So yes, COS is about the future, a future in which we have genetically engineered second class citizens based on animals. They exist because of labor shortages: basically people don't want to work because the standard of living of sitting on your ass at home has gotten good enough that you don't have to (sound familiar btw? Remember this book was written originally in 1990 - and no, that's not the buried trope). I wrote this book long before I had ever even heard of 'furry' or 'furry fandom' btw, it was more in the vein of Cordwainer Smith and his 'animal people'. Though as someone who owned and trained wild cats, and was up on what a lot of Geneticists were doing, and who was following the human genome project, there were some fertile ideas there.
Now, I have gone and dropped hints everywhere, especially in later books in that world, as to why things were the way they were. Multiple races in order to make it harder for them to have things in common to unite against humans. No human 'supermen' because of fears that they would take over (and you wouldn't be able to easily find them), and a few other reasons as to why they were made the way the were. There is even some discussion as to if they are engineered to have certain behaviors, which can be used against them, one way or another, or to control them.
But the one that I thought was the most obvious and which was alluded to constantly but which everyone seems to miss, is based on this old quote:
"Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man." -Aristotle
That is the major background 'trope' in the whole series, it forms so much of the stories, the society, and it is even reflected in the title, which comes from the song 'Types' by Living Color. It is mentioned, more than once, that the government comes in and provides all schooling for the 'animen' for the formative years of their lives. They are taught and trained where they are to be, and what they are to be.
And I must admit that I am incredibly shocked that so many people have missed this. Especially when countries like France have recently embraced this philosophy by mandating government pre-schools for children. Much of our own school system here in the USA have been taken over by a particular political group who are using them to instill certain beliefs and behaviors in students today, which we are now reaping the harvest of, when we see all this micro-aggression bs, and the movement to stamp out free speech coming from our schools today.
Then again, maybe that is why so many of you are missing it, because you're actually living it.
I find it interesting though, that a book I started writing in 1990, which I published in 2011, is still dead on, on politics and what is happening with society, twenty plus years later.
