All posts tagged: anthology

Traveling to The Furry Future

Published by Jakebe Rabbit

The Furry Future Edited by Fred Patten Cover Art by Teagan Gavet 446 pp., $19.95 (ebook, $9.95) FurPlanet Productions, January 2015 The Furry Future collects nineteen short stories imagining how furries might come into being, whether created by humans, or discovered as aliens mankind must now learn to live with. Furries in science fiction settings offer a wide variety of ideas and approaches, and this anthology, edited by Fred Patten, does a good job mining different veins. Fiction within the fandom that features a mixed population of anthropomorphic and human characters often centers on the idea that furries are a servant/minority class without equal rights. The protagonists are making their way through this world, either struggling to make sense of it, fighting for better treatment, or just trying to survive the abuses of the ruling class. The problem with these “fursecution” stories is they’ve been told many times before, and worse, they’re fairly easy to get wrong. Many of us reading these are minorities moving through a world where we aren’t treated equally—I’m a politically …

Exploring Abandoned Places

Published by Watts Martin

Abandoned Places Edited by Tarl “Voice” Hoch Cover Art by Kappy Rayne Interior Art by Silent Ravyn 346 pp., $19.95 (ebook, $9.95) FurPlanet Productions, November 2014 Tarl Hoch’s Abandoned Places isn’t the first furry horror-themed anthology,1 but the genre includes relatively unmined territory for anthropomorphic fiction. More intriguingly, many of the voices presented here are relatively new to the scene, or at least to the anthology circuit. Hoch himself may be best known in the fandom as one of the co-hosts of the Fangs and Fonts podcast. Authors include novelists Ryan Campbell, James L. Steele and Ben Goodridge, as well as a few authors known more for explicit work, like Rechan and Kandrel.

Five Fortunes, an anthology of novellas

Published by Dronon

Five Fortunes Edited by Fred Patten Cover Art by Terrie Smith 415 pp., $19.95 FurPlanet Productions, January 2014 This anthology is a collection of five furry novellas, each about 80 pages long. The theme? All the main characters are taking steps forward to choose and shape their own futures. I’ve read work by all of the contributing authors before, but for most of them it’s been a while, so I was curious to see what their recent output would be like.

Is What Happens Next the right question?

Published by Watts Martin

What Happens Next: An anthology of sequels Edited by Fred Patten Cover Art by Sara Miles 424 pp., $19.95 FurPlanet Productions, July 2013 Other than annual awards collections, mainstream fantasy and science fiction anthologies have all but vanished. Furrydom, though, has an infatuation with them. We pump out several a year, nearly always of original fiction and nearly always themed: cyberpunk, Halloween, science fiction, gay erotica featuring farmboy foxes. Whether readers share this enthusiasm for anthologies with writers, though, seems murkier. In What Happens Next, an anthology from 2013, each story connects to a published story from furry’s past. At first blush there’s a logic to this. What sells most consistently in genre fiction has long been the serial, from E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensman series through Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Kyell Gold‘s popularity is in no small part due to the Argaea and Dev & Lee series. Yet the chances are slim that a reader who isn’t deeply invested in stories produced by furrydom over the last quarter-century will know all or even most of …