CZM Book Club: All Cats Are Grey, by Andre Alice Norton

0:01 Cool Zone Media.

0:06 Hello, and welcome to Cool Zoned Media. Book Club, the only book club you don't have to do the reading for because I do it for you. And what's that you're thinking? You're thinking that I forgot the chant book Club, book Club, book Club, Well, book Club, book Club book Club. Today Uncles Owned Media book Club. We're going to go back to the golden age of science fiction with some good pulp fiction. This story is by a grand master, but it's a little complicated who it's by. Actually, it was published under the name Andrew North. And you're thinking to yourself, I don't I don't know that name. Yeah, I didn't either, And it was published by Andrew North in the August September nineteen fifty three issue of Fantastic

0:53 Universe Science Fiction. Just the kind of stuff I grew up with. I got really lucky. My dad always had Asimov as an FNS and all those things sitting around the cover of this particular issue is incredible. It's the statue of Liberty buried up to her chest and sand being visited by aliens in UFO and that's all like some good Ozzi Mandayas shit right there. But the story was published under the name Andrew North, but later in life this same author published under the name Alan Weston and then Andre Norton. But she was born in good old Cleveland, Ohio as Alice Mary Norton in February nineteen twelve.

1:35 She was an absolute titan of pulp writing and earned a lot of firsts and sci fi awards, including the first woman to be Gandolf grand Master of Fantasy, the first to be an SFWA Grand Master, and as a proud paying DU's member of the SFWA, the closest thing we have to a union. They get really defensive when you say it's a union. It's not a union, it's a trade association. But they help set the rates for fiction so that people get paid a decent amount. And I'm grateful to be part of it. And she was the first woman to be an SFWA Grand Master and to be inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. She is often called the Grand Dame of science fiction. I don't know how to pronounce that, but

2:20 it's like Dame and grand with an e at the nd. And she did it all while working as a librarian at the Cleveland Public Library, where, among other things. She defended the acquisition of the Hobbit, and also working at the Library of Congress. Here's her nerd cred. I mean the library is enough nerd cred. Actually, all of that was nerd cred. Here's even more of it. She played Dungeons and Dragons with Gary Geigax. In nineteen seventy six, she wrote some fiction for the early franchise called quag Keep.

2:50 According to Publishers Weekly, not only was it the first book to be written about D and D, it's the first book to be written about any tabletop role playing game and is the originator of the trope where tabletop role playing game players literally get sucked into the game that they're playing. And if you don't know what any that means, I mean, she's got some real nerd bonafides.

3:11 She's a Cleveland queen, and she never got married. In two thousand and five, after her death, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America the SFWA started the Norton Award, given annually to an outstanding work of fantasy or science fiction for the young adult literature market. Notable past winners include Children of Blood and Bone by Tommy Adiemi. In twenty eighteen. I show Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett in twenty ten and Sister Mine by nal Hopkinson in twenty thirteen.

3:43 She changed her name legally to andre Alice Norton because being a woman in science fiction publishing was a nightmare. I did the opposite. I started writing as Margaret Kildroy before I came out as trans, years before I came out as trans. I think because of my subconscious news stuff. But andre Norton wrote this fun story, the one that we're going to read to you. It's called All Cats Are Gray, and it's possible that it stood out because that sounds almost like all cats are beautiful acab But in this case it's akag and the name of the story is not a reference to the slogan. It's a coincidence.

4:21 It is a deeply pulpy story, particularly in the plot structure and the genre conventions. And yeah, contrast it with some of the more modern stuff we read. Think about it, do some learning, because, as we say, this is the book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you, but you have to do the thinking. Don't let me do your thinking for you unless you want to give me money. No, I can't really bring myself to do that. Okay, But Hazel, who picked it, mostly likes it because it sounds like it was written by the protagonist's wistful lesbian X. And that's just the head canon we have over here. Please don't come the ghost of miss Norton. We love and respect your work, and here it is. All Cats Are

5:07 Gray by Alice Andre Norton Stina of the Space Ways. That sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar Vedo spreads. I ought to know. I've tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Stina was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a lunar plant. Even the hair netted down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast. And I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray space. Al Stina was strictly background stuff, and this is where she spent most of her free hours, in the smelly, smoky background corners of any stellar port dive frequented by free spacers. If you really looked for her, you could spot her just sitting there, listening to the talk, listening and remembering she didn't open her own mouth often.

