The Greatest Cat Story of All Time

I knew Ellen Datlow had been working for a while to get permission to reprint a Fritz Leiber story at SciFiction, and that the owners of the rights had been extremely reluctant, but her efforts paid off, and now "Space-Time for Springers" is available for all to read.

It is a delightful and heartwrenching story, and probably the greatest cat story of all time (I say probably because I can't claim to have read every cat story ever published by anyone). Leiber succeeds, I think, in convincing us that this is really how cats think (and yes, for all you evil cat-haters out there, cats certainly do think. What mine was thinking when he scampered 25 feet into a tree the other day, I don't know, however...)

This is a story that deserves great blurbs, so here are a couple:

Neil Gaiman calls "Space-Time for Springers" a "marvellous short story ... a story that everyone who's ever tried to understand kittens should read. Harlan Ellison sent Fritz a copy of my own 'Dream of a Thousand Cats' with a note from me saying it was probably Fritz's fault."

Theodora Goss lists "Space-Time for Springers" as one of her all-time favorite fantasy stories, calling it "one of the saddest stories I know".

Before it becomes one of the saddest stories known to human or animal, it is one of the most delightful. Go forth, my frisky friends, and read!

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