Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: fiction

February 27, 2015

Huvek, by James L. Steele – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Huvek, by James L. Steele
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, July 2014, trade paperback $19.95 (247 pages).Huvek-Cover

(Publisher’s advisory): This is a mature content book.  Please ensure that you are of legal age to purchase this material in your region.

“Loy emptied his clip, ejected it and crouched below the wall as he yanked another from his vest and popped it in. He braced himself on the sandbags piled midway up the wall for a firing platform, stood up straight and started shooting again.

His entire battalion was firing into the line of massive reptiles from behind the city’s defensive wall. They had previously succeeded in clearing the Kesvek out, but now the reptiles were coming back and they had never looked more intimidating.” (p. 5)

In an interstellar future, a spreading humanity first met another sentient life form, the massive reptilian Kesvek, over forty years earlier. The Kesvek immediately started killing all humans. They were not interested in negotiations. Humanity abruptly found itself being annihilated from its hundreds of newly-settled frontier worlds.

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February 26, 2015

The Great Catsby, by Linda Stewart – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.download

The Great Catsby, by Linda Stewart
NYC, Cheshire House Books, September 2013, trade paperback $10.95 (143 [+ 1] pages).

This is the fourth novel in Stewart’s Sam the Cat series, officially children’s fantasies but often Edgar and Agatha Award mystery-fiction nominees. Stewart’s first, Sam the Cat: Detective (February 1993), was a generic hard-boiled mystery fantasy-parody, with Sam, one of a mystery-bookshop’s cats (the other is Sue, Sam’s sassy secretary), hired by an apartment building’s housecat to find their real human burglar and keep the apartment’s custodian from being framed. The next two novels, The Big Catnap (August 2000) and The Maltese Kitten (December 2002), were specific pastiches of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939) and The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929), with Sam standing in for Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, who practically defined the crime-noir private eye genre. Not exactly kids’ stuff. The Maltese Kitten also won the Cat Writers’ Association’s 2003 Muse Award in the Best Juvenile Fiction category.

Stewart seemed to run out of famous crime-noir mysteries to parody after 2002. But, eleven years later, here is The Great Catsby. Presumably you know what this is a pastiche of, even if you haven’t read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age classic. Not exactly a hard-boiled mystery, and still not exactly kids’ stuff; but it does get the series moving again.

“The first time I saw Catsby he was sitting atop a diving board and staring across a swimming pool at a lantern hung from a tree. It was one of those green paper Japanese lanterns and it flashed, in the local distance, like the light of an alien star. Of course I didn’t know he was Catsby then, or anything else about him. By his looks, he was nothing special – just a pleasantly yellow fellow with a curve at the tip of his tail. What impressed me had been his gaze – an almost laser-like concentration – and the stillness that seemed to surround him the way a halo surrounds a saint.” (p. 1)

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February 18, 2015

French anthro comic: Solo, by Oscar Martin – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Solo. T.1, Les Survivants du Chaos, by Oscar Martindownload (2)
Paris, Delcourt, September 2014, hardcover €16,95 (107 [+ 13] pages).

Thanks, as always with French bandes dessinées, to Lex Nakashima for loaning this to me to review.

The setting: a bleak, war-destroyed future Earth. Think MGM’s/Hugh Harman’s 1939 animated Peace on Earth, where the last humans on Earth kill each other and leave the world to the peaceful funny animals; or the similar sequence in Alexander Korda’s 1936 live-action feature Things to Come, where England (and presumably the whole human race) has been bombed and shot up back to the Stone Age. It’s Mad Max with furries.

Solo’s blurb, translated by the publisher, is:

“Ravaged by nuclear and chemical weapons, the Earth has mutated and many animal species have developed a size and intelligence similar to that of humans. To make life easier for his family, Solo, a young rat, decides to take the road. In this hostile world of predators, cannibals, monsters or pirates, Solo will have to become the best fighter to survive.”

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February 17, 2015

Chakat in the Alley, by James R. Jordan – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Chakat in the Alley, by James R. Jordan. Illustrated.
North Charleston, SC, CreateSpace, June 2014, trade paperback $14.95 (318 pages), Kindle $4.95. 

download (1)Chakat in the Alley is James Jordan’s third annual novel in what has become a regular series. It is a direct continuation of Jordan’s May 2012 Bound to Play, and his June 2013 The Cat’s Eye Pub; and it ends with “To Be Continued In: It Takes Two: The Story of Diamondstripe”, presumably coming around June 2015. Each novel is complete in itself, but for how long will the overall saga continue?

What’s more, Jordan’s novels do not exist alone. They are set, with permission, in Bernard Doove’s “Chakat’s Den” universe. Doove began writing about the chakats, his 24th-century hermaphroditic felinoid centauroids in an interstellar civilization, in 1995. By now Doove has six volumes of their adventures (one of which, Flight of the Star Phoenix, won the 2012 Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Novel of the year), plus another set in their universe. Doove is writing My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction today (see his December 2013 Change of Life, his May 2014 Growing Up Dandy, and his December 2014 Conversations in a Canterlot Café), so Jordan (among others) is keeping his chakat universe alive.

By now, everyone in furry fandom should be at least aware of the chakats, foxtaurs, skunktaurs, Caitans, and other species (including humans, of course) of the Chakat’s Den universe. If you’re not, it’s easy enough to pick up within the first few pages. The chakats take the most getting used to, because of their hermaphroditic nature. Each chakat is both female and male. That makes family life among chakats a bit unusual, with each parent able to be both a mother or a father. Since chakats are neither a “him” or a “her”, they have their own pronouns of “shi”, “shir”, and “hir”. You’ll pick it up fast.

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February 12, 2015

French anthro comic: L’Epée d’Ardenois – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

L’Épée d’Ardenois. T. 3/4, Nymelle, by Étienne Willem.
Geneva, Switzerland, Éditions Paquet, February 2014, hardbound €13,50 (48 pages).

downloadThis is part of Lex Nakashima’s & my project to bring American furry fans the best of new French-language animalière bandes dessinées. Volumes 1 and 2 of this 4-volume series were reviewed on Flayrah on April 29, 2013. Here is volume 3, Nymelle.

The warfare in the Medieval funny-animal realm of the three kingdoms has devolved into bloody chaos. Garen (rabbit), the young peasant boy who hero-worships the legendary Companions of the Dawn — four unstoppable knights who led the three kingdoms of Bohan, Herbeutagne, and Valdor against the demonic armies of wizard-king Lord Nuhy a generation ago, then retired – is eager to see them reunite when Nuhy’s army reappears under his “eternal captain”, Hellequin of the Cursed Wood (goat). But the Companions are old and out of training today, and Sir Godefroid (hound), who is Garen’s personal hero among the Companions, is carefully killed by Hellequin before he relaunches the war. The other Companions dubiously accept Garen as their squire to honor Godefroid’s memory, but they are all shocked to find that the three kingdoms of today are not what they were a generation ago. Then, they were three monarchies united by strong rulers working together. Now, they are three separate monarchies each under weak rulers who do not even have the support of all their own nobility and knights, and who are jockeying for leadership among themselves – divisions that Hellequin skillfully encourages. Hellequin is supposedly trying to find and collect the Black Armor of Nuhy, which was divided among the victors after Nuhy’s death in battle. Some believe that this is just Hellequin’s pretext to use Nuhy’s name and armies for his own benefit, while others believe that Nuhy had real demonic powers, and that he will be resurrected if Hellequin does find all of his Black Armor. There are more complications, and volume 2, The Prophecy, ends with Garen, the other three Companions of the Dawn (Sir Grimbert, fox; Lord Arthus, bear; and La Fouine, marten), and the peasant refugees left behind the Wall of Ambrosius where they are supposed to be safe, suddenly attacked by Skernovite pirate raiders led by their King Rothgard the Bald (hawk) and Hellequin’s lieutenant Sigwald the Rash (bull terrier).

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February 10, 2015

Downunderground, by Craig Hilton – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Downunderground, by Craig Hilton. Illustrated.
Collie, Western Australia, Collie Mail Printing, February 1996, paperback AUS$5.95 (32 pages).

Downunderground cover (front) (Small)Don’t try to buy this. You can’t. Craig Hilton sent me a copy when it was published in 1996. It was long out of print when I had a stroke in 2005; friends boxed up my belongings while I was in the hospital, and it disappeared. It has just been rediscovered. Nobody reviewed it at the time, and it is forgotten today. But it did exist, and as a (ex)-librarian, I am obsessed that it should be documented somewhere. Besides, Craig Hilton is now a popular cartoonist as “Jenner”, the author/artist of the daily Doc Rat Internet strip. His fans would surely enjoy this very much. Perhaps he could publish a new edition, or add it to one of his Doc Rat collections?

Craig Hilton graduated from Australian medical school as a general practitioner (GP) in the 1980s. He was also active as a furry cartoonist during this time. One of the requirements of new Australian GPs is that they spend several years interning in a variety of small towns that need a doctor. Hilton did. Around 1990-‘91 he (with his wife, Julia) was the only doctor in Collie, Western Australia; a coal-mining town “a hundred miles from anywhere” (actually 132 miles south of Perth, the state capital). Medical duties there were not onerous, and he had considerable spare time on his hands. He volunteered to draw a free comic strip for the town’s weekly newspaper. Read the rest of this entry »

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February 4, 2015

The History of Furry Publishing, Part Two: Current Publishers – by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer. Continuing Part One: Beginnings.

Sdownload (4)ofawolf Press, founded by Tim Susman and Jeff Eddy and currently run by Jeff Eddy, originally from his homes in East Falmouth, Massachusetts and later St. Paul, Minnesota, and now from a warehouse in the latter, was the first really successful furry publishing company in the U.S. Sofawolf became official in October 1999 as a sole proprietorship, with its first publication, the furry general fiction magazine Anthrolations #1, in January 2000.   Anthrolations was originally scheduled for semiannual publication in January and July, but it soon ran into the drying up of submissions – except for furry erotica, which Susman & Eddy did not accept for Anthrolations. #7 was published in July 2003, and #8, the final issue, was not until November 2006.

