as robots. The term derives from the Czech robota, denoting drudgery or forced labour, and was coined in the 1920 play R.U.R. by Karel Capek. Some robots are builders and some are servants. The latter are still new, and tend to be gendered: the 'males' seem often designed to be small and chirpy, the 'females' to be attractive. The latter are bland machine-creatures who speak and try to understand. Like the Stepford Wives they have no emotions, we assume, but perhaps the tangles of logical thought they are capable of produce after-effects, some kind of gravel in the system which may be akin to feeling. We know where that thought goes. As Capek wrote, 'Robots of the world! The power of man has fallen! A new world has arisen: the Rule of the Robots! March!' Animals are rarely part of science fiction, but we live in the future now, and animals are still with us. What effect will the age of robotics have on our relationship with them? Will we still breed animals for food and for experimental purposes? Will we genetically enhance our pets? WiU robots of the future be animal-based, if the inventors (and investors) can get past the ethics committees? WiU we see hybrid machine life, gene-edited lambs singing in Alzheimer care homes, purring kittens kneading preset patterns on human laps, beautiful nightingales and hummingbirds switched on and off at will? We don't know - but we do know this: we are transcending animalia. Our lead piece, 'The Taxidermy Museum' by Steven Dunn, is part of a longer work made up of a number of fictional interviews, mostly with soldiers, adding up to a surreal and compelling indictment of the US military machine. In this excerpt, a taxidermist explains the