Not the sort of match-up I've recalled seeing before in a science fiction story. So it has something original going for it from that alone.
One major detail in the design going against the story when reading it today is that it should have been set farther into the future. I'm aware Donaldson wrote it in 1977, and it's extremely hard to see ahead to predict how things are going to work out in societal evolution. It's just that the "futuristic" setting becomes somewhat compromised by that setting now being in the past.
This imagined "future" Donaldson has created is still an intriguing place to me, with a compelling logic behind the government coming to subsidize hunting preserves, race car tracks, and marijuana for use by the general public to keep down the occurrences of violent crime. That makes sense, and gives this fictional "future" some appeal for me.Here we are in the year 2011--men had walked on Mars, microwave stations were being built to transmit solar power, marijuana and car racing were so important they were subsidized by the government--but the rooms where men and women like me did their paperwork still looked like the squadrooms I'd seen in old movies when I was a kid.
Our cyborg protagonist, Special Agent Sam Browne (works for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations, I presume), loves animals enough to go to these government-subsidized hunting preserves to rescue animals orphaned by the hunting activities and raise them before turning them over to zoos. He seems more human than those in charge of the private hunting preserve he's sent to investigate by his boss Morganstark: owner Fritz Ushre and chief surgeon/animal breeder Avid Paracels.
He [Ushre] had the face of a boar, and he was looking at me as if he were trying to decide where to use his tusks.
Caught snooping in Paracel's lab adjacent to Sharon's Point hunting preserve after hours, agent Browne is knocked out and finds himself facing threats by genetically altered animals with weaponry somewhere within the preserve.[Dr. Paracels] looked a good bit more than thirty years older than I was. His face was gray, like the face of a man with a terminal disease, and the skin stretched from his cheekbones to his jaw as if it were too small for his skull. His eyes were hidden most of the time beneath his thick ragged eyebrows, but when I caught a glimpse of them they looked as dead as plastene. I would've thought he was a cadaver if he wasn't standing up and wearing a white coat. If he hadn't licked his lips once when he first saw me. Just the tip of his tongue circled his lips that once--not like he was hungry, but instead like he was wondering in an abstract way whether I might turn out to be tasty.
A rabbit came out of the brush a meter down the path from me. I thought he was a rabbit--he looked like a rabbit. An ordinary long-eared jackrabbit. Male--the males are a lot bigger than the females. Then he didn't look like a rabbit. His jaws were too big; he had the kind of jaws a dog has. His front paws were too broad and strong.
What the hell?
In his jaws he held a hand grenade, carrying it by the ring of the pin.
He didn't waste any time. He put the grenade down on the path and braced his paws on it. With a jerk of his head, he pulled the pin. Then he dashed back into the bushes.
________________________
A rabbit that wasn't a rabbit. A genetically altered rabbit, armed with munitions from the Procureton Arsenal.
Almost at once, two dogs went trotting by. At least they should've been dogs. They were big brown boxers, and at first glance the only thing unusual about them was they carried sacks slung over their shoulders.
But they stopped at the farthest mine crater, and I got a better look. their shoulders were too broad and square, and instead of front paws they had hands--chimp hands, except for the strong claws.
They shrugged off their sacks, nosed them open. Took out half a dozen or so mines.
Three seconds later, there was a thrashing above me in the next tree over, and then a monkey landed maybe four meters away from me on the same branch.
He was a normal howler monkey--normal for Sharon's Point. Sturdy gray body, pitch-black face with deep gleaming eyes; a good bit bigger and stronger than a chimp. But he had those wide square shoulders and hands that were too broad. He had a knapsack on his back.
And he was carrying an M-16 by the handle on top of the barrel.
Which told the bear everything he wanted to know about me. With a roar that might have made me panic if I hadn't already been more dead than alive, he reared up onto his hind legs, and I got a look at what Paracels had done to him.
He had hands instead of forepaws. Paracels certainly liked hands. They were good for handling weapons. The bear's hands were so humanlike I was sure Paracels must have got them from one of the dead hunters. They looked too small for the bear. I couldn't figure out how he was able to walk on them. But of course that wasn't too much of a problem for a bear. They were big enough for what Paracels had in mind.
Against his belly the bear had a furry pouch like a kangaroo's. As he reared up, he reached both hands into his pouch. When he brought them out again, he had an automatic in each fist. A pair of .22 Magnums.
