I'm glad I plodded on when the narrative got gratingly repetitive (I think it's purposefully written that way, because it's cray cray Doctor Rat, after all). Como novela, tiene una hechura muy interesante: una sátira agria (amarga, a veces) de la ingerencia del ser humano dentro del Mundo, la ceguera (voluntaria) al sufrimiento animal, la guerra bacteriológica, el capitalismo salvaje. The combination of visceral scenes of brazen animal torture with lashings of black-comedy made for an altogether gut-twisting and chillingly guilt-inducing read. As I got a bit older, my drawing improved, and I gradually left behind the animated shows in favour of Doctor Who. It's a tale whose moral message is conveyed through a mix of all-too-real horrors and slapstick satire, both of which are bound to elicit strong feelings among today's readers, so beware - this is far from being a safe place for the squeamish.

I guess the immediate impression I gleaned from reading Doctor Rat is that humans need to learn to live with the world rather than against it or our long-term future is going to look more like Soylent Green than Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’d seen other fans’ drawings in there before, but somehow it felt impossible that mine would ever make it. Yet the seeds of the modern movement sprouted earlier and can be seen in this book: while the main focal point of this story is a laboratory, the author breaks away from this scene with increasing frequency to recount an animal uprising in other captive situations as well as the wild. Perhaps it’s one of those images burned into the memory which never actually happened – such as the Fourth Doctor, K9 and Leela facing off against the Daleks. During a stay as the doctor for the coal-mining town of Collie, he drew an anthropomorphic comic strip, DownUnderGround, for the local newspaper.

He won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Doctor Rat in 1977, and has also won the National Magazine Award for fiction. Books may be printed during extreme circumstances such as COVID-19 and when students can’t work from school (with physical books) and don’t have access to a device (as a temporary measure). Dr Ravi Ratnavel is a leading consultant dermatologist based on Harley Street, London and in Buckinghamshire.

I would also go out of my way to identify specific characters to avoid any doubt – they were usually highlighted with their name and a big arrow! This was a rewarding moment, especially given I hadn’t drawn any Doctor Who stuff for literally decades. Rat Trap underscores a fundamental scientific problem: animal studies fail to translate to humans because of significant differences between species. They look at my, sympathetic joy in their eyes, believing that I am an initiate to the Pleasure Dome, that I will join them in their unspeakable delights” (132).Some insurance providers will cover e-Consultation services, but please check with your provider directly before proceeding to book your video conference or private messaging session. However, the actual endgame for the novel seems to spiral out of control, with Kotzwinkle’s ambitious imaginings never really managing to be successfully portrayed to the extent that he no doubt envisaged. It is also appallingly cruel, of course, but the book concentrates on the science, and shows that everyone should want an end to animal experiments, even if they don’t care about animal suffering. All the animals gather at points around the world and are annihilated by humans in an orgy of bloodshed. These superior, human-relevant methods are already being used, but institutional, social, and economic barriers have prevented their complete acceptance.

The conceit of that novel is that the human brain is too large for its own good, and we are much better off when these survivors evolve into a seal-like species, still smart but no longer "intelligent. Regardless of Doctor Rat’s animated shouts declaring “Death is freedom” a revolution is slowly forming. I left the clinic feeling valued as a patient, well-informed, and confident in the care I had received. Rat, a mentally unbalanced but eloquent lab rat who fancies himself a scientific expert, acts as an apologist for mankind's worst acts against animals--vivisection, experimentation, hunting, and slaughter--by preaching that humans are animals' superiors, that animals don't have souls, that animals have a moral duty to serve humanity as both food and grist for scientific experimentation, and ultimately that Death is the only Freedom for animals.

But more disturbing are the descriptions of actual experimental practices which, whether we want to think about it or not, are probably going on in laboratories every day. The mad rat’s outbursts, rantings and meandering thoughts create a brilliantly scattered dissection of the distasteful events taking place within the laboratory.