"Rat" is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 short story by James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly

James Patrick Kelly is an American science fiction author who began publishing in the 1970s and remains to this day an important figure in the science fiction field....

. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story

Hugo Award for Best Short Story

The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...

 1987, and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story

Nebula Award for Best Short Story

Winners of the '“Nebula Award for Best Short Story”'. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year. Winning titles are listed first, with other nominees listed below.-Winners and nominees:-External links:* *...

 in 1986. Also nominated for Lucas Poll Award category for best short story and also nominated for SF Chronicle Award for the same category. In 1986 "Rat" was published in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Plot summary

In this cyberpunk story the protagonist is literally a rat, though clearly not an ordinary one. Rat has been given the mission to smuggle a large amount of drugs, but decides that he wants to cut out the middle the man and keep the entire haul for himself. Rat tries to sneak out of sight from the spook that was hired to watch him and the fed who also put onto his tail. After Rat is able to finally get away from the two he makes it to his safe house. Only there to have to fight and claw to be able to move the drug haul and save his life as well.

Cyberpunk

This story emphasizes the punk half of cyberpunk (for the cyber half, see Candace Jane Dorsey's "(Learning About) Machine Sex"). It takes place in a decaying society in which only scavengers like Rat can prosper. Rat is a criminal, a drug runner and murderer. He is selfish, amoral, vindictive. Yet the reader gets caught up in his plight and begins to empathize with him for two reasons. One is that stories do that to us: putting even a despicable character in the role of protagonist and filtering events through that character's perceptions automatically slants our responses toward that character, even against our moral judgment. The way the story is set up seduces us into rooting for Rat to get home, to outwit his pursuers, to make his score. The other reason is that Rat is not a person but an animal, literally a rat, and everything he does is consistent with rat behavior: stealing, hiding, killing, surviving. Once we get a sense of his appearance-furry, twenty-six inches high—he takes on something of the disarming quality of Mickey Mouse or the animals in The Wind in the Willows.