Cats in Science Fiction

[Don]

I'm a cat and dog person. My cat, Honey Bee, loves to model. Here she is in her Halloween Costume:

Given how The Door Into Summer is my favorite Heinlein it only makes sense for Pete to be my favorite fictional feline. The ?chiral? cat in Doorways In the Sand doesn't ring a bell. The story needs a re-read.

 

[J-Sun]

When I think cats and SF, I think Leiber. Whether it's The Wanderer or The Green Millennium or "Space-Time for Springers" and other Gummitch stories collected in Gummitch and Friends and Kreativity for Kats.

Incidentally, the last book I read was James L. Cambias' The Godel Trigger, which includes an uplifted cat (though she's a bad cat).

 

[Jo Zebedee]

There are little cat bushes in Vorkosigan as well as living fur cats

 

[Parson]

I love the Tree Cats in Weber's Honor Harrington stories. But they are most definitely more than "merely" a cat. Probably best described in the book Changer of Worlds, in the later Honorverse books they begin to actively hunt Manticore's enemies.

 

[psikeyhackr]

All Cats are Gray

The Project Gutenberg eBook of All Cats Are Gray, by Andrew North

gutenberg.org

Except when they are not.

 

[BAYLOR]

Doesn't that violate the Nine Lives rule of catness. Oh right, it's science fiction. Rules do not apply.

This could end in Cat astrophy .

 

[psikeyhackr]

There are little cat bushes in Vorkosigan as well as living fur cats

Just keep Ivan Vorpatril away from them.

 

[austin_cambridge]

From my childhood...... the Telzey Amberdon books - she had a rather large cat called Tick-Tock.

 

[badfanfic]

Kate Orman's The Year of the Intelligent Tigers was quite a bit of fun. I wish she was still writing novels.

 

[J-Sun]

James L. Cambias' The Godel Trigger

Oops. The title of the book is actually The Godel Operation, in which the characters search for the Godel Trigger.

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm a cat and dog person. My cat, Honey Bee, loves to model. Here she is in her Halloween Costume:

View attachment 86120

Given how The Door Into Summer is my favorite Heinlein it only makes sense for Pete to be my favorite fictional feline. The ?chiral? cat in Doorways In the Sand doesn't ring a bell. The story needs a re-read.

It's aerodynamically impossible for a cat to fly.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I love the Tree Cats in Weber's Honor Harrington stories. But they are most definitely more than "merely" a cat. Probably best described in the book Changer of Worlds, in the later Honorverse books they begin to actively hunt Manticore's enemies.

View attachment 86121

The very first SF book I read had an alien with a psychic pet.

Star Surgeon by Alan E Nourse

I wonder if I like the Harrington series because of that.

 

[psikeyhackr]

It's aerodynamically impossible for a cat to fly.

Tell the cats.

 

[Toby Frost]

And there's Countess Groan and her hundred white cats from the Gormenghast books.

 

[worldofmutes]

The Master and Margarita is suspiciously reminiscient of science fiction… I don’t know why. But I love Behemoth.

 

[alexvss]

A YT channel that I like just released a video about cats in mythology. I believe the people from this thread will be interested on it:

 

[paranoid marvin]

It's aerodynamically impossible for a cat to fly.

Apparently the same is true of bumble bees.

I couldn't even begin to imagine the chaos caused by flying cats...

 

[Stuart Suffel]

I'm a dog person but best cat in sci-fi is Cat from Red Dwarf. He's hilarious.

Yup. Plus he helps the other actors up their game that much more...

 

[williamjm]

There's also Naomi Kritzer's short story Cat Pictures Please in which a superintelligent AI meddles in human affairs to get them to do what it really wants - posting pictures of their cats on the Internet.

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast. This page: Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer

clarkesworldmagazine.com

I've not read it but I think she also did a novel with a similar premise.

 

[Parson]

Apparently the same is true of bumble bees.

They were considered areodynamically unable to fly, but everyone knew that there must be something wrong with our modeling. The mystery has been solved about a decade ago.

The aerodynamics of bumblebee flight were solved in the early 2000s, and modern computational fluid dynamics can accurately model insect flapping flight (Young et al., 2009, Science). The key is unsteady aerodynamics and leading edge vortices.

https://www.animal-dynamics.com/ad-blog/the-bumblebee-flight-myth#:~:text=Since%20they%20do%20fly%2C%20there,conventional%20aerodynamic%20methods%20should%20allow.&text=The%20key%20is%20unsteady%20aerodynamics%20and%20leading%20edge%20vortices.