"Feather Tigers" by Gene Wolfe

First appeared in Bruce McAllister's Edge. Reprinted by Terry Carr, Brian Attebery, Ursula K. Le Guin.

 

Summary:

 Quoquo, a blue alien the shape of a "child-sized" bunny, is investigating Earth after a catastrophe has wipe most life other than plants which have grown wild and thick.

Humanity has left behind intelligent machines, but Quoquo doesn't find them all that useful, saying that they lie.

Proudly, Dondiil, another blue alien, has been breeding domestic cats for 40 orbits of their home world, so that they now approximate the kind that would have existed in the area [Vietnam].

Discussion (Spoilers):

Quoquo takes a blaster into the jungle and clears a path for himself. However, Dondiil has let his genetically modified tigers to escape. Quoquo blasts them until he realizes he's been hallucinating at least some of them. Finally, at his death understanding some human concepts.

Quoquo--whose name approximates "whichever" or "whatever"--has a hard time believing human culture. He's trying to be objective but failing. His name in his own language may be an intensifier: "Quo" now with even more "quo."

Humans do things that don't make sense like having a "Paris, Texas" that has nothing to do with "Paris, France" and what the aliens think they know about the species such as cannibalism, is applied over a time and circumstance and in a way that distorts understanding. Perhaps this is why Quoquo thinks the skyacht lies to him. The history is too complex, too broad and too thick to be easily understood. 

"Feather tigers" is another of those strange humans topics where humans see something where there is nothing. Only when exposed to a similar environment is Quoquo able to understand--albeit too late.

The ship is described by some unnamed narrator as being like the phoenix, and so too is the environment returning to what it once was--even if using animals different from the ones before.

This is a solid story. But Wolfe has others, better. The more I read The Norton Book of Science Fiction, the more I sense they are the B-sides of SF: These stories deserved more attention, which is great, but the book has a grander title with a presumed grander scope. No doubt the old reviews still exist. I do know some professors of the time professed their appreciation of the book. 

I've been reading the opening essays, which are informative, and establish the parameters of selection, and perhaps this urgency to get on the right side of politics held the book back from being something closer to what the book title proclaims. There's nothing wrong with what they're wanting to do, but it requires a different title: Forgotten or Neglected Stories of an Ethically Kind SF. At least that seems to be the best title for the moment. Maybe I'll have another later.