Mice
Entry updated 14 May 2024. Tagged: Theme.
The rodents most frequently found in sf are Rats (which see); but mice, their less threatening relatives, are also involved in similar sf tropes. A mouse civilization on a lost Pacific Island is discovered in The Wonders of Mouseland (1901) by Edward Earle Childs. The Iconic cartoon character Mickey Mouse, dating from 1928, has occasional science-fictional adventures: examples are given in the entry for The Walt Disney Company (which see). In Fredric Brown's "The Star Mouse" (Spring 1942 Planet Stories), a mouse sent into space as an experimental animal is Uplifted by Aliens who return him to Earth. The premise of James White's "The Conspirators" (June 1954 New Worlds) is that prolonged Space Flight brings increased Intelligence, with the Spaceship's laboratory mice being first affected and planning escape with the aid of a more slowly developing Cat. The maze-running laboratory mouse Algernon in Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon (April 1959 F&SF; exp 1966) undergoes an artificial and sadly temporary increase in intelligence. A semi-organic Computer based on a "laminated" mouse brain imprinted with human personalities is central to "Think Blue, Count Two" (February 1963 Galaxy) by Cordwainer Smith. The protagonists of Russell Hoban's fantasy The Mouse and His Child (1967) are sentient clockwork mice conjoined as a single Automaton. A field mouse is the heroine of Robert C O'Brien's Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971), filmed as The Secret of NIMH (1982) directed by Don Bluth. In Douglas Adams's The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978; 1979) the Secret Masters of Earth are aliens who have taken the form of mice. Mice have inherited the Earth in the Satire Play Little Victims (1978 chap) by Kenneth Cook. In a Parody of James Bond and other spy series, the animated Danger Mouse (1981-1992) stars a UK Secret Service mouse whose Technothriller adventures involve Robots, Spaceships and more bizarre sf trappings. Mutant mice infest the UK in Mutants (1986) by Peter Van Greenaway. A mouse Sherlock Holmes called Basil stars in the Walt Disney Company film The Great Mouse Detective (1986). Peter Dickinson's Time and the Clockmice, Etcetera (1993) involves Telepathic mice in a clockwork world. Two lab mice in Pinky & The Brain (1995-1998) regularly plan to take over the world; that is, The Brain plans while the hapless Pinky helps and/or hinders. There are many further examples.
Mice living in the interstices of human civilization are the classic real-world instance of a Wainscot Society: see this entry for more and for reversals of the situation with humans eking out a mouse-like existence in various Alien contexts, a notable Satirical example being William Tenn's Of Men and Monsters (October 1963 Galaxy as "The Men in the Walls"; exp 1968). [DRL]
see also: Hanna-Barbera.
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