6:05 When she did, spacers had learned to listen, and the lucky few her heard her rare spoken words. These will never forget Stina. She drifted from port to port, being an expert operator on the big calculators. She found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time, and she came to be something like the masterminded machines. She tended smooth gray without much personality of her own. But it was Stina who told Bub Nelson about the Jovian moonrights, and her warning saved Bub's life. Six months later, it was Stina who identified the piece of stone Keen Clark was passing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked slittite. That started a rush which made ten fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets,

6:58 and last of all whacked the case of the Empress of Mars. All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge in her photographic memory tried at one time or another to balance the scales, but she wouldn't take so much as a cup of canal water at their expense, let alone the credits. They tried to push on her. Bob Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat.

7:26 About a year after the Jovin affair, he walked into the free Fall one night and dumped Bat down on her table. Bat looked at Stina and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nod at once. From then on they traveled together, the thin gray woman and the big gray tomcat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes.

7:51 He developed a liking for vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass, and he was always at home on any table where Stina elected to drop him. This is really the story of Steena Bat, Cliff Moran, and the Empress of Mars, a story which is already a legend of the Spaceways. And it's a damn good story too. I ought to know, having framed the first version of it myself, for I was there right in the Regal Royal when it all began, on the night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an antman's belly and twice as nasty. He'd had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man into a slug snake, and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff had fought his way up from the back courts of Ventaport. Lose his

8:42 ship and he'd slip back there to rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he picked out a table for himself and set out to drink away his troubles. However, just as the first bottle arrived, so did a visitor. Came out of her corner bat curled around her shoulders, stole wise his favorite mode of travel.

9:06 She crossed over and dropped down without invitation at Cliff's side. That shook him out of his sulks, because Stina never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the man stones on Gannymede had come stumping in, it wouldn't have made more of us. Look out of the corners of her eyes. She stretched out one long fingered hand and set aside the bottle he had ordered, and said only one thing, it's about time for the Empress of Mars to appear again. Cliff scowled and bit his lip.

9:39 He was tough, tough, as jet lining, you had to be granite inside and out to struggle up from ventaport to a ship command. But we could guess what was running through his mind at that moment. The Empress of Mars was just about the biggest prize a spacer could aim for. But in the fifty years she had been following her queer derelict orbit through space, many men had tried to bring her in, and none had succeeded. A pleasure ship carrying untold wealth, she had been mysteriously abandoned in space by passengers and crew, none of whom had ever been seen or heard of again. At intervals thereafter she had been sighted even boarded, Those who ventured into her either vanished or returned swiftly without any believable explanation

10:29 of what they had seen, wanting only to get away from her as quickly as possible. But the man who could bring her in, or even strip or clean in space, that man would win the jackpot, all right. Cliff slammed his fist down on the table. I'll try even that. Stina looked at him, much as she must have looked at Bat the day that Bob Nelson brought him to her.

10:54 And nodded. That was all I saw. The rest of the story came to me in pieces months later, in another port half the system away. But do you know what's not half the system away? Dear listener? Do you know what is right next to you? Do you know what the cat will always drag in for you when you've least want it. That's right, it's ads, and we're back.

11:31 Cliff took off that night. He was afraid to risk waiting with a writ out that could pull the ship from under him, and it wasn't until he was in space that he discovered his passengers, Stina and Bat. We'll never know what happened then. I'm betting that Stina made no explanation at all. She wouldn't. It was the first time she had decided to cash in on her own tip, and she was there, that was all. Maybe that point weighed with Cliff. Maybe he just didn't care anyway. The three of them were together when they sighted the Empress riding her dead lights gleaming a ghost ship in night space.

12:09 She must have been an eerie sight because her other lights were on too, In addition to the red warnings at her nose, she seemed alive, a flying Dutchman of space. Cliff worked his ships skillfully alongside and had no trouble in snapping magnetic lines to her lock. Some minutes later, the three of them passed into her. There was still air in her cabins and corridors, air that bore a faint, corrupt taint, which set Bat to sniffing greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human nostrils.

