on Adam Roberts's Bête

This is a book about the difference between being a butcher and being a murderer, if there is a difference

This is a book about the fungibility of identity

This is a book about the persistence of identity

This is a book about the relationship between identity and body

This is a book about the unforeseen consequences of technology

This is a book about some of the ways in which slick talk about the “posthuman” is vacuous

This is a book about the uses and abuses of the concept of species

This is a book about the Smiths' song “Meat is Murder”

This is a book about all the stories that have talking animals

This is a book about Wittgenstein's claim that “If a lion could talk, we would not understand him”

This is a book about what happens to carnivores when they become reflective about being carnivores

This is a book about Oedipus and the riddle of the Sphinx

This is a book about what Animal Farm would be like if it weren't a parable

This is a book about what we think is below us and what we think might be above us in the Great Chain of Being

This is a book about what the Turing test can’t do

This is a book about the problem of other minds