"Genius of the Species" is a

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 unive ...

short story by American writer

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 l ...

(first published with the author name "R. Bretnor"), which originally appeared in the anthology ''

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' ...

'' edited by Raymond Healy. The story is set in the

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 ...

where a

rat Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. Species of rats are found throughout the order Rodentia, but stereotypical rats are found in the genus ''Rattus''. Other rat genera include ''Neotoma'' ( pack rats), ''Bandicota'' (bandicoot ...

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 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 S ...

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 goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

world.

External links

* 1954 short stories Science fiction short stories {{1950s-sf-story-stub