Fellow Tetrapod: speculative evolution, office politics, and cooking
by DanielMBensen
Koenraad Robbert Ruis used to be a paleontologist, but now he's a cook at the United Nations embassy to the Convention of Sophonts. His bosses must negotiate with intelligent species from countless alternate earths, and Koen must make them breakfast. It turns out, though, that Koen is rather better at inter-species communication than any other human in this world (all nine of them). Everyone loves to eat (certain autotrophs excepted).
Fellow Tetrapod is an speculative-evolution office comedy about food preparation, diplomacy, and what it’s like to be a talking animal.
Updates M-W-F. Find the Fellow Tetrapod gallery and playlist here or join my discord.
Cover art by Simon Roy. Illustrations by Tim Morris. Edited by Georgi Shopov.
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a strong universe building served by a good style
Reviewed at: 19: A Bird at the Window
Had a slight difficulty starting this, because it is different from what I expected. but at chapter 19 I'm hooked.
Great univers building, the main characters and the very diverse aliens are really believable, and I've often found myself laughing at the awkward situations.
Also, I'm french, and a novel about a good cook cannot be bad.
My comment is apparently too short, so I'll add I did not find grammatical errors, the story reads itself, and I like the system of end of page notes.
Feels like a modern Lem
Reviewed at: 60: Vitrifer
This is by far the best story I have come across on RR. Running an embassy among aliens as a junior species has a Stanislav Lem feeling, At first I was a little afraid of this becoming just a "see next alien dance by" show. But while this happens, there is plenty of character development oh the humans. Not to forget about the humour which is not like Dauglas Adams but more subtle. There are some references to more or less current events like Brexit, but very few so that this story could indeed become a classic.
The style is a high point, which made me think of Lem or Strugatzki. I am sure the author is well versed in science, but he is also a gifted writer. The only thing are the footnotes which are not so practical on RR. Even though, they add a lot of atmosphere, especially the fully academic citations including doi (which is not really something to read while reading this story).
The choices of words and the grammar is also a nice departure, straining my academic passive vocabulary a lot. (Ok, but I am at the physical science end of the campus.) Again on par with some SF classics.
There are plenty of individual characters, human and otherwise. All are clearly individuals (well, apart from the hive mind members of course) while the human fulfill (or deliberately do not) stereotypes. And the aliens are the most alien aliens I have encountered in literature for a long long time. So alien, that character is a hard word to apply to quite a few of them.
Overall, this is a page-turner and I am happy to have come across it.