A review by grimmauxillatrix
Cats in Space...and Other Places by Bill Fawcett
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
3.0
This is an anthology, so the stories vary significantly in enjoyability. It's a mix of old and newer (90s-ish) mostly science fiction stories about cats. Some of the stories are about or significantly involve cats, however many only mention a cat, which seems like a bit of a cop-out. There's a decent amount of enjoyable content in this anthology, but you definitely have to sift through some questionably included filler to get to it.
5/11 of the stories in the segment of the book regarding regular cats actually had any significant cat involvement. This is a massive disappointment, and feels like they were cheating to fill pages.
The shorter "alien cats" segment did actually focus on cats, but the first and longest story in that segment was borderline unreadable due to the fact that the author made up a million words and terms and never bothers to explain them. I'm glad I decided to skip to the next story because the rest of the stories in the alien cats segment were quite enjoyable.
5/11 of the stories in the segment of the book regarding regular cats actually had any significant cat involvement. This is a massive disappointment, and feels like they were cheating to fill pages.
The shorter "alien cats" segment did actually focus on cats, but the first and longest story in that segment was borderline unreadable due to the fact that the author made up a million words and terms and never bothers to explain them. I'm glad I decided to skip to the next story because the rest of the stories in the alien cats segment were quite enjoyable.
Content Warnings
Some of the stories in this book get weeeeird, and a lot of the ones that were written in the 50s and 60s are very classically misogynistic. I wish I could trigger tag individual stories, but I can't, so:
Ship of Shadows only has women characters who are sex workers, and it's irritatingly anti-sex worker.
Bullhead has an abusive character whose dick turns into a fish. It is not NEARLY as interesting as I've made it sound.
Otherwise just take it with a grain of salt and that the contents of each individual story vary wildly.