C.A.T. [Kindle Edition]

My dear Sir or Madam (or Your Royal Ma'am if One has forgiven me and is reading my reviews again), let me make one thing perfectly clear; I am a dog-lover.

There, I've said it. No, no - not a dog-lover in the sense of the details of that unfortunate recent legal case 'The Vicar, his wife and their chocolate Labrador', but in the sense that my mentality predisposes me towards dogs and doggy-behaviours rather than puddy-tats.

And yet ... this short story kept me flicking the pages on my Kindle from start to finish and flicking, I may say, with not a little disregard for the work of my medical-manicurist, Enriqué. I wanted to know what was going to happen.

It's space, it's space-craft, it's plausible science and there's peril for all including the C.A.T.

The cat's on the mechanical lam (no pun on species intended, but appreciated all the same because I'm cheap like that) and is under pain of deletion. Everyone else is crashing about a bit and trying to kill one another. If this sounds rather like a regular day at home to you then welcome to my world, sister, although things are admittedly quieter now that Grandma has been sent back inside for breaking her parole.

The author doesn't dictate every detail of the scenery or action but says just enough to kick-start any blancmange-like imagination. In my mind the action took place in a station just like those from the "Star Cops" series of the nineteen-eighties, the spacecraft were - to me I say, and to me alone - of the "Dan Dare" variety and the exposed spaces of the universe icy cold, edgy and on my Cook's Tour list. I'm sure that the author envisaged something entirely different but then that is the beauty of the written word when used with precision.... I'm free, you're free and the eBook's about twenty-six shillings.

The language is direct and clear and is, unlike my incurable yet curiously quite printable logorrhoea, very easy to read.

Better yet, having zipped through this one like a starving chap at a roadside oysters & chips bar, I find that there are other adventurings available such as Neptune's Angel (CAT) and still further juicy items from the same author to be found in Escape Velocity: The Anthology.

Give it a go - the most you risk is a robotic AI furball. Read more ›

What's 1ft tall, metal on the inside and furry on the outside? No? Okay, I'll tell you then. It's called C.A.T. and I'm sure it has an attitude chip fitted somewhere.

Rosie Oliver paints a cute feline as the main character in her scifi adventure titled, C.A.T.

C.A.T. is a self-learner, a rogue AI consciousness outlawed in the human colonies. C.A.T. hides its true identity inside a standard issue robo-cat. But underneath the purr a fierce intelligence is on the prowl.

C.A.T. `belongs' to Zacman, the commander at Triton Base. Zacman dwells heavily on the lost pilots in recent incidents. Something about the missions just doesn't sit right with him. Being a modest `maths-head', Zacman discovers anomalies in their flight-plans and decides to investigate.

Meanwhile, C.A.T. smells a rat and decides it better stick with Zacman rather than take its chances at the base where it might get whipped up and used for spare parts.

C.A.T. goes with the commander on a space flight and together they unravel the mystery of the recent accidents.

Oliver clearly writes with technical experience at the forefront. Her world is solidly constructed with believable technology, and her vision of the future is clearly grounded in today's technology. I enjoyed the way she blended the science bits with humor.

It was a fun read and I'm looking forward to reading the next installment " Neptune's Angel (C.A.T.)"

I'm told there's a third story being written...

Don't be fooled by the somewhat fluffy title, or by the first line (`C.A.T. sensed it was going to be a bad fur day') this is hard sci-fi of the highest order. This story is well written, cleverly characterised and set in a plausible future. Rosie Oliver's world-building and her description of the environs around Neptune are first rate, as is her actual science which all stands up. Most importantly though, it is a story about trust and how trust between two parties can be fostered and developed. (`...for a machine to trust a human, that would be a big step for all self-learners. C.A.T. would be the first.')

It's also fun to read, as most of the other reviewers have indicated, especially if you are a cat owner as I am. Rosie Oliver has some of the cat's characteristics and behaviours down perfect here (even if this is the robo-version). She has the cat's self-interest down pat (`In a nanosecond C.A.T's logic module decided on the solution to this problem. C.A.T. would have to keep Zachman alive... at any cost.') and also some of the cat's movements. I found myself rooting for this robot/ animal hero far more readily than most I've read in short fiction this year. Bravo!

This is a really fun and innovative short story, one of those that you pick up and finish before you know where the time went! Without giving too much away (you may have guessed though) C. A. T. is a robot feline, a self learner, and the hero of the tale. What makes C. A. T.'s story so cool is that the science aspect of the narrative is both interesting and key to the story's progress.
Good entertainment, very visual and at the end of it you will definately be a
C. A. T. lover!!

In the short story, "C.A.T.," by Rosie Oliver, it's a bad fur day for C.A.T., a robot-cat owned by Commander Zacman on Triton Base, a space-command base on the frozen moon orbiting Neptune. Can a self-learner like C.A.T. (illegal in the world Oliver has created), and a "maths-head" like Commander Zacman, find a reason to trust each other on a mission where both of their lives are endangered? Will they solve the mystery before the villain, who is planning a massacre on earth, carries out his plan? Will C.A.T. be scrapped for spare parts? Oliver has created an innovative world and an interesting and humorous story. Rosie, this would make a good series.