Rats
Entry updated 3 June 2024. Tagged: Theme.
Rats, though sometimes cherished as pets (albeit far less frequently than Cats or Dogs) are traditionally unpopular: disliked as household pests and often feared, sometimes to the extent of outright phobia. They feature in the ultimate Torture of Room 101, tailored to the protagonist's greatest dread, in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Rats and their fleas were also long thought to be plague carriers, specifically of the Black Death Pandemic in the fourteenth century, though scientists now believe otherwise. In Rudyard Kipling's "A Doctor of Medicine" (October 1909 The Delineator; in Rewards and Fairies coll 1910), the titular doctor brilliantly deduces from the Imaginary Science of astrology that rats are responsible for the Black Death, and saves a village by having them killed en masse; in R Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke mystery "A Sower of Pestilence" (in The Puzzle Lock coll 1925), an anarchist deliberately spreads plague in London via rat-fleas; rats and their fleas are plausibly considered as plague vectors in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Physicians of Vilnoc (2020), though the true solution lies elsewhere. Rats are a focus of Horror in H P Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" (March 1924 Weird Tales.) Sterling Lanier's The War for the Lot: A Tale of Fantasy and Terror (1969) centres on the defence of an unofficial wilderness animal sanctuary against an incursion of City rats. Having to eat rats is usually a marker of ultimate degradation or desperation, but in Terry Pratchett's Discworld comedies – for example Feet of Clay (1996) – this dish is a great delicacy of the dwarf community
Outsized rats (see Great and Small) regularly appear as genre Monsters. They are among the first animals enlarged by the growth elixir in The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth (1904) by H G Wells, whose third chapter is titled "The Giant Rats", and are the least unconvincing special effect in the film distantly inspired by Wells's novel, Food of the Gods (1976) directed by Bert I Gordon. Giant rats are encountered as tiresome low-level enemies in the Role Playing Game Dungeons and Dragons (1974) designed by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. They overwhelm London in The Rats (1974) by James Herbert and wreak further havoc in its sequels. Descendants of "the giant rat of Sumatra" mentioned in passing in one Sherlock Holmes tale threaten 1860s London in the proto-Steampunk Rattus Rex (1978) by Colin Andrew McLaren. Humanity is served by monster rats, some rebellious, in From the New World (2012-2013). In a simple variation on the theme, normal-sized rats present as monsters to Miniaturized humans in Attack of the Puppet People (1958; vt Six Inches Tall UK; vt The Fantastic Puppet People) and others. The deep-space monsters of Cordwainer Smith's "The Game of Rat and Dragon" (March 1955 Galaxy) are wholly Alien – perhaps Energy Beings – but are perceived as rats by the story's human-partnered cat warriors.
The further Evolution of rats is generally viewed with more alarm than that of cats or dogs, though the naturally gifted rat who plays Chess in Charles L Harness's "The Chessplayers" (October 1953 F&SF) is welcomed by human fellow-players. Rats are discovered by their own successors on Earth to have succeeded humanity in "Later Than You Think" (October 1950 Galaxy) by Fritz Leiber. They develop Intelligence in The Papers of Andrew Melmoth (1960) by Hugh Sykes Davies. In Fritz Leiber's stylish Science Fantasy The Swords of Lankhmar (May 1961 Fantastic as "Scylla's Daughter"; exp 1968), the City of Lankhmar is threatened by the intelligent and highly civilized rat denizens of its underground counterpart Lankhmar Below, though a human collaborator defends them by quoting the mystic palindrome "Rats live on no evil star". Humans woken from Suspended Animation in the Far Future of Sold – for a Spaceship (1973) by Philip E High find that our world's inheritors include evolved and inimical rats with advanced Weapons. Rats also battle with future humanity in De verwoesting van Hyperion ["The Destruction of Hyperion"] (1978) by Hugo Raes (see Benelux). A laboratory rat proves to be secretly intelligent, and in Communication not only with others of its species but with distant Aliens, in The Rat Report (1980) by Constantine Fitzgibbon.
There are several examples of rats gaining Intelligence through Uplift. This happens via Communication with the titular human who to some extent controls them in Ratman's Notebooks (1968; vt Willard 1969) by Stephen Gilbert; as a result of Scientists' cruel experiments in Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971) by Robert C O'Brien, filmed as The Secret of NIMH (1982); and again in Doctor Rat (1976) by William Kotzwinkle. Magical Pollution is responsible for the uplift of the titular Cat and his rat troupe who operate a Pied Piper scam in The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001) by Terry Pratchett.
Rat kings, groups of rats or sometimes Mice whose tails are irretrievably tangled, have been reported since the sixteenth century; many are hoaxes but there appear to have been genuine examples. A typical genre spin is that the living components of a rat king meld into a kind of Hive Mind, often with Psi Powers. Rat kings feature in "The Tail-Tied Kings" (April 1962 Galaxy) by Avram Davidson; in James Herbert's above-cited The Rats (1974); in James Tiptree Jr's "The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats" (in New Dimensions 6, anth 1976, ed Robert Silverberg); in Alan Moore's and Ian Gibson's The Ballad of Halo Jones (1986-1987 3vols; omni 1990), where the gestalt entity's power to control subject rats is the key to illegal "ratwar" (ie. spreading plague); in Stephen King's It (1986); in Mary Gentle's Rats and Gargoyles (1990); and in Terry Pratchett's above-cited The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001), here artificially created as the unpleasant "masterpiece" trial of the rat-catchers' guild.
Some further rat characters are less conveniently classifiable. Despised rat-like (though human-sized) aliens prove to be very much more intelligent and civilized than the men who harry and Torture them in "The Writing of the Rat" (July 1956 Galaxy) by James Blish. A rat called Splinter is the sensei or mentor of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who made their Comics debut in May 1984. The eponym of China Miéville's urban fantasy King Rat (1998) is not a rat king as described above but a chiefly humanoid rat-human hybrid, with some rattish Superpowers such as being able to squeeze through improbably small holes. The star of the Walt Disney Company film Ratatouille (2007) is a young rat determined despite obvious difficulties and prejudice to succeed as a French-cuisine chef. In Bryan Talbot's Graphic Novel sequence Grandville (graph 2009-2017) the recurring sidekick character Detective Ratzi is a nattily dressed anthropomorphic humanoid rat.
Metaphorical uses of the term, such as Harry Harrison's picaresque tales of the lovable human crook known as the Stainless Steel Rat, are outside the scope of this entry. [DRL]
see also: Alarming Tales; David Henry Wilson.
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