Feed Them Silence

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Lee Mandelo: Feed Them Silence (2023, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom)

English language

Published Dec. 17, 2023 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.

ISBN:
978-1-250-82451-6
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5 stars (2 reviews)

What does it mean to "be-in-kind" with a nonhuman animal? Or in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon’s case, to be in-kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves? Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subject’s perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret, lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness. To see the world through animal eyes; smell the forest, thick with olfactory messages; even taste the blood and viscera of a fresh kill. And, above all, to feel the belonging of the pack.

Sean’s tireless research gives her a chance to fulfill that dream, but pursuing it has a terrible cost. Her obsession with work endangers her fraying relationship with her wife. Her research methods threaten her mind and body. And the attention of her VC funders could destroy her subject, the beautiful wild wolf whose mental …

2 editions

reviewed Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Feed Them Silence

5 stars

Feed Them Silence is the best fiction I have read all year.

It's a near-future sf novella about a researcher who is using new technology to neurologically interface with a near-extinct wolf pack, in order to "become in kind" with them and understand how they make their way in a tough world. Thematically, this novella is dense and chewy and interleaves so much into such a short length. It's about relationships and power dynamics, the fantasy of truly understanding animals (and other humans [and ourselves]), but also about global warming and the objectivity of research.

For me, this is science fiction at its best, using a what-if future science to ask troubling and incisive questions. Even as it presents its own conflicting opinions, it asks far more questions than it has answers for. The novella also walks a tight line in generating compassion and understanding for the protagonist Sean, even …

reviewed Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Review of Feed Them Silence

5 stars

I've been looking forward to reading this since the authors essay on the subject matter was released on tor.com (I highly reccomend the essay). This is absolutely a book that will stay with me for a long time and one that is worth a slow burn, or if you're like me and can't put it down, then a re-read. It was devastatingly beautiful, brutally human.

The most fascinating and compelling aspect of the book for me was the interplay between the relationships: to the multitudes of inner selves and their relation and manifestation to other selves l, and to the feedback loop that exists with all social interaction. This is a story about how we relate to others (no matter their embodiment), and how those relations are influenced by our own perspective and habituated behaviors. It's also about so many other things that are best discovered first hand.

The sheer …