Tuesday 23 March 2010

Beware the Cat

This F&SF piece gets a few things wrong. Baldwin's Beware the Cat was wrtten in 1553 and published 1570, not '1533' as here; and it's not really an attempt to worldbuild an intelligent feline society, so much as it is a clunking allegorical anti-Catholic satire (to be fair, Norwood notes 'Some of the stories have a strong anti-Papist theme'). But a trick is missed by not including the full title: A Marvellous Hystory intitulede Beware the Cat, Conteynyng diuerse wonderfull and incredible matters, very pleasant and mery to read. For myself, I'd like that to become the default title setting for all SFF. (For example: A Marvellous History entitled Yellow Blue Tibia, Containing diverse wonderful and incredible matters, very pleasant and merry to read.)

On second thoughts, maybe not.

No comments: