C.A.T.S.: Cycling Across Time And Space: 11 Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories about Bicycling and Cats

Introduction

In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first human woman to travel to space. A Russian textile worker, she was selected for the space program because of her love of amateur skydiving; the Soviets were determined to beat the U.S. in sending a woman to space and scoured the country’s parachutist clubs for candidates.

That same year, a French catstronaut named Félicette became the first cat to go to space, and to this day is the only feline to have survived spaceflight. She trained much as human astronauts do, with centrifugal force simulating the gravity of re-entry, practice being confined in a small space, and the simulated noise of rockets. She didn’t long survive her return to Earth; to add further indignity, she has often been mistakenly commemorated on postage stamps as Felix. The error speaks for itself.

Tereshkova has fared much better, going on to become an engineer and career politician as well as an international celebrity. After her rush into orbit, it was almost 20 years before another woman went to space. She remains the only woman to have been on a solo mission in space.

With these early cosmonauts in mind, here is the eight volume of the Bikes in Space series of feminist science fiction (with a good deal of fantasy in the mix).

What makes the Bikes in Space books feminist? I get asked this question frequently, especially when our calls for submissions are open. More amusing is when people don’t ask, but assume—my favorite example was someone who mused, So you publish stories about planets with no men? No, I get it—all the men are enslaved! More frequent is the assumption that all the stories must by written by women in order to be feminist, or that the stories need to be overtly about fighting sexism.

None of that’s quite right. When I first started editing this series, I had one simple rule—it would not include stories that were overtly sexist. That includes stories that glorify gendered or sexual violence, tedious stereotypes like strong men saving wilting women or strong women portrayed as militantly anti-man, casual slurs, or anything told un-self-reflexively through the male gaze. Which seems like a pretty easy and obvious bar, but I still get plenty of submissions for every volume that don’t meet it. Over time, that bar has stayed pretty much the same, and I’ve learned to steer clear of stories with racist or transphobic themes and dog whistles as well.

There has been one key addition to my criteria, though, something that all the stories must be rather than must not be. In a word, it’s agency.

The idea of agency had been building in my mind—and story selections—for a while. This is the eighth volume of Bikes in Space; while editing the fourth (Biketopia), I was a little chagrined to figure out that the strongest stories in each volume were ones where the protagonist is faced with a meaningful choice, takes a risk, and is transformed. Seems basic, but I came around to it the hard way. (And when I did, it made me a better editor of nonfiction, too.) No amount of gorgeous scenery, sparkling dialogue, smooth pacing, or clever devices can save a story that’s missing that key element, because without it there is no story. Since then, I’ve learned to look for this element in screening submissions for these books.

A few years later, I was on a cross-country train ride, reading the new edition of the 1990s book Jane, which recounts the story of the Chicago Abortion Project and the team of women who worked outside the law to organize affordable, shame-free abortions in the years leading up to Roe v. Wade. Their story is moving and heroic, but what stuck with me most was the reason they did it, and which imbued every aspect of their operation: they were fighting for our right to have agency over our bodies and lives. At every step of the process, they asked the patients who came to them to deeply consider what they wanted, and encouraged them to choose freely, regardless of the coercions or obligations (whether that was to commit to the pregnancy or have the abortion) being put on them from families, partners, and society. Choice was never a euphemism for abortion—it was a call to each person to take full responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings, and decisions, even as external forces were doing their best to strip those powers away.

At the time, this was revolutionary—possession of a uterus greatly reduced your economic power and legal protections—and today when some of us can take a little more equality for granted, it’s no less of a revelation. At least, looking out those train windows and contemplating the moments in my life that I’ve defaulted to passivity, it was to me. Agency, I decided, is the key element in feminism, or any other liberation movement in which we are fighting to be able to live our lives as fully human, fully adult. This gave me the language that is what continues to motivate this project and attempt to do it better every time—as well as all the others I work on, including nonfiction.

Around that same time, I was starting to read more science fiction and fantasy with an editors’ eye. What is the fantasy? I wondered about each book (of any genre, nonfiction included), and the answer often surprised me. One pervasive trope I started to notice in fiction written with ostensibly strong female leads is a love story that begins with one partner (almost always a man) kidnapping another (almost always a woman). Seeing this once, I began to see it everywhere. This fantasy depicts the opposite of agency; many fictional women have valiantly fought their way free of truly hopeless situations, only to return (albeit, in the best of them, with a lot of spirited, boundary-setting dialogue) to the arms of the person who made it necessary for them to fight those battles to begin with. Very occasionally the would-be kidnapper even demonstrates their remorse through changed behavior; in most, it turns out to all have been a big misunderstanding, and nobody’s learned a thing. But we can learn from it; once we can see it, we don’t have to repeat this depressing theme in fiction or in life.

This obsession with agency absolutely came out in the story selections for this book. The characters shown here are positively brimming with agency, gumption, and a can-do attitude. And I was tickled to receive so many good stories featuring cats as the protagonists, many of which made it into this volume. After all, if anyone knows about making their own choices, cats do.

I hope you enjoy these stories. As I write this introduction, the COVID-19 pandemic is still ravaging the US and a violent right wing insurrection is simmering, but these stories were all written over a year ago, before any of the plot twists of the 2020s came to pass. Perhaps by the time you pick up this book, reading about characters eating in restaurants and having animated conversations with unmasked strangers won’t feel just as far fetched as the stories about cats living on spaceships. The future seems as uncertain now as it ever has, but it will absolutely be what we make it.

Elly Blue

Portland, Oregon

January, 2021

Myx Sends It

Jessie Kwak

If I don’t move, she can’t see me.

Myx crouches, still as stone, fighting her tail’s urge to flick back and forth in terror. She’s pretty sure that the creatures can only see movement — it’s always worked before. Of course, before, they’ve always been flying past her with magical, wingless speed.

They don’t have wings, but they do have their two-wheeled contraptions. And that seems to be enough.

Myx has been fascinated by the creatures since she first glimpsed one soaring bright and colorful, smearing rainbow hues she doesn’t even have names for against the brown and green backdrop of her forest home. They fly single file in formation, yelling back and forth to each other — braaap! braaap! — like Canada geese soaring overhead in their migratory patterns.

Myx doesn’t think the creatures are migrating, because she sees the same ones over and over. They seem to stay in distinct groups, maybe flying together with their litter? In fact, she has seen a few juveniles, wee ones teetering along the trails on two wheels at the encouragement of their parents.

This one — a female — has gotten separated from her flock. At first, Myx was worried about her, but she doesn’t seem to be lost. Merely resting.

Myx was resting, too. She’s been trying to fly all morning and now she’s exhausted, but too embarrassed to go back to the den. When she goes back, her brothers and sisters will probably have all mastered flight. They’ll ask her how she did. They’ll show off their swoops.

She can’t bear to tell them that she still hasn’t figured out how to fly.

The two-wheeled creature takes a swig from a cylindrical fruit she detaches from her contraption. Her gaze swings past Myx, who lets out a quick breath of relief.

It’s true.

If I don’t move, she can’t —

Myx’s breath disturbs a leaf, which tickles her whiskers. She sneezes.

Oh, no.

Oh my gosh.

The creature stares straight at her, wide-eyed in shock and wonder. Myx stares back. She’s frozen in terror.

"What are you?" The girl leans forward, tipping precariously on her two wheeled contraption in order to get a better look at Myx. She carefully unclips the sack on her back and opens it, trying to find something without taking her eyes off of Myx. She swears under her breath, then glances down to find what she’s looking for.

Without the girl’s eyes on her, Myx finds she can move again. She instinctively flaps her wings, hoping this time she’ll soar majestically into the air like her mother — but she gains only the most pathetic bit of lift. It’s just enough that when she leaps it takes her a little bit farther than usual — though nothing impressive. Myx lands on