Browne finds the blood placed upon him by Ushre and Paracels is attracting more deadly animals to him, so he has to hurry as unobtrusively as possible to a stream to clean up and hide until he can figure a way to get out of the preserve alive. While doing this he discovers he has a deeper sense of purpose for bringing Ushre and Paracels to justice, beyond survival and doing his job.After that, the outcome was out of my hands. I was attacked again. At the last second, my ears warned me: I heard something cutting across the breeze. I fell to the side--and a hawk went shizzing past where my head had been. I didn't get a very good look at it, but there was something strange about its talons. They looked a lot like fangs
A hawk with poisoned talons?
A strong statement of purpose, and reading that made me wish him luck.With one hand, Paracels gave them guns, mines, grenades; with the other, he took away their instincts for flight, self-preservation, even feeding themselves. They were crippled worse than a cyborg with his power turned off. They were deadly--but they were still crippled. Probably Paracels or Ushre or any of the handlers could walk the preserve from end to end without being in any danger.
That was why I was so mad.
Somebody had to stop those bastards.
I wanted that somebody to be me.
The ending, though, puzzles me.
Spoiler
After Browne manages to "borrow" a hovercraft, confronts Ushre and blows him up as he tries to escape, though not before Ushre opens the hunting preserve's gates to allow the animal mutants to escape. Browne then has an encounter with Paracels and a giant gorilla bodyguard. Browne dispatches the ape by touching a handheld magnetic device to the power pack in his chest (it had been turned off by Ushre) while shoving his left hand--a laser weapon--into the gorilla's mouth, blasting its head apart. Then Browne disposes of Paracels by throwing a knife into his neck. After that, he takes off his belt to use as a tourniquet on his bleeding left arm.
QUOTE Some time later (or maybe it was right away--I don't know) Morganstark came into the lab. First he said, "We got the gates shut. That'll hold them--for a while, anyway."
Then he said, "Jesus Christ! What happened to you?"
There was movement around me. Then he said, "Well, there's one consolation, anyway." (Was he checking my tourniquet? No, he was trying to put some kind of bandage on my mangled hand.) "If you don't have a hand they can build a laser into your forearm. Line it up between the bones--make it good and solid. You'll be as good as new. Better. They'll make you the most powerful Special Agent in the Division."
I said, "The hell they will." Probably I was going to pass out. "The hell they will."UNQUOTE
QUOTE Some time later (or maybe it was right away--I don't know) Morganstark came into the lab. First he said, "We got the gates shut. That'll hold them--for a while, anyway."
Then he said, "Jesus Christ! What happened to you?"
There was movement around me. Then he said, "Well, there's one consolation, anyway." (Was he checking my tourniquet? No, he was trying to put some kind of bandage on my mangled hand.) "If you don't have a hand they can build a laser into your forearm. Line it up between the bones--make it good and solid. You'll be as good as new. Better. They'll make you the most powerful Special Agent in the Division."
I said, "The hell they will." Probably I was going to pass out. "The hell they will."UNQUOTE
Not being sure I understand the ending along with the dated nature of this being a story set in a future that has passed made me dismiss this story the last time I read it. On the other hand, I've always liked that this story was set in south-central Missouri, for I grew up in places like Rolla, Lebanon, and Springfield. I mean, I KNOW this countryside, with its oak-hickory forests interspersed with meadows and bluffs, with its tall sycamores and occasionally big ash trees (like the ash tree agent Browne climbs to get an overview of the preserve). This gives me a comfortable feeling of familiarity and makes it easy for me to picture the background.
Still, overall I remain rather neutral on this story. Neither love it nor hate it. But I certainly respect the opinions of those who love this story, for it's undeniably interesting. I also respect the opinions of people who find stories about genetically modified animals to be creepy. It's kind of intriguing, but doesn't compare to a masterpiece like "Ser Visal's Tale". But I would be glad to hear differing opinions of this tale from other Kevin's Watch members, regardless of whether they generally agreed or disagreed with me on this one.
So I'll quote some passages from "Animal Lover" to see if they contain undercurrent, and to see if I can fathom what that undercurrent really means.
Also, by putting the word sport within quotes, is he making a personal comment on the unfairness of shooting at something living that can't shoot back, or should I assume that's just Browne's position? 
The problem is, the preserve owners see no profit in that.
