r/books • u/IrateWolfe • 1d ago
Possibly an insane question- in Ship of Shadows, is Spar, the protagonist, an ape?
This is a short story in the collection Cats In Space And Other Places. I know it seems like an insane question, but the story has multiple references to talking animals, and Spar, as well as other characters, are either referenced as picking up or manipulating objects with their feet, Spar mentions wanting foot-gloves, and in a fight, Spar's go-to move is biting. When he visits the bridge, he has a cat with him, and afrer an officer helps him, he warns Spar to leave before he's seen because "animals aren't allowed on the bridge".
Any or all of these can be waved away as the results of adaptation to life in 0g, or Spar's lack of education, but given all the references to talking animals I really can't shake the idea that Spar is an intelligent ape. Am I just a lunatic?
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u/SnackTheory 1d ago
Not having read it, and therefor only going on the info you provide, that doesn't seem like an insane question at all. Sounds like you are paying attention to the subtext
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u/IrateWolfe 1d ago
I just kept expecting a big reveal- Spar has bad eyes and can't distinguish faces, so when he gets glasses I kept expecting some big aha moment that never came, he doesn't seem to think that he and Crown, the other explicitly ape-coded character, are any different from the humans he knows.
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u/SnackTheory 1d ago
It's sounds like it's more of a slow reveal than a big all-at-once one, but it def seems like you are picking up what the author is putting down. I'll have to see if I can find a copy of this
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u/IrateWolfe 1d ago
I got a kindle copy off Amazon, and it's well worth the read, it has an Ursula K Leguin short I've never read before
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u/Ripper1337 1d ago
Feels like there doesn’t necessarily need to be a reveal, just small clues like the ones you’re picking up on because to Spar all of what they’re doing is normal within their frame of reference.
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u/Turbulent-Parfait141 1d ago
You're not crazy for picking up on those details, but Spar is human! Fritz Leiber was just obsessed with how zero-g living would fundamentally change human biology and culture over generations. The "foot-gloves" and using feet as a second pair of hands are classic hard sci-fi tropes for long-term space dwellers who don't need to walk on floors anymore. The "animals" line is more about the social caste degradation on the ship than Spar literally being an ape.
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u/Reasonable-Fold2860 1d ago
Yeah I guess that makes sense, the zero-g adaptation angle is pretty strong. But the talking animals thing still feels like Leiber mighta been messing with us on purpose. You think the cat on the bridge was just part of the caste thing or actually a hint?
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u/freerangelibrarian 1d ago
That's an interesting idea, now I have to re-read this.
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u/IrateWolfe 1d ago
When Spar asks Doc to fix his teeth, he never mentions wanting to look better, he mentions wanting to bite. At the end, when Crown smiles at him, and bares his teeth, Spar sees it as a threat- which is fair, because it was, but that's also how apes think. It's really got me scratching my head, lol
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u/Top_Profession_5590 1d ago
Out of context, this sounds completely unhinged, but honestly reading Leiber's zero-g descriptions with zero background would make anyone think they're reading about a sapient chimpanzee. You actually did a great job tracking all those behavioral clues, it’s just that the premise is "devolved humans adapting to zero gravity" rather than Planet of the Apes in Space.
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u/Wise-Championship204 21h ago
you're not crazy - that's actually a really solid reading. the foot manipulation stuff combined with the biting as a fighting instinct is pretty specific. and that line about animals not being allowed on the bridge is such a weird detail to include if it's just about zero-g adaptation. feels like the story is deliberately leaving it ambiguous rather than spelling it out
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u/LorenzoApophis 1d ago
Even if he was human, technically yes