FLUFFY'S REVOLUTION

In a future America where
intelligent, genetically modified animals are a persecuted minority, a talking
cat joins a mixed-species, underground resistance movement.

By 2135, science/technology has
solved many of humanity’s ills. The human population has leveled at a few
billion and nuclear weapons no longer exist. Still, a ruling “Triumvirate” of
corporations decides society needs a scapegoat (or scape-dog or -cat or -pig) for
any discontent. It settles on “GAB” animals, different types of domestic
critters, from mice on up, with Genetically Altered Brain heredity traits.
Medical tinkering rendered their species supersmart and even
telepathic/telekinetic. But, occupying a literal no man’s land in terms of
legal rights, GAB fauna are feared and strictly regulated, with many
free-roaming ones cruelly caught and exterminated. Fluffy, a female GAB cat on
America’s East Coast, has lived a safe, sheltered, high-rise life with her
human dad, a widowed professor. Answering psychic summonses from the animal
world, Fluffy departs for adventures that lead her to furry revolutionaries
(and their human allies), a Scrooge-like robotics tycoon high in the
Triumvirate, bounty hunters, and a clandestine, mountain-bound “Animal U” (with
distinctly New Agey overtones), where GAB beasts develop their powers and eat
vegetarian fare in love and harmony. A natural disaster provides the means by
which Fluffy and friends show their worth. This upbeat sci-fi novel by Myers (Making
It, 2017) seems pitched to the YA demographic, despite having no juvenile
characters—unless the audience counts cat and dog years. The prose stylings
are serviceable enough, and readers will
not find anything to threaten their rosy memories of yesteryear’s superficially
similar Rats of NIMH trilogy by Robert C. O’Brien and Jane Leslie Conly. But
there are some kindred spirits here, praising the animals as morally superior to
the Homo sapiens, with
their treacheries, drone warcraft, and global warming. The pace moves rapidly,
and the length is just about right. Maybe the biggest surprise: a corporate
minion surnamed Trump who isn’t particularly evil or outwardly symbolic of a
certain real-life, political/capitalist dynasty. 

Brisk sci-fi futurism with a feline
star and a positive outlook.