Review: The Game of Rat and Dragon

The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm a dog person, so cats are instinctively the enemy. I tend to avoid stories (and jokes and memes and puns and etc...) about cats. Hence, this is decidedly a bad place for me to start reading Cordwainer Smith.

I liked this set up, despite the cats, but I still thought the narrative was plain. Apparently, there's much more to this short story than I would have noticed on my own. Which is one of my favourite things about our Science Fiction Book Club. I enjoyed reading what others got out of this story more than I enjoyed the story.

For me, it felt like reading a description about this story was near enough to the same experience as reading the story. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more, then, if I hadn't read anything it before starting. Too late now for me, but perhaps not for you, which is why this review says practically nothing of worth.

It seems that this story fits into a larger universe of 'Instrumentality' stories and I would be keen to have a look further into those.

"After all these years, nobody knows whether we have souls or not."
"But I saw one once."

One last useless aside; I hadn't realised that Cordwainer Smith was a real person, a distinct author. I had mistakenly presumed it was one of Harlan Ellison's pseudonyms. Well, finding new SF authors is always great for adding bulk to Mount TBR.

View all my reviews