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February 3, 2015

The History of Furry Publishing, Part One: Beginnings – by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer. Part Two, Current Publishers, posts tomorrow.

rowrbrazzle090xThis is to some extent a “define your terms” question. Furry fandom got started, depending upon whom you ask, with the amateur press associations (APAs) Vootie and Rowrbrazzle. Vootie, “The Fanzine of the Funny Animal Liberation Front”, run by Reed Waller & Ken Fletcher of Minneapolis s-f fandom, lasted from April 1976 to February 1983; 39 bi-monthly issues. Vootie self-destructed when its Official Editors, Waller & Fletcher, grew too disinterested to continue it any longer. A member, Marc Schirmeister of Los Angeles, tried to keep it going, failed, and started its replacement, the quarterly Rowrbrazzle, beginning in February 1984. Rowrbrazzle was designed so that, when the Official Editor steps down or is unable to continue, another member is selected to replace him. Rowrbrazzle is still going after thirty years; the current O.E. is William Earl Haskell of Houston, Texas. So it’s technically a current furry publication.

HUZZAH-48-2002-1-2252-6298Vootie and Rowrbrazzle, and later furry APAs such as the Furry Press Network, Huzzah!, and Canada’s FURthest North Crew, exist(ed) as membership clubs averaging 25 to 30 members, whose members print their own fanzines in enough copies for all members, and send them all to the O.E. for assembly into a super-fanzine of 25 to 30 copies that are sent to each member. The only way to get a copy is to join the APA and publish your own pages. Private membership APAs are traditionally not counted as furry publishing.

The earliest generally available publication in furry fandom was the fanzine FurVersion, published by Kyim Granger (real name: Karl Maurer) of the San Francisco Bay area. FurVersion ran for twenty-one issues from May 1987 to November 1990. It began as a simple mailing list of furry fans’ names and addresses, so they could keep in touch with each other in pre-Internet days. Fans began sending in their sketches and amateur fiction for publication, and FurVersion quickly turned into an amateur magazine for furry art & fiction. It had a cover price and subscription. FurVersion was the first of many amateur magazines published by furry fans from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. The most famous and successful was Yarf!; the Journal of Applied Anthropomorphics, edited and published by Jeff Ferris of the San Francisco Bay area, with the help of Bay Area furry fandom. It lasted for 69 issues, from January 1990 to September 2003. Yarf! is currently being republished as five-issue volumes by Jarlidium Press of Seattle (see below).

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February 2, 2015

Introduction for Fred Patten Presents – History of Furry Publishing.

by Patch O'Furr

UrsaMajorAwardsAnthologyIt’s an honor to host articles by Fred Patten, “Furry’s favorite reviewer and historian.”  There’s minimal management, supporting him to post what he wants.  Many are reviews and some are in depth writing from his experienced perspective.  Those are the ones I want to select for a new feature.

FRED PATTEN PRESENTS joins other features: INTERVIEWS FOR FANS AND FURRIES – THE “FURCLUB” SURVEY – and FURRY GOOD IDEAS.

I’ll pick the best to highlight and link.  It’s inspired by the great quality of Fred’s article that posts tomorrow:

A History of Furry Publishing (Part One – Beginnings, and Part Two- Current Publishers.)

While I shake my sore paws after many hours of tedious book cover image layout for Fred’s pieces… I wanted to announce it, and toss a little “outtake”.

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January 29, 2015

Off the Beaten Path, by Rukis – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Off the Beaten Path, by Rukis. Illustrated by the author.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, July 2014, trade paperback $19.95 (385 pages).

(publisher’s advisory):
“This is a mature content book.  Please ensure that you are of legal age to purchase this material in your state or region.” 

Rukis_OTBP_web“When I turned thirteen years of age, the village elder told me I had become a woman. When I had turned fourteen years of age, my mother told me I had become a burden. When I had turned fifteen years of age, my father told me I had become a wife. He had been paid [by] a man from the Anukshen to take me away from everything I knew and every person I cared for, to become his third wife.” (p. 9)

This is one of those books that is almost impossible to review without giving away spoilers. Basically, except for the anthropomorphic-animal and fantasy-world aspects, the setting is North America shortly after the British colonies along the Eastern Coast have won their independence. Shivah, the narrator (bobcat), is a young woman of a native tribe in a valley beyond the “Otherwolf” lands. She has only known two tribes, her own Katoshen and the neighboring Anukshen. They barely tolerate each other, grudgingly trading together. Both are extremely patriarchal, treating women as little more than slaves and baby-making machines. Shivah is married against her will to Methoa’nuk, an arrogant and brutal Anukshen Honored Warrior for two horses and a brick of salt. Despite her attempts to be a “good wife”, she disgraces him (or maybe he just blames his disgrace on her). Methoa kills their year-old son, and encourages the Anukshen to stone her to death. She recovers consciousness weeks later, having been nursed back to health by two wandering trappers from faroff differing tribes, Ransom, a tall coyote, and Puck (Puquanath Roatok), a blind white fox medicine man who “sees” with his ears:

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