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CZM Book Club: All Cats Are Grey, by Andre Alice Norton

April 5, 2026·31 min·1 clip

Aboard a ghost ship that has killed every boarding party for fifty years, a woman watches in a mirror as a bracelet rises from a gem pile by an invisible hand.

Margaret Killjoy reads and discusses Andre Norton's 1953 short story All Cats Are Grey for the Cool Zone Media Book Club. The story follows Steena, a quiet, gray, overlooked woman who haunts space bars with her cat Bat, and who cashes in on her encyclopedic knowledge to board the infamous Empress of Mars, a derelict ghost ship whose previous boarders all vanished or fled. Norton, born Alice Mary Norton in Cleveland, was the first woman to earn the SFWA Grandmaster award and the Gandalf Grandmaster of Fantasy, publishing under male pen names. The episode includes commentary from co-host Hazel about the story as an early disability narrative, and Margaret delivers a spirited defense of pulp fiction as meaningful human creative expression, contrasting it sharply with AI-generated text.

As heard by us

A ghost-ship story that turns curiosity, cats, and jewels into dread.

Andre Alice Norton's "All Cats Are Grey" moves like a slow ghost-ship crawl. Cliff brings the ship alongside the Empress, Steena and Bat range ahead, and the tone tightens fast.

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Why you'd press play

A ghost ship, a jeweled room, and Bat waiting in the dark.

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