J. T. McIntosh (1925–2008)

A silly title though I can see why there was a desire to replace the forgettable original title "The Fittest". This reminded me a bit of Tucker's far better The Long Loud Silence as a not very sympathetic main character makes his way through a devolving civilization. The cause initially seems kind of silly: lab-created intelligent dogs, cats, rats, and mice have escaped, reproduced rapidly, and are now relentlessly killing people and destroying our infrastructure. Eventually this is made a bit more reasonable and the nature of the change a bit more nuanced. Like Kress' Beggars in Spain, the change is small. Like humans, the animals can do one-shot learning. They see something work or fail, and they remember it immediately. Otherwise they're still animals that can't communicate or do higher order cognition. The book also manages to maintain a steady growing sense of tension and despair for much of its short length, though it eventually becomes mostly about humans vs humans, as most apocalyptic stories do.

What makes this hard to recommend is the racism and sexism that appears on virtually every page. If it were just a passage or chapter, it could be noted and passed over , but it's deep in the fabric of the story.

Only for historians of British SF.… (más)