Genius Of The Species
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Genius Of The Species
"Genius of the Species" is a science fiction short story by American writer Reginald Bretnor (first published with the author name "R. Bretnor"), which originally appeared in the anthology ''9 Tales of Space and Time'' edited by Raymond Healy. The story is set in the Soviet Union where a rat problem is getting out of control due to the laziness of cats. This problem is solved by a government program to use artificial means to raise the intelligence of cats to an IQ of 20.2 so that they can be taught Marxism and subsequently realize catching rats is for the greater good. However, due to a calculation error on part of the scientist responsible for this program, the cats end up with an IQ of 202 rather than 20.2. With this superior intellect cats become the dominant species in the Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose ...
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Science Fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has beco ...
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Reginald Bretnor
Reginald Bretnor (born Alfred Reginald Kahn; July 30, 1911 – July 22, 1992) was an American science fiction author who flourished between the 1950s and 1980s. Most of his fiction was in short story form, and usually featured a whimsical story line or ironic plot twist. He also wrote on military theory and public affairs, and edited some of the earliest books to consider SF from a Literary criticism, literary theory and criticism perspective. Bretnor's father, Grigory Kahn, was born in Russia, but he and his family left Siberia for Japan in 1917 and later settled in the United States. Bretnor's mother was born a British subject, became a Russian subject, spent from 1917 to 1920 in Japan, then settled in the United States with her children Reginald and Margaret. Reginald Bretnor himself was born in Vladivostok, Imperial Russia, Russia. He was married to Helen Harding, a translator and U.C. Berkeley librarian, from 1948 until her death in 1967. He subsequently married Rosalie, who ...
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9 Tales Of Space And Time
''9 Tales of Space and Time'' is an anthology of original science fiction stories edited by Raymond J. Healy, published in hardcover by Henry Holt in 1954. A British edition appeared in 1955, with the title rendered ''Nine Tales of Space and Time''. No paperback editions are reported. Contents * "The Idealists", John W. Campbell, Jr. * "Shock Treatment", J. Francis McComas * " Genius of the Species", Reginald Bretnor * "Overture", Kris Neville * "Compound B", David H. Fink * "The Chicken Or the Egg-Head", Frank Fenton * "The Great Devon Mystery", Raymond J. Healy * "Balaam", Anthony Boucher * "Man of Parts", Horace L. Gold Reception P. Schuyler Miller, noting that Healy had managed to commission stories from the editors of the major science fiction magazines of the time, described the anthology as "one of the best anthologies you'll see in 1954.""The Reference Library", ''Astounding Science Fiction ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction mag ...
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Raymond Healy
Raymond John Healy (September 21, 1907 – July 17, 1997) was an American anthologist who edited four science fiction anthologies from 1946 to 1955, two with J. Francis McComas. Their first collaboration, ''Adventures in Time and Space'', (1946) is generally recognized as the finest early anthology from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Books edited * ''Adventures in Time and Space'' (1946), with J. Francis McComas * ''New Tales of Space and Time'' (1951) * ''9 Tales of Space and Time ''9 Tales of Space and Time'' is an anthology of original science fiction stories edited by Raymond J. Healy, published in hardcover by Henry Holt in 1954. A British edition appeared in 1955, with the title rendered ''Nine Tales of Space and Time' ...'' (1954) * ''Selections from Adventures in Time and Space'' (1954), paperback, subset of stories from the hardback * ''More Adventures in Time and Space'' (1955), paperback, subset of stories from the hardback References External links * * ...
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ...
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Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand Social class, class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist philosophy, Marxist theory exists. In addition to the schools of thought which emphasize or modify elements of classical Marxism, various Marxian concepts have been incorporated and adapted into a diverse array of Social theory, social theories leading to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy, the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms dialectical mater ...
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Communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist st ...
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1954 Short Stories
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations. * January 21 – The first nuclear-powered subm ...
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