An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
A couple weeks ago, I heard the memory of a line echo in my head, but I couldn’t place it. I thought maybe it was from Grey’s Anatomy… or a Jane Austen movie…
Now I think it’s from Remember WENN. But I can’t check. I can’t share it with my kids. I can’t relive it. Continue reading “Remember WENN and Grief”
Story time.
When I met my husband, he was a Christian. He believed Christians shouldn’t date non-Christians, meaning me. That was a rude and surprising slap in my face, after I had got up my eighteen-year-old courage to tell him I liked him. Continue reading “Christianity”
My greatest comfort when life is hard has been — since I first heard it — the music of Brian Wilson.
But the more I understand and see the misogyny in the world, the less I’m able to take comfort in a man’s voice objectifying women. Continue reading “Learning to Like New Music”
Opinion: shows are better with spaceships in them.
I mean, I love Grey’s Anatomy & Station 19, but I’d love them even more if there were spaceships flying by every time they showed a view of Seattle. Continue reading “Shows are Better with Spaceships”
It’s kind of upsetting how easy it is to forget which people—who aren’t in your immediate circles—have died. I think I figured once someone died, your brain would pull up a sort of “404: File Not Found” error when you thought of them as a reminder… and this is not the case. Continue reading “The Forgettable Quality of Death”
No matter how much I love Picard, it’s hard to get over the sequel to an ensemble show w/a diverse cast being about only the white male lead.
All the women & PoC in ST: Picard don’t change that the show is kinda saying, “White men are special; women & PoC are replaceable.”
To be clear, I’m not really critiquing any of the content within the new show… more just the fact that Picard is treated like he’s more important and more worthy of a new show about him than Troi, Geordi, Crusher, Worf… Or literally any women or PoC from previous Trek shows. Continue reading “Ideas for Star Trek Shows”
Watching Star Trek: Picard makes me wrestle with the fundamentally temporal nature of existence more than I’m comfortable with.
Star Trek is a universe where the clock stopped nearly half my life ago. Sure, there’ve been fits & starts—a handful of movies, flash forward clips in prequels, and a lot of delving into the past. Continue reading “When Star Trek Lurched Back to Life”
Yesterday I read a beautiful story in a top market that helped me understand pieces of myself, and I stayed up late having a conversation where quotes from it helped me explain a dynamic in my life that’s been going on for decades.
This is everything art should be. Continue reading “Thoughts on the Helicopter Story”
Okay, theoretically, this is an Awards Eligibility Post… except, I had so much fiction published this year that thinking of it that way will probably melt people’s brains. So, instead, here’s a guide to learning about the fiction I had come out this year, in case you want to read it. If when you get to the end, you can still remember that awards exist, then I’d absolutely be honored by any award nominations my fiction might receive.
First off, my books…
Nexus Nine, published by FurPlanet, counts as a novel for the Ursa Major Awards and Cóyotl Awards, and a novella for the Leo Literary Awards.
Tri-Galactic Trek, Jove Deadly’s Lunar Detective Agency (co-written with Garrett Marco), and ROAR 10 were all published by FurPlanet and count as Other Literary Works for the Ursa Major Awards and as Anthologies for the Leo Literary Awards and Cóyotl Awards. Continue reading “Fiction by Mary E. Lowd in 2019”
I just read “Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!” by Alice B. Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.)… and oof.
What a beautiful, lyrical punch to the gut that calls to mind my dad lecturing me as a teen about how I couldn’t go out for a walk alone after dark.
Continue reading “Walking at Night”