A welcome new category for the Ursa Major Awards: Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction.
by Patch O'Furr
WHY DON’T FURRIES RECOGNIZE GOOD JOURNALISM?
This topic has come up before: “Bay Area Furs find out why there should be a Furry award for Best Journalism” (see some good articles within) – and – “VICE looks back on the Midwest Furfest attack, earning kudos for thoughtful journalism.”
The simplistic answer is – back around 2001, this little fan group was mistreated by Vanity Fair, MTV and CSI. Forevermore, “The Media” was a thing to hate.
But it’s not so simple. In a chicken-or-egg way, “The Media” deserves some credit for creating furries. (It’s a FANdom!) That usually means fiction media, but there’s much more than that. There’s the “science” part of science fiction; transhumanism, animals and nature, and anything about growing a self-defined subculture. There’s info coming from the Anthropomorphic Research Project. A top selling nonfiction book (from Thurston Howl publishers) is the fandom-essay collection Furries Among Us.
Nonfiction is a big deal in fandom for anthropomorphic animals.