EXPLORING THE UNIVERSE IN SIX WORDS: A JOURNEY THROUGH MICRO SCIENCE FICTION

Science fiction is big. It’s space opera. World-saving, universe-sundering, machine-dissolving stories as big as the wide world, devouring peril, surging entropy, rebel heroes, androids, and silver death rays. But six words. Now there’s a challenge. And the replies were wonderful, little worlds in those tiny words.

THE ECCENTRIC WORLD OF MICRO SCI-FI

CATS AND THE ART OF TINY STORYTELLING

It’s an art, in miniature – a story, a feeling, an imagination-spark, a gesture made by cascading language in a chiffon-light rainfall of words. It’s a tale told at half-volume and with twice the nuance, a kitten skimming a tightrope along the towpath, a story told in a few words, a world conjured up in a few steps.

WHEN CULTS AND TECHNOLOGY COLLIDE

These are tales of strange new cults, little-understood alien mores, anthropomorphic fursuits, and other eccentricities of human (often not so human) life newly exposed to a 23rd-century sensibility. What could be better than finding the answers to big philosophical questions in the unlikely form of a feline? What could be more enthralling than a universe where cats are the founders of a bizarre space cult? The promise of magic lies in the very possibility of transforming the mundane into something exotic and far away.

VENTURES INTO THE BIZARRE

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DE-EXTINCT CAT

Reviving lost species has long been a staple of sci-fi fantasy. At the end of these stories, one is left to ponder just which of the prehistoric creatures should be brought back to life first, how the human and animal world would react and what this might mean for our society and environment. The juxtaposition of the extraordinary with the ordinary invites the reader to consider the possibilities of such science.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES IN TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS

Smart houses and AI trials provide a glimpse of what our technology-centric lives could be like, if cats were the past and not our future. The feline companions of this imagined future are anthropomorphised super-predators, who have learned to trick their captors into handing over control of their environment, and might even sway the AI into their favour by applying their own inscrutable logic to a hapless programme.

INTO THE COSMOS AND BEYOND

ALIEN ENCOUNTERS OF THE FURRED KIND

Cats ruin the discovery of alien artefacts, or the tall secret of teleportation, with their insidious kitten ways. They are the true aliens, or the beloved sidekicks, of humans in their strange new world, making space seem just that little bit sillier.

VISIONS OF A FELINE FUTURE

How would cucurbitophyte or the origins of life stories play out – or the story of a sentient moon – if they were written by cats? Their natural inquisitiveness and inclination toward mischief might yet help unlock the cosmos’ biggest questions.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE BROUGHT BY CATS

THE INFINITE CHARM OF CATS

Because every word matters: the micro sci-fi tale is not unlike the real cat, where every whisker twitch or tail flick is significant. And although the stories are short, they allow for virtually endless interpretation and possibilities for the reader, and require that we extend our own imaginations to greater lengths. And in a genre where stars are often gazed at, isn’t it time we peered into the eyes of a cat instead, see the galaxy mirrored back in his unblinking gaze? In these stories, the cosmos is touched, and the human condition is examined not in tomes spanning hundreds of pages or thousands, but in those worlds encapsulated in six words – and the sensorial silence of a slow cat-stroke.