My dramatic reading of Legend of the Wolf-Cat

For this installment of my science fiction reading project, I wanted to share with everyone a chapter out of one of my favorite “fantasy-like” science fiction novels: The Celestial Steam Locomotive Volume I of The Song of Earth. I found this novel quite randomly when I was 15. I was wandering around the school library in the science fiction section, and the cover and title of the book caught my eye. So, I picked it up and started reading.

The entire novel has a kind of mythic story-telling quality. It takes place so far in the future that the technology is indistinguishable from magic, and even events in our future are myths of the distant past for the characters in the novel. This chapter, Legend of the Wolf Cat, is a fanciful fairy tale that uses fable story-telling format to teach a lesson about jealousy, to explain continental drift, and to explain the name of a particular animal….

OK, I’ll admit it: the last part is my favorite part. It is the punch-line of the story, and the last line of the chapter. And it is one of the worst-best bad puns I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to give it away, you’ll just have to listen to the story….