12:44 Cliff headed straight for the control cabin, but Stina and Bat were prowling. Closed doors were challenged to both of them, and Stina opened each as she passed, taking a quick look at what lay within. The fifth door opened on a room which no woman could leave without further investigation. I don't know who had been housed there when the Empress left Port on her last lengthy cruise. Anyone really curious can check back on the old photo reg cards.

13:13 But there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowded with crystal and jeweled containers, along with other lures for the female, which drew Stina in. She was standing in front of the dressing table when she glanced into the mirror, glanced into it, and froze over her right shoulder.

13:38 She could see the spider silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems, the dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out, as cats will, watching those gems, watching them and something else. Put out her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle. As she unstoppered it, she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air, and tinkled its siren song.

14:12 It was as if an idle hand played. Bat spat almost noiselessly, but he did not retreat. Bat had not yet decided his course. She put down the bottle. Then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without hurry or sign of disturbance, on a tour about the room, And although she approached the bed, she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to do that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue. He leaped from the bed and escorted something to the door, remaining a careful distance behind. Then he mewed loudly twice. Stina followed him and opened the door wide. Bat went straight on down the corridor, as

15:03 intent as a hound on the warmest of scents. Stina strolled behind him, holding her pace to the unhurried gait of an explorer which sped before them. Both was invisible to her, but Bat was never baffled by it. They must have gone into the control cabin almost on the heels of the unseen, if the unseen had heels, which there was good reason to doubt, for Bat crouched just within the doorway and refused to move on. Stina looked down at the length of the instrument panels and officers station seats, to where Cliff Moran worked on the heavy carpet.

15:38 Her boots made no sound, and he did not glance up, but sat humming through set teeth as he tested the tardy and reluctant responses to buttons which had not been pushed in years. To human eyes. They were alone in the cabin, but bat still followed a moving something with his gaze, and it was something which he had at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now he took a step or two forward and spat his loathing, made plane by every raised hair along his spine.

16:10 And in that same moment, Sheena saw a flicker, a flicker of vague outline against Cliff's hunch shoulders, as if the invisible one had crossed the space between them. But whyat had been revealed against Cliff and not against the back of one of the seats, or against the panels, the wall of the corridor, the cover of the bed where it had reclined and played with its lute. What could bat see? And you, dear listener, what do you think that bat sees? Ponder it over while the ads do their thing, or you can hit the like forward fifteen seconds, button about I don't know, ten times, I don't really care. Make your own choices, cowards, and we're back the storehouse. Memory that had served Stina so well

17:06 through the years clicked open a half forgotten door. With one swift motion, she tore looser space all and flung the baggy garment across the back of the nearest seat. Bat was snarling, now, emitting the throaty, rising cry that was his hunting song. But he was edging back back towards Stena's feet, shrinking from something he could not fight, but which he faced defiantly. If he could draw it after him past that dangling space, all he had to It was their only chance. What the cliff had come out of his seat was staring at them. What he saw must have been weird enough. Stina bare armed and shouldered, her usually stiffly netted hair falling wildly down her back.

17:51 Stina watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single, wild chance. Bat crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon. Toss me your blaster. Stina gave the order, calmly, as if they still sat at their table in the Regal Royal, and as quietly Cliff obeyed. She caught the small weapon out of the air with a steady hand, caught and leveled it. Stay just where you are, she warned Bat. Bring it back. With a last throat splitting screech of rage and hate, Bat twisted to safety between her boots. She pressed with thumb and forefinger, firing at the space alls. The material turned to powdery flakes of ash, except for certain bits, which still flapped from the scorched seat,

18:43 as if something had protected them from the force of the blast. Bat sprang up in the air with a scream that tore their ears. What began Cliff again. Stina made a warning motion with her left hand. Wait, still tense, still watching Bat. The cat dashed madly around the cabin twice, running crazily with white ringed eyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. Then he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked back over his shoulder for a long, silent moment, he sniffed delicately. Stina and Cliff could smell it too, now, a thick, oily stench, which was not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster shell. Bat came back, treading daintily across the carpet, almost on the tips of his paws. He raised his head as he

19:33 passed Stina, and then went confidently beyond to sniff, to sniff, and spit twice at the unburned strips of the space all. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy. He sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Stina sighed once and dropped into the navigator's seat. Maybe now you'll tell me what the hell's happened, Cliff exploded as he took the blaster out of her hand. Gray, she said, dazedly. It must have been gray, or I couldn't have seen it like that. I'm colorblind, you see.

