"Gardner Dozois - A Cat Horror Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

regard such bodies of water, as though they were an unholy and dreadful
anomaly in the natural order of the world.


1.Actually, “groom me,” in the True Tongue. The People consider humans to be
bizarrely handicapped creatures since they must groom with their hands rather
than with their tongues. They are widely pitied for this, although there is
derisive speculation as to why this is so — in fact, in one dialect, the generic
term for “human “ translates to
“Those-Who-Must-Groom-With-Their-Paws-Because
-Their-Breath-Smells-So-Bad.”

1.In the True Tongue, the word for “torture” also implies a sort of willful,
capricious, malevolent playfulness, and a highly refined aesthetic appreciation
of the pain you are inflicting; if you’re ever seen one of the People with a bird
or a mouse that they’ve caught, you get the idea.

****

We’re pleased to have some short fiction from Gardner Dozois. His short stories are
too few and far between. Although he has won two Nebulas for his fiction, he is
perhaps better known for his award-winning editing skills. Every month he edits an
issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and each year he compiles The Year’s
Best Science Fiction for St. Martin’s Press. His most recent work of book-length
fiction is a short story collection, Geodesic Dreams: The Best Short Fiction of
Gardner Dozois, published by Ace

In “A Cat Horror Story,” Gardner takes on a difficult alien viewpoint—one
that exists close to home.