Apuleius’s The Golden Ass is an ancient novel (the only complete surviving Roman novel!) in which the protagonist accidentally turns into an ass. Although I haven’t read the novel, Peter Singer seems to think that it is a good vehicle for conveying empathy towards other animals.
J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals is a peculiar story of a novelist (much like Coetzee himself) delivering a set of lectures on humans’ treatment of the other animals, along with surrounding tensions and encounters.
Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (included in one of his collections of stories, Exhalation) is a fascinating exploration of digital sentience.
Apuleius’s The Golden Ass is an ancient novel (the only complete surviving Roman novel!) in which the protagonist accidentally turns into an ass. Although I haven’t read the novel, Peter Singer seems to think that it is a good vehicle for conveying empathy towards other animals.
J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals is a peculiar story of a novelist (much like Coetzee himself) delivering a set of lectures on humans’ treatment of the other animals, along with surrounding tensions and encounters.
I absolutely love that Ted Chiang story (and so many of the others, in both that collection and the other).
Thank you so much for the other recommendations!