THIS story’s main strength is in its social commentary. It does what Science Fiction is best at: holding a mirror up to humanity and forcing us to see things a different way, from the point of view of another. This can often be painful because it’s hard to show humans how much we suck without whacking us over the head with how much we suck. The author shows us our ugly tendency to discriminate and hate those we don’t understand through the characters’ dialogues about their respective cultures.

Most of the first part of the story is Jerry and Willy learning each other’s language. Willy learns Drac from the teachings of Shizumaat, a religious book that Jerry keeps around his neck. This gives the author the chance to explore the cultural differences without preaching to the reader. It makes sense that Willy would have questions about the things he is reading, and it also makes sense that Jerry and Willy would have to explain their turns of phrase to each other. This gives the author a chance to insert comments on our society through comparison with the Dracs. One example is when, during a discussion about food, Jerry calls Willy a “slave eater” because of the way humans eat. Willy is confused about this, and Jerry explains to him that, during the history of the Dracs, there was a war in which the victors took slaves—and, well, ate them. Willy compares the Dracon events to the Holocaust on Earth, yet another example of how being different doesn’t necessarily equate with not being alike.

The biggest mirror held up to us, however, is in the overall theme of the novel: that one’s enemies are often just like us, even if they appear to be vastly different. Even though this story was written in the 1970’s, I thought it was an interesting parallel to the conflicts that the United States are having with Muslim countries, religious discrimination in the States and in my own country of Canada, and the conflicts between Israel and Palestine. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the religious book that Jerry gives to Willy to learn Drac is called the Talman, which sounds similar to Torrah, Talmud, and Qu’uran combined. I also found it interesting that, like Christianity in North America and Islam in the Middle East, both of the characters’ belief systems hold the same tenants, namely “love thy neighbour.” The social comment in this book was truly ahead of its time. What writers can take away from this is that commenting on complex—yet broad—issues can make your story timeless, and it will give the reader the ability to insert their own cultural context into the comment you are trying to make.