Dogs, Donkeys, Daemons and Dragons #AtoZChallenge

I have always wanted to know what the final form my daemon would take – a white wolf who walks by my side, a mink who wrapped around my neck, or a mouse who hid in my pocket. Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials Trilogy assumed each human had a daemon, an animal who housed our souls, and lived by our side.  A strange world, a corrupt one, but no one was ever truly alone, but the connections between people seemed more limited.  Rebuilding our world with daemons was an interesting way to explore our religion and ethics.

How animals turn up in a world tell us a lot about society functions.  Do they show up as pets like dogs, beasts of burden like donkeys, scourges like Dragons, or as our conscience like Daemons.

As a pet lover, I couldn’t imagine a world without something furry within arms’ reach (see my fur babies below). Pets inject warmth and empathy into worlds, stories and people. That’s a pretty human version of pets.

In science fiction and fantasy, our non-biped humanoid friends seem to take on alternative roles, or function differently reflecting society.

• ·Evil sidekicks—think Salacious B. Crumb, Jabba the Hut’s Kowakian monkey-lizard, nibbling  C-3P0’s eye out;
• Pets that reflect culture – Targs, Klingon pets that function like dogs, but are boar-like, aggressive and vicious – the pet of a warrior race that we might need a hunting license to feed.
• Sentient buddies, guardians and alter egos—our furred, scaly or feathered partners in crime.  Daemons fit here. Sephora in Eragon or Ann McCaffery’s Dragonriders of Pern as well..
  

  

• Pure nuisance—Tribbles anyone?
• Electronic sidekicks such as K-9 or R2D2; and
• Heroes themselves, remember Krypto and Lockjaw and the pet avengers?
• Bio-engineered to sentience, such as David Brin’s Uplift Universe, where monkeys and dolphins talk, work, and have joined the earth’s population or Planet of the Apes, with a scarier outcome.

Creating worlds and populating them also allows us to explore fundamental questions of sentience, consciousness and the ethics of how we treat other life, even when it poops in the basement and rips apart the furniture. Pets can humanize or dehumanize characters quickly, tell us about culture, society and environment. They are a world building tool that can sometimes get overlooked.

Your turn.  What’s your favorite non-terran  or fantasy animals and why?

Header photo Istock credit: ad_photo

Don’t forget to visit all the other bloggers participating on the A to Z Challenge.