I shall not discuss squirrels

When Cats & Dogs came out a few years ago I was extremely disappointed. I know I shouldn't get too worked up over a kids film but the premise for this one - cats and dogs fight a high tech war under our noses - looked as if it had real potential. The film was let down, however, by the shameless pro-dog propaganda stance: dogs are portrayed as the valient, obedient servants of mankind while cats ruled the Egyptian empire as gods and are plotting to re-enslave humanity. What's more this outcome is somehow contrived to be a Bad Thing.

Our feline overlords will be pleased to read Sean McMullen's light-hearted and wickedly humorous short story Mother of Champions in Interzone 222 as it goes some way towards redressing the balance. I particularly enjoyed the depiction of the deadlocked and futile conversation between the (human) scavenger and (feline) Champion - two species that think very differently.

Elsewhere in Interzone 222: cinema reviewer Nick Lowe's PhD thesis on the subject of Watchmen is published in full. Conclusion: he quite liked it - I think. There's also a moody and metaphysical Aliette de Bodard short fantasy, Ys, with an Atlantean legend at its heart. de Bodard's writing is always a pleasure and I look forward to more of her Aztec-themed stories including a forthcoming novel.

Cats Rule

I'm currently reading The Black Ship by Diana Pharaoh Francis - thanks SQT. It's too early to review but having been introduced to the character of Fitch, Thorn's somewhat overprotective pet cat, I started to wonder if fantasy, or for that matter sci-fi, might be a cat people thing. Are cat lovers over-represented amongst sci-fi or fantasy writers?

Simone Simon starred in The Cat People (1942) a genuinely creepy and sexy black and white feline variation on the werewolf legend and an all time favourite. Ripley's cat Jones survives the first encounter with the Alien(1979) and shares Ripley's escape pod - Jones reappears at the beginning of Aliens(1986) and provides one of the film's first memorable moments. There's also a memorable cat moment in The Matrix(1999) where deja vu is given a new, sinister significance.

Cat-loving sci-fi writers include Robert Heinlein, whose novels and short stories feature a great many cats, not least the mysterious Pixel, the Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Many writers have also written about cat-like alien species - for example Nimitz and his fellow treecats in David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, the Kzin of Larry Niven's Known Space and C.J.Cherryh's hani.

There are Cat People on the BBC too, Cat, the humanoid evolutionary descendent of Lister's cat smuggled aboard Red Dwarf was a high water mark in sci-fi comedy, particularly in earlier episodes that genuinely played with Cat's feline characteristics. More recently cat-like aliens have featured in Doctor Who. The BBC believes in "balanced reporting" and both series have also featured dog characters - Cat's counterpart in the Parallel Universe turns out to be a (very scruffy) dog; while Doctor Who occasionally travels with robotic companion K9.

Cats in sci-fi seem to stand for a range of different ideas, playing on their reputations for having a wild streak, being independent or untameable; they're both self-centred and deeply honourable, sinister, funny and sexy and above all enigmatic.