20:10 I can see only shades of gray. My whole world is gray like bats. His world is gray, too, all gray. But he's been compensated for He can see above and below our range of color vibrations, and apparently so can I. Her voice quavered, and she raised her chin with a new air Cliff had never seen before, a sort of proud acceptance. She pushed back her wandering hair, but she made no move to imprison it under the heavy neck again.

20:41 That's why I saw the thing when it crossed between us against her space. All it was another shade of gray in outline. So I put out mine and waited for to show against that. It was our only chance, Cliff. It was curious at first, I think, and it knew we couldn't see it, which is why it waded to it. But when Bat's actions gave it away, it moved. So I waited to see that flicker against the space awe, and then I've let him have it. It's really very simple.

21:10 Cliff laughed a bit shakily. But what was that great thing? I don't get it. I think it was what made the Empress a derelict, something out of space, maybe here from another world, somewhere. She waved her hands. It's invisible because it's a color beyond our range of sight. It must have stayed in here all these years, and it kills.

21:32 It must when his curiosity is satisfied. Swiftly, she described the scene in the cabin and the strange behavior of the gem pile, which had betrayed the creature to her. Cliff did not return his blaster to its holder. Any more of them on board. Do you think he didn't look pleased at the prospect? Stina turned to Bat. He was paying particular attention to the space between two front toes and the process of a complete bath. I don't think so. But Bat will tell us if there are He can see them clearly, I believe, But there weren't anymore.

22:07 And two weeks later, Cliff, Stina, and Bat brought the Empress into the Lunar Quarantine Station. And that is the end of Stina's story, because, as we've been told, happy marriages need no chronicles, and Stina had found someone who knew of her gray world and did not find it too hard to share with her, someone besides Bat. It turned out to be a real love match. The last time I saw her, she was wrapped in a flame red cloak from the looms of Regal and wore a fortune at joven Rubies blazing on her wrists. Cliff was flipping a three figure credit bill to a waiter, and Bat had a row of vernal juice glasses set up before him. Just a little family party out on the town.

22:54 The end. Okay, what Hazel has to say about this story? This story quite a lot, and I don't usually like golden age pulp all that much, but it's mostly a well written female character written by a woman that's pretty fun for me. Miss Norton or her editors wrote this blurb for the magazine. Under normal conditions, a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one, But out in deep space, the normal may be reversed for humans at any rate. And back to Hazel, And that's really interesting to me. I wouldn't have clocked this as an early story about disability, but I can totally see what miss Norton is trying to do. It's, you know, a little old fashioned, but reading generously. Sure that works for me.

23:38 The stuff about color blindness and the twist of a creature being a color outside of human doesn't land as well today because we have a different scientific understanding of vision and color blindness. But who knows, maybe that was just different in the nineteen fifties. We still get a story of a woman with a disability who has gotten crafty, needing to accommodate it. Light Year is more competent than any man in the story. You've seen her well known problem solving skills to solve a problem that no one else could. That's pretty nifty to me, as a chronically old person who needs to get crafty to work around a lot of my own debilitating symptoms. It's cool to see that represented in early pulp. IWO, all cops are grassterds, okay,

24:18 And then this is me again. It is Margaret, what do I have to say about this. I have so much to say about this. I always have so much to say about this. There's a lot of stuff that wouldn't pass muster in modern short story writing, and that doesn't make this wrong. It means that we just have different tastes, right, Like what counts as well written has changed.

24:39 But this is clearly a well written and entertaining story. I'm never not entertained by this story. So instead we have this assumption that this, like modern way of doing things is more correct. For example, you should have should have quote if I had this story in front of me as like a this is really funny. Because Andre Norton is a grandmaster of SFWA, I'm like a lowly dues pain member of SFWA. But if I had this story in front of me in a workshop, I would say, you need to foreshadow at the very least the color blindness, right, The thing that is the grand reveal can't come out of nowhere. You have to has to feel earned so that the reader has a chance to feel smart. You know, the perfectly written modern story, the reader figures it out

25:23 just ahead of the reveal in a way that makes the reader feel smart, even though you're actually setting it up, so of course they figure it out. You actually are revealing it before the reveal, right, But there's instead in this case, it's like, ah, I'm colorblind, That's why I know this thing was like not the way you would do it in a modern sense. And also there's also kind of a trope of like, I have heightened senses because of this disability that when I've been reading about people from the disability community talking about how disabilities represent in fiction that they're like not in love with Again, this is the nineteen fifties, and you know, I think it's really interesting and worthwhile to trace how these things

26:05 go and like what we consider like intentionally a positive story and how that changes. But the main thing, I enjoy this story, and the fact that I enjoy this story means something to me. The discourse on Blue Sky, I'm so sorry I've said both of those nouns. I'm very sorry. But the discourse on Blue Sky last week, as you listen to this, if you listen to it when it comes out, was about AI writing. But it wasn't really discourse, which makes it more fun. It was just people dumping on using AI for fiction writing. And lots of science fiction writers being like, you couldn't catch me dead using AI because there was some fucking mainstream article that was like, all writers use AI, some of them are just honest about it, and like, no, no,

26:50 most writers don't use AI. Why would we want to, Like, there's no technical thing preventing us from writing. It's purely a matter of time, time and skill and learned ability and ideas right, and it's one of the most glorious and beautiful things that you get to do with your life sometimes. And that article, I think, the article that everyone was dunking on and I dunked on it too, and because it needed to be dunked on, it was saying, how you know, oh, people call it AI slop, but what about human slop? People are like all the old stuff was all crappy and written badly, you know. And the thing is, it's not slop. It's pulp. And there's a world of difference. Pulp is what gives you the fiber, it keeps you regular and pulp fiction it's entertaining and

27:42 beautiful partly because it comes from people, and specifically it's kind of to me sort of holy because we get to have these glimpses into someone else's imagination. What we get to see by reading a story that's kind of just pulpy fun adventure is we get to see what someone like fantasized about was like, Oh, wouldn't this be neat?

28:05 And this story is such a perfect example of it because it, I mean, it reads like fan fiction. Again, I feel really weird coming for this story in any way, I really like it, but it reads like fan fiction. You have a character who can kind of do no wrong, and she's like, I don't know if she's a self insert about Norton, miss Norton, but it's like very much the kind of it's a cat lady who's always overlooked, but at the end she lets her hair down when she learns her own agency, and she's never gonna put it back up again. And she's like sort of boring and gray, but that she finds her love match in this like rough and tumble spacer she saves like it's like the most wish fulfillment early specfic woman writing thing,

28:49 and it's glorious for that. That is what we get to see and experience by reading All cats are gray, and whereas just some random shit spit out that has a story shaped form. It's meaningless. So here's to human slop because it's not human slop, it's pulp, and I love it. I also love that pulp makes you want to write. It's like punk. You listen to it and you're like, I could do that, but you also have a good time listening to it, and so you can do that. You genuinely can. You can go start a band with three chords. And there's a lot of genres that do this, and folk and hip hop are like two of the other ones that do this off the top of my head, where it's just like you could just do it, and you should, and it rules, and

29:43 so you should go write stuff. You should go write pulp. There's no barrier. You don't need to hold yourself up to some elaborately high standard. Now. I actually also at the same time kind of will defend gatekeepers publishers. This is the only context in which I'll defend Gatekeeper, And I think I think that editors of magazines and places like that do a really important job of filtering through slush and presenting you with stories that are entertaining and well written. And I actually do think that the story is entertaining, well written just to a different standard than the current modern standard. And I don't know. So it's like, go write your story, and maybe it isn't good enough for a science fiction magazine to pay you a professional

30:27 rate for That's okay, write another story. But in the meantime, it might be good enough to entertain your friends, right, Like, I'll go see the local punk bands play, even if they're not very good, and I'll have a good time. But then some punk bands are so good that they go on international tours and everyone is like, oh, this band fucking rules. You know. Anyway, that's what this story made me think about. Well, take care of each other, Free Palestine, fuck ice, See you next week.

31:00 It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.