Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Gods With Fur

FurPlanet Productions is announcing its next original short story anthology:

Gods With Fur (subtitle: or Feathers, Scales, … We haven’t forgotten them.)

To be published in July 2016, at Anthrocon 2016.

Wanted: original short stories (no reprints) featuring animal gods, preferably of 4,000 to 20,000 words. Lesser will be accepted. Longer … let’s discuss it.

These may be historic gods or “superbeings” such as the African Anansi (spider); the Akkadian/Babylonian Tiamat (dragon or sea serpent); the pre-Islamic Arabian Allāt (hyena) or Nasr (vulture); the Aztec Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent) or Tezcatlipoca (jaguar); the Egyptian Anubis (jackal-headed), Bast (cat-headed), or Sekhmet (lioness-headed); the Mayan Kayab (turtle), Muwan (owl), or Zotz (bat); the North American Coyote, Nanabozo (giant rabbit), or Raven; or original creations like Michael H. Payne’s 12 Curials or Rick Griffin’s congress of Cerberus, Great Kitsune, Pete the Gryphon, and the Spirit Dragon (but don’t use another author’s copyrighted characters. Create your own furry pantheon.). Since this is for a furry fandom readership, stories with a single god and all other humans are discouraged; although authors are encouraged to think of imaginative exceptions such as an animal god changing humans into furries. Some humans are acceptable, but make this a predominantly furry story.

(Many ancient religions described their gods and goddesses as alternating between human and anthropomorphic forms, or blending several forms. Tiamat has been depicted as a human woman, a giant sea serpent, a flying dragon with either one or multiple heads, and a woman with a tail and a cow’s udder. The Mesopotamian Pazuzu, god of disease, was usually shown as a human with snarling dog’s or cat’s fangs, scales, a predator’s foreclaws and a raptor’s hind talons, a scorpion’s tail, four large wings, and an erect penis with a snake’s head. The four large wings have resulted in the modern theory that Pazuzu was inspired by the mosquitos that brought disease. Zeus would appear as an animal whenever he wanted to. For this anthology, keep the anthropomorphic form predominant, although the blend of forms could be useful.)

Imaginative combinations of gods are good: one or more Egyptian gods versus North American gods, or all of them teaming up against a common adversary. Or the feline gods & goddesses of several different mythologies getting together or fighting each other. Would canine and feline gods fight like dogs and cats? (But many people have pet dogs & cats that live peacefully together.)

Use obscure and ugly gods. The Middle Eastern Mandaeans (who Wikipedia says are emigrating to the U.S. to escape the war in Iraq) still believe in the five lords of the underworld including Krun (anthro giant louse), Hagh (anthro giant scorpion), and Sargi (anthro giant hornet). Non-god mythological characters are acceptable, such as the Egyptian demoness Ammut, the crocodile-lion-hippopotamus “pet” of the goddess Ma’at (she ate the souls that Ma’at judged unworthy of being admitted to the Egyptian hereafter); or the Nordic giant serpent Ouroboros who circled the world, or Hugin & Munin, Odin’s two ravens.

Authors who want to contribute are urged to check with me (Fred Patten) first to make sure that story ideