by Mary E. Lowd
Sometimes my life feels like a budget
I need to balance
Allocating hours
To some activities, at the expense of others
Trying to optimize
My time Continue reading “More Sense Than Coffee Spoons”
An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
by Mary E. Lowd
Sometimes my life feels like a budget
I need to balance
Allocating hours
To some activities, at the expense of others
Trying to optimize
My time Continue reading “More Sense Than Coffee Spoons”
by Mary E. Lowd
Am I the hour glass
Or the sand passing through
Its gossamer waist
One grain at a time? Continue reading “The Hourglass”
by Mary E. Lowd
You only see a zoetrope of my life
Sampling more regularly sometimes
Less regularly others
And yet you know me so well Continue reading “Zoetrope”
With the latest update to ChatGPT, converting the first strip of SPACE HOUNDS! into a normal graphic novel page took one command: “redo this in an appropriate art style.”
So, yeah, maybe it’s just about time to finally turn SPACE HOUNDS! into an actual graphic novel. Continue reading “Experimental Online Comic –> Graphic Novel”
by Mary E. Lowd
The lion, coyote, and bear
Argue and fight
Who is best?
Who is right? Continue reading “Merriment Better than a Crown”
by Mary E. Lowd
She tends her own tree
Unbothered by the chaos below
They have nothing she needs
Only chaos to sow Continue reading “The Luna Moth’s Moon Tree”
Going to sleep listening to the Wicked soundtrack and waking up just as Elphaba sings, “It’s too late to go back to sleep…” Continue reading “Learning to Sleep with a CPAP Machine”
Yellowjackets is a wish-fulfillment show.
The wish is that middle-aged women get to be complicated and broken, but still receive empathy and be seen; that they get to commit atrocities like men do all the time and still have us rooting for them, still get centered in the story. Continue reading “Yellowjackets, AI, The Residence”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025
Rariel 77 had entire closets of different bodies zhe’d built for zirself, and zhe liked switching between them. Sometimes, you want a classic robot body — boxy, straight lines, gleaming metal. You know, that whole deal. But sometimes, an AI simply needs to be able to go incognito and blend in with all the biological sentients around. The most common species on Crossroads Station were the Heffen (a sort of canine alien, kind of like anthro red wolves) and after that humans. Rariel 77 had very nice android bodies in both of those flavors. Zhe also had some much more abstract choices for when zhe was feeling whimsical or wanted to go on a spacewalk or do some other more exotic activity. Continue reading “Dancing with Zirself”
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025
Cobalt Starstrong charged right in, grabbed a stool at the bar, and then looked back to see Delvin balking in the doorway. There was a strange look on the younger man’s face. Cobalt gestured to the empty barstool beside him; it was a plain, simple stool, suitable to all kinds of physiologies. That was important. For they were in the All Alien Cafe.
Reluctantly, Delvin darted into the bar and took the empty seat beside Cobalt. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked. Continue reading “Goin’ Turtle”