The alien mindset

 I’m re-reading an old novel this week, to try and assess how good I think the writing is.  I sent it out to half a dozen agents a couple of years ago.  All showed no interest in it at all, and I’m trying to decide whether the writing is as good as I think it is.

It has always been one of my favourite novels.  It was influenced by Anne McCaffrey’s Doona books.  In that trilogy humans settled on a planet which they thought was unoccupied, but slowly they come to realise that they’re not alone there.

Eventually the humans get to meet the aliens, who are a big cat-like species which walks upright on its hind legs.  At the heart of the books is a friendship between a young human boy and a Hurruban cub.  They are inseparable, and seem to understand each other even though they don’t know each other’s language.  Over the course of the trilogy the two friends grow up together, and as adults their friendship is just as close.  They even own a ranch jointly.  

This hopepunk view of the world is what I have always written, and the Doona books were a great inspiration for the novel I’m reviewing now.  My aliens are big cats too, but they’re pony-sized lions who still run on their four paws.  But they also have arms and hands, and they have technology.  They have a sophisticated level of bioengineering knowledge, using large raptors as their drones and radio relay system.

The cats live in tribes, most of them in caves in the two big mountain ranges which run down most of the continent.  Each tribe has its own lands, and owns the prey animals which graze on them.  They have an Agreement for other tribes to pass over their territories, and to hunt on their land.  I also gave the tribes democracy.  Every member of the tribe votes for their Prime, the person they want to lead them.

I had them team up with my humans, and go on a long journey together to investigate a mysterious downed starship at the far end of the continent.  The aliens don’t have space tech, so this gave me the opportunity to write about them not being able to imagine leave their home planet.  I also had the opportunity to talk about them hunting, and about the creatures they feel threatened by.

I have a section early on in the novel where one of the young aliens gets together with a pair of human sisters to learn each other’s languages.  The first scene I wrote, set in an orchard, was inspired by Anne McCaffrey’s Doona books too.  Having them learn each other’s words was a great way to get into the alien mindset too.

I always loved this book, and having read it through I feel that it is every bit as good as I thought it was.  I feel another rash of pitching to agents coming on.