Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Karl Schroeder's avatar

Thanks for the incisive comments! In the novel, the deodands do not have fixed identities and are nested inside one another. They're systems rather than individuals, so deer are not protected from wolves; wolves and deer may each have their own deodands to advocate for them in the human world, but there is a larger wolves-sheep deodand that represents them as a system, and so on up to the planetary level. I did not have time to go into many of these details in the novel (it was overloaded with explanation as it was) but identity works differently for them; it's also not a simple hierarchy but a complex network, reflecting our real ecosystem.

Expand full comment
Katharine Beckett Winship's avatar

Thank you for writing this!!🌱

Expand full comment
5 more comments...

No posts