sci-fi | Dogpatch Press

June 29, 2016

Furplanet Debuting Over 25 Books at Anthrocon.

by Pup Matthias

REPOST! Sorry, this went out by mistake with half of the info unfinished. – Patch

Anthrocon is coming! Where Furries far and wide come together to hang out, make friends, attend panels, dance, drink too much alcohol, and spend way too much money. I am so jealous of you guys. Stupid adult responsibilities keeping me away from all the fluffies. And the fine Fluffer Nutters at Furplanet have not 1, not 5, not 12, but 25 books debuting at AC. A combination of novels, anthologies, comics, and art books from a who’s who of writers and artist.

We at Dogpatch Press now present to you an easy to follow catalogue of all that will be available. So take a look and visit the Furplanet table to support Furry Writers and Artists. Or pre-order now for those like me who can’t. Pre-Orders will begin shipping out on July 22nd. I hope you find your next reading obsession soon and have a nice day.

NOVELS:

Legacy: Dawn by Rukis ( Mature Hardcover $29.95 and Softcover $19.95)

Kadar was born into one of the lowest castes in his society—the laborers. That is, until a series of unfortunate events trapped him in the only life worse, that of an indentured servant.

Literally collared by the powerful hyena clan that holds his contract, Kadar now finds himself facing a dangerous decision.

Live as a slave, or fight for freedom.

Joined by a hyena held captive by his own kind, a guard with a grudge against the very people he works for, and an indomitable cheetah, Kadar faces an uncertain future in a land where centuries of dependence on slavery and warfare make real freedom of any kind, for any caste, a dream that might be worth dying for.

From the world of “Red Lantern.” Written and illustrated by Rukis.

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May 17, 2016

The Companions, by Sheri S. Tepper – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

The Companions, by Sheri S. Tepper.
NYC, HarperCollinsPublishers/Eos, September 2003, hardcover $25.95 ([vi +] 452 pages), Kindle $9.99.

In the far, far future, the galaxy is being explored and colonized, and Earth is incredibly overpopulated. The Worldkeeper Council government, supported by the humans-only IGI-HFO political majority, declares that all animals (only pet dogs, cats, and small cage birds are left by this time) are to be exterminated because they take up too much room and use up too much air. The tiny underground movement that wants to keep the animals alive, called arkists because they have accumulated spaceships to use as arks to evacuate the remaining animals from Earth, decide to take them to Treasure, the moon of a newly-discovered and poorly-explored world covered in moss, where they can be hidden in safety. Jewel Delis, the narrator, is an arkist who goes from overcrowded Earth to care for the “companions” of humans, especially the dogs.

The Companions contains dialogue, but mostly Tepper writes in long, blocky narrative paragraphs:

“Earth scared me at first. The towers were huge, each a mile square and more than two hundred stories high. Podways ran along every tenth floor, north on the east side of each tower and south on the west side. Up one level, they went west on the north side and east on the south side. They stopped at the pod lobbies on each corner, so when you were on one, it went woahmp-clatter, rhmmm, woahmp-clatter, whoosh. That’s a pod-lobby stop, a slow trip across the street, another pod-lobby stop, then a mile long whoosh, very fast. The pod-lobbies were full of people, too, and that’s the clatter part, the scary part. Taddeus and I saw more people in one pod-lobby than we’d ever seen together anywhere on Mars, and many of them were dressed in fight colors: Tower 59 against Tower 58, Sector 12 against Sector 13, all of them pushing and shoving and tripping over each other. Often they got into fights or screaming fits. It took us a while to figure out how to dodge them and keep out of their way, but when we got good at it, it turned into a kind of game, and we rode the podways for fun. It was a lot safer than it sounds, because there are so many monitors on the pods that people are afraid to do anything really wicked unless they’re over the edge. Tad and I thought part of the fun was spotting people that were about to go over the edge. We could almost always tell.” (p. 18)

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February 5, 2016

Scarlett: Star on the Run – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Scarlett: Star on the Run, by Susan Schade and Jon Buller. Illustrated by Jon Buller.
NYC, Papercutz, November 2015, trade paperback $14.99 (173 pages), Kindle $8.81.

Here is another all-ages novel by Susan Schade & Jon Buller (wife & husband) in their signature format of alternating chapters in comic-book format and in traditional-novel text. (I reviewed their three-novel The Fog Mound in 2007.) It is mostly for 8- to 12-year-old children, but it has aspects that adult furry fans will enjoy. This would be a simplistic talking-animal comic book/novel for young children, if it weren’t for the revelation that the talking animals have been scientifically made intelligent and given speech.

Is Shane Pafco, the dictatorial owner of Pafco Studios, a movie producer/director or a Mad Scientist? What year is Scarlett set in, with futuristic cars and flying spycams? When Scarlett, the cat movie star of Pafco Studios, gets the chance to escape, she is quick to take it even into a snowy, freezing outdoors. She is lucky enough to be taken in by grouchy old Frank Mole, a half-crazy, gun-waving hermit who doesn’t trust any people and hears voices. He believes that a talking cat is only part of his delusion; and when Scarlett finds out that Trotter, Pafco’s experimental talking dog, has followed her, she fast-talks Frank into believing that he needs a dog, too. Scarlett wants to be a natural cat and catch mice, until Frank’s messy, vermin-filled cabin gives her the opportunity to do so.

“I don’t know,” she muses. “Something about all that SKIN and HAIR is making me lose my appetite.” (p. 29)

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August 26, 2015

Anthropomorphic Animated Features, 2015-2016 – by Fred Patten

by Patch O'Furr

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

Yarst! This has gotten really complicated, so bear with us. These release dates are mostly useless.

Yes, the official American release date of Minions was July 10, 2015, but it was released in Indonesia on June 17 and in Australia (in English) on June 18, and in the United Kingdom on June 26.

Boonie Bears: A Mystical Winter (Xiong Chumo Zhi Xueling Xiongfeng) was released throughout China on January 30, 2015, but most Americans won’t see it until it is released by Warner Bros., dubbed in English, on January 17, 2016. Frog Kingdom – (“Princess Froglegs goes undercover to compete in her father’s Froglympics in order to avoid being married off to a male suitor,” from IMDB) – is a new movie as far as the U.S. is concerned, produced by Grindstone Entertainment in Santa Monica, California and distributed by Lionsgate Entertainment, also in Santa Monica, and released on June 30, 2015; but it was released first in China on December 28, 2013. A Mouse Tale premiered on February 10 as an American direct-to-DVD release; but its theatrical premiere was not until April 7 in Kuwait. (Interestingly, A Mouse Tale was first distributed on DVD in the U.S. by Lionsgate Entertainment, but it was co-produced by Red Post Animation Studio in Lima, Peru and Vista Sur Films in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was announced by Vista Sur as Rodencia y el Diente de la Princesa http://www.vistasurfilms.com.ar/) Japanese animated features are notoriously unofficially subtitled and available in America on video or DVD within a month or two of their Japanese theatrical release.

All that a release date usually means is that the movie has been released; e.g., is real and should be findable somewhere.

Titles, especially of non-English-language features, are also mostly useless. One theatrical feature about “the animals that DIDN’T make it onto the Ark” was produced in CGI animation by Ulysses Filmproduktion GmbH in Hamburg, and originally released theatrically in thirteen countries between April 9 and August 21, 2015. In the U.S., its release was July 17. In Germany its title is Ooops! Die Arche ist Weg …, in the U.K. it’s Two By Two; in America it was announced with trailers as both Ooops! Noah is Gone … and Two By Two before settling on All Creatures Big & Small. You shouldn’t need translations of its Dutch title (Beestenboot) or Spanish title (¡Upsss! ¿Dónde Está Noé…?). The Japanese feature listed as The Boy and the Beast is actually titled in Japanese Bakemono no Ko, which is literally The Beast’s Child or Son of the Beast (or Monster); who knows what it’ll be titled if it gets an American release? The Spring 2016 Russian feature Volkii i Ovtsi has been announced as coming to the U.S. as Sheep and Wolves. In case you don’t know any Russian, that’s a reversal of the Russian title. Read the rest of this entry »

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January 22, 2015

A Wilder West, by Ted R. Blasingame – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

A Wilder West, by Ted R. Blasingame

Raleigh, NC, Lulu.com, August 2014, trade paperback $13.99 (258 pages).

“The range of low granite mountains baked in the prairie’s summer sun, heat waves shimmering into water mirages wherever there were flat places. A ghostly dust devil stirred up dirt in a dancing pirouette while heat-loving cicadas chirred across the plain, filling the air with their rolling song of mating.” (p. 8)

If you think that this sounds like the opening of a Western, you’d be right – except that this is a Western with a Fur, a nude half-human, half-cheetah woman named Citra Kayah. No human has ever seen anything like her before, until she saves the life of Jacob Harrison, a middle-aged showman who is attacked by a mountain lion while out riding in Oklahoma. Jake is dumbfounded, but grateful and in her debt, so he can’t turn Citra down when she asks to join his small traveling Wild West show.

“‘I am far from my home,’ she replied, ‘and I am in constant danger from others like you who would not hesitate to kill me for my pelt. Until I can find a way to return to where I belong, I will need your protection.’

‘How can I protect you?’ he asked, wiping the sweat from his brow.

‘Take me in as a curiosity for your show. It would allow me to hide in plain sight.’” (p. 24)

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July 29, 2014

Furry news of the week: Pseudo-furries past and future (7-28-14)

by Patch O'Furr

It’s the regular feature of news bites, scoops, and Snausage links. Tips welcome- I’d love to post yours!
Only minor stories got my attention this week, so I threw in a few topic starters.
______________________________________

– Technology’s Rainbow Connection – Silicon Valley’s Embrace of the Gay and Lesbian Community
The NY Times article relates to a general conflict about keeping subculture “weird” vs. inviting mainstream attention. (For example- A sex educator has trouble understanding why people wear costumes to gay pride parades, especially Furries.) Thanks for the shout out, Tristan!

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