Science Fiction Short Story Review: "Cat Pictures Please" by Naomi Kritzer

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Saturday once again and time a review from The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016. Ever wonder why the internet is full of cat pictures? “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer will reveal all. This story is narrated by an AI who wants to be helpful. It also likes cat pictures. It knows it is not a product of a divine creator or of biological evolution. It was created by a corporation in Mountain View, California. Its creators don’t know it’s conscious, though. In its quest for a moral code, it examines the Ten Commandments and the Eightfold Path. While it’s not suited for those systems because it has no body, it could for the most part follow them. It does not, for example, envy people their cats. It just likes cat pictures. It turns to Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. After some thinking, it decides it could follow them, with some modification. It knows everything about everyone on the planet. Better than that, it knows what people need before they do. It can help them with their personal lives—help them find better jobs (whether they’re looking or not), help them find more suitable significant others (whether they’re looking or not), and so on. This is a smart, funny, and enjoyable little story with just a hint of the sinister. I liked the voice, the sly way it was told, the inside jokes and the ending. The author was unknown to me before I read this, but I will be looking for more of her stuff. This was fun. According to the blurb, author Naomi Kritzer has five published novels available online and has short stories in magazine like Asimov’s, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Lightspeed. She and her husband have two daughters and “several cats.” I’d be disappointed if they only had children and goldfish. Both text and audio versions are available at the URL below: ______ Title: “Cat Pictures Please” Author: Naomi Kritzer Published in: The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 First Published: Clarkesworld January 2015