Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre

by Mary E. Lowd

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx

 “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” — Groucho Marx

“You shouldn’t need a membership card to write or enjoy furry fiction. All you need is a story about anthropomorphic animals, and there are more of those coming out all the time.”

There’s a question that floats around the furry writing community occasionally:  how do you define furry fiction?  At first glance, this question seems similar to the age-old, what’s the difference between sci-fi and fantasy?  A nit-picky question about the borders of a genre that can be endlessly debated.  Hours can be lost to arguing over whether Star Wars is sci-fi because of spaceships, or fantasy because of the Force.  I would expect arguments about furry fiction to fall along similar lines.  For instance, does Robert T. Bakker’s Raptor Red anthropomorphize the raptors enough to count as furry?  Or is it simply a piece of speculative naturalism? Continue reading “Am I Furry? — Fandom vs. Genre”

On the Eve of the Apocalypse

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Theme of Absence, March 2017

“I know that you claim you didn’t vote in favor of the Elasporians’ imminent occupation of Earth. But you couldn’t have fought very hard against it.”

Dear Patriarchal Genetic Progenitor,

In spite of my requests that you leave me alone, I find notifications and messages from you, little traces of your electronic existence, in every aspect of the virtual world whenever I dare to tread in it.  Generally, I ignore your unwanted advances toward a relationship that I gave up long ago.  But tonight, knowing that the Elasporians will descend to Earth tomorrow, I find that the idea of reaching out to you and your myriad tiny abuses is less painful and frightening than the reality that all flesh-bodied humans will face tomorrow. Continue reading “On the Eve of the Apocalypse”

Pre-NaNo Dithering

I keep going back and forth about whether I should try to write Unexpected Voyage for NaNoWriMo this year. I already have 8-10k starts on Otters In Space 4, In a Dog’s World 2, and Xeno-Spectre. So I feel like I should focus on one of them instead… and yet…

I figure, if I hit Halloween midnight without having picked a different novel to focus on, I’ll go ahead and start Unexpected Voyage. So, I have five days to re-familiarize myself with the other options and see if I can commit to one. Continue reading “Pre-NaNo Dithering”