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Zoo 2000: Twelve Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy Beasts
Stories about humans and animals living in the future focus on man's ignorance and greed
- GenresFiction
224 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1973
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68 people want to read
About the author
Jane Yolen
987 books3,243 followersJane Yolen is a novelist, poet, fantasist, journalist, songwriter, storyteller, folklorist, and children’s book author who has written more than three hundred books. Her accolades include the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, the Kerlan Award, two Christopher Awards, and six honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Born and raised in New York City, the mother of three and the grandmother of six, Yolen lives in Massachusetts and St. Andrews, Scotland.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 24, 2025
The copy of this book I borrowed from the Open Library has a terrifying cover: it is bright orange and shows a man apparently apparently about to walk into the mouth of a giant red-grey-black bug of some sort with at least 6 eyes...(see the story "Country Doctor" by William Morrison).
The inner flap claims that: "The inter-relation of man and animal has fascinated writers of science fiction for many years, but this is the first time an anthology has been devoted to the subject." It was published in 1975 and the 12 stories were compiled and introduced by Jane Yolen. (Note: These are not original stories but pre-published stories, selected "from the work of leading writers in the field"). (Further note: The flap states "Jane Yolen is the author of a number of books for children, among them picture book texts and retellings of fairy tales." This made me wonder if this is meant to be a collection for children, but I don't think so.)
Introduction (Jane Yolen) – Yolen talks about how people of the past felt more connected to Creation but didn’t think much of the future and didn’t know much about what was beyond the boundaries of their tribe/land. In comparison, the modern person is connected all around the world and we think less about the creation of the world and more about how we might impact its future (esp its destruction). Ancient stories used animals as vehicles for some of the things they tried to understand, while modern stories use animals to warn. She says the first SF animals were BEMs (bug eyed monsters) out to destroy, but SF animals gained more depth following Stanley Weinbaum’s writing in the 1930s.
Each story that follows begins with a brief thematic/moral summary by Yolen. I ended up skipping these to avoid spoilers.
1) Zoo 2000 (Richard Curtis) (copyright 1973) - This was a kind of fun short story about a father taking his kid to the zoo in the future. Animals look a little different following The Great Mutation (the result of nuclear power plant accidents causing radiation over the planet). The father seems fairly enlightened but the kid is a brat (unkind to the animals). I thought the ending was pretty predictable but I still enjoyed it. 3 stars.
2) The Hurkle is a Happy Beast (Theodore Sturgeon) (copyright 1949) – On an alien planet, a Hurkle kitten wreaks a bit of havoc on a piece of scientific equipment, which causes it to arrive on Earth, where its presence makes a group of students and their teacher very itchy. I found the ending of this one a bit confusing at first, as the story suddenly switches from third person into first person and I wasn't sure I was reading it right, but I think it was saying that the hurkles bred so much that humans had to leave [Earth?]. The story as a whole was a bit tongue-in-cheek - Yolen describes it as "light and silly". 2 stars.
3) The Deep Range (Arthur C. Clarke) (copyright 1957) – In this story, humans have turned to the seas for food - plankton farms and meat, oil, and milk from pods of whales (now referred to as herds). The ocean "ranges" have been "fenced" (electrically) and the protagonist, Don, in his sub, is akin to a cowboy or shepherd. He and his "dogs" (two trained dolphin companions) take on a very large Greenland shark who is worrying his whales. 2 stars.
4) There's a Wolf in My Time Machine (Larry Niven) (copyright June 1971; first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). This is certainly the most interesting of the collection so far. Svetz is a man of the far future, sent into the past to collect animals for a zoo of the future. He accidentally slides sideways in time and finds himself in a world where intelligent life evolved from wolves rather than apes. There is a sense of danger, urgency, and mystery missing from the other stories which makes this one the best of the bunch. 3 stars.
5) Apple (John Baxter) (copyright 1967). This is another story warning of 'atomic' disaster. In this dystopian future, people live in small communities close to fallen mutant apples. I found it hard to understand the scale of this story. The apples are so huge that the townspeople 'mine' them. The protagonist is a man who used to be a miner but is now a Mothkiller. He travels between places to do this job, and on this occasion goes into the apple a town is mining but doesn't come out. Exactly what the Moths are was unclear - they are human-sized and seem to have some human characteristics (hands, breasts). They don't behave like moths, either, being apparently violent and choosing to kill and lay their eggs in other animals. This was too much of a horror story for my taste, although it was certainly an interesting setting. 1 star.
6) Interview with a Lemming (James Thurber) (copyright 1942; from Vintage Thurber copyright 1962). It was a nice switch to something light and amusing after the previous story. A scientist stops for a rest while climbing a mountain (why, we never learn). A lemming strikes up conversation because lemmings can talk apparently, and make a study of man. Like many of the other stories in this volume, humankind, once studied, is judged awful. So when the scientist asks why lemmings through themselves off cliffs, the lemming asks why we don't. 4 stars.
7) All Cats Are Gray (Andre Norton) (copyright 1971 from The Many Worlds of Science Fiction, ed. Ben Bova). This felt older than its copyright would indicate. The language had shades of the 50s - this is its opening lines: "Steena of the Spaceways - that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I've tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamorous babe." The narrator is a writer who has habited the same bars as Steena, "an expert operator on the big calculators" - something like an engineer. She is 'grey', hanging out in the background but hearing a lot, and she tips off a captain down on his luck. With Steena's cat, they visit a Flying Dutchman of space and with the help of the cat and Steena's colour blindness, are able to avoid an all but invisible alien and cash their salvage. Some heavily gendered comments undermined Steena's strength but this was fairly fun. 3 stars.
8) The Mouse (Howard Fast) (copyright 1969 from The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy). Tiny alien humanoids that are much heavier than us (ostensibly because they come from a Jupiter-sized planet) want to explore Earth, so they give a mouse's brain many more folds until it is intelligent. They think humans are horrible (our minds are apparently "like a journey through a sewer"), and the mouse becomes their faithful companion and support in exploring Earth. There is a very sad ending. 3 stars.
9) The Island of the Endangered (Dale Ferguson) (copyright 1973). An animal story. On an island in the ocean, the humans have gathered the last of many kinds of animals (all the final male members of their species). The bison is friends with the snow leopard. Then one day all are surprised when a female of one species arrives.
10) Country Doctor (William Morrison) (copyright 1953 from Stars Science Fiction 1 by Frederick Pohl). This felt very dated to me (reading it 71 years after it was written!) and some of the story lacked sense to my mind. The protagonist is a country doctor (on Mars). He also serves as the local vet because people value their livestock (why they don't have actual vets there is unclear). When a spaceship lands nearby with an alien found near Ganymede, they call on him. They've named the giant alien a 'space cow' and want to farm it for food (we've found an alien - let's eat it!) but it is sickening and they know nothing about it so they insist the doctor has to go into its giant mouth (yep, the only way to help this sick creature is apparently to climb inside it). 2 stars.
11) The Day of the Dragon (Guy Endore) (no copyright date given). I enjoyed this story. The narrator is a reporter who is telling us how the world ended. It's because a scientist figured out that alligators are all invalids with heart trouble. He managed to fix the hearts of a few of them, and it brought about some interesting changes - and the end of the world! 4 stars.
12) The King of the Beasts (Philip Jose Farmer) (copyright 1964). This is a short 2 pager, cleverly worded so as to keep us from realising the characters are not human. A biologist is showing a distinguished visitor through the zoo and laboratory. They are recreating extinct species, and had to get special permission to recreate one, the most dangerous - man.
The inner flap claims that: "The inter-relation of man and animal has fascinated writers of science fiction for many years, but this is the first time an anthology has been devoted to the subject." It was published in 1975 and the 12 stories were compiled and introduced by Jane Yolen. (Note: These are not original stories but pre-published stories, selected "from the work of leading writers in the field"). (Further note: The flap states "Jane Yolen is the author of a number of books for children, among them picture book texts and retellings of fairy tales." This made me wonder if this is meant to be a collection for children, but I don't think so.)
Introduction (Jane Yolen) – Yolen talks about how people of the past felt more connected to Creation but didn’t think much of the future and didn’t know much about what was beyond the boundaries of their tribe/land. In comparison, the modern person is connected all around the world and we think less about the creation of the world and more about how we might impact its future (esp its destruction). Ancient stories used animals as vehicles for some of the things they tried to understand, while modern stories use animals to warn. She says the first SF animals were BEMs (bug eyed monsters) out to destroy, but SF animals gained more depth following Stanley Weinbaum’s writing in the 1930s.
Each story that follows begins with a brief thematic/moral summary by Yolen. I ended up skipping these to avoid spoilers.
1) Zoo 2000 (Richard Curtis) (copyright 1973) - This was a kind of fun short story about a father taking his kid to the zoo in the future. Animals look a little different following The Great Mutation (the result of nuclear power plant accidents causing radiation over the planet). The father seems fairly enlightened but the kid is a brat (unkind to the animals). I thought the ending was pretty predictable but I still enjoyed it. 3 stars.
2) The Hurkle is a Happy Beast (Theodore Sturgeon) (copyright 1949) – On an alien planet, a Hurkle kitten wreaks a bit of havoc on a piece of scientific equipment, which causes it to arrive on Earth, where its presence makes a group of students and their teacher very itchy. I found the ending of this one a bit confusing at first, as the story suddenly switches from third person into first person and I wasn't sure I was reading it right, but I think it was saying that the hurkles bred so much that humans had to leave [Earth?]. The story as a whole was a bit tongue-in-cheek - Yolen describes it as "light and silly". 2 stars.
3) The Deep Range (Arthur C. Clarke) (copyright 1957) – In this story, humans have turned to the seas for food - plankton farms and meat, oil, and milk from pods of whales (now referred to as herds). The ocean "ranges" have been "fenced" (electrically) and the protagonist, Don, in his sub, is akin to a cowboy or shepherd. He and his "dogs" (two trained dolphin companions) take on a very large Greenland shark who is worrying his whales. 2 stars.
4) There's a Wolf in My Time Machine (Larry Niven) (copyright June 1971; first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). This is certainly the most interesting of the collection so far. Svetz is a man of the far future, sent into the past to collect animals for a zoo of the future. He accidentally slides sideways in time and finds himself in a world where intelligent life evolved from wolves rather than apes. There is a sense of danger, urgency, and mystery missing from the other stories which makes this one the best of the bunch. 3 stars.
5) Apple (John Baxter) (copyright 1967). This is another story warning of 'atomic' disaster. In this dystopian future, people live in small communities close to fallen mutant apples. I found it hard to understand the scale of this story. The apples are so huge that the townspeople 'mine' them. The protagonist is a man who used to be a miner but is now a Mothkiller. He travels between places to do this job, and on this occasion goes into the apple a town is mining but doesn't come out. Exactly what the Moths are was unclear - they are human-sized and seem to have some human characteristics (hands, breasts). They don't behave like moths, either, being apparently violent and choosing to kill and lay their eggs in other animals. This was too much of a horror story for my taste, although it was certainly an interesting setting. 1 star.
6) Interview with a Lemming (James Thurber) (copyright 1942; from Vintage Thurber copyright 1962). It was a nice switch to something light and amusing after the previous story. A scientist stops for a rest while climbing a mountain (why, we never learn). A lemming strikes up conversation because lemmings can talk apparently, and make a study of man. Like many of the other stories in this volume, humankind, once studied, is judged awful. So when the scientist asks why lemmings through themselves off cliffs, the lemming asks why we don't. 4 stars.
7) All Cats Are Gray (Andre Norton) (copyright 1971 from The Many Worlds of Science Fiction, ed. Ben Bova). This felt older than its copyright would indicate. The language had shades of the 50s - this is its opening lines: "Steena of the Spaceways - that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I've tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamorous babe." The narrator is a writer who has habited the same bars as Steena, "an expert operator on the big calculators" - something like an engineer. She is 'grey', hanging out in the background but hearing a lot, and she tips off a captain down on his luck. With Steena's cat, they visit a Flying Dutchman of space and with the help of the cat and Steena's colour blindness, are able to avoid an all but invisible alien and cash their salvage. Some heavily gendered comments undermined Steena's strength but this was fairly fun. 3 stars.
8) The Mouse (Howard Fast) (copyright 1969 from The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy). Tiny alien humanoids that are much heavier than us (ostensibly because they come from a Jupiter-sized planet) want to explore Earth, so they give a mouse's brain many more folds until it is intelligent. They think humans are horrible (our minds are apparently "like a journey through a sewer"), and the mouse becomes their faithful companion and support in exploring Earth. There is a very sad ending. 3 stars.
9) The Island of the Endangered (Dale Ferguson) (copyright 1973). An animal story. On an island in the ocean, the humans have gathered the last of many kinds of animals (all the final male members of their species). The bison is friends with the snow leopard. Then one day all are surprised when a female of one species arrives.
10) Country Doctor (William Morrison) (copyright 1953 from Stars Science Fiction 1 by Frederick Pohl). This felt very dated to me (reading it 71 years after it was written!) and some of the story lacked sense to my mind. The protagonist is a country doctor (on Mars). He also serves as the local vet because people value their livestock (why they don't have actual vets there is unclear). When a spaceship lands nearby with an alien found near Ganymede, they call on him. They've named the giant alien a 'space cow' and want to farm it for food (we've found an alien - let's eat it!) but it is sickening and they know nothing about it so they insist the doctor has to go into its giant mouth (yep, the only way to help this sick creature is apparently to climb inside it). 2 stars.
11) The Day of the Dragon (Guy Endore) (no copyright date given). I enjoyed this story. The narrator is a reporter who is telling us how the world ended. It's because a scientist figured out that alligators are all invalids with heart trouble. He managed to fix the hearts of a few of them, and it brought about some interesting changes - and the end of the world! 4 stars.
12) The King of the Beasts (Philip Jose Farmer) (copyright 1964). This is a short 2 pager, cleverly worded so as to keep us from realising the characters are not human. A biologist is showing a distinguished visitor through the zoo and laboratory. They are recreating extinct species, and had to get special permission to recreate one, the most dangerous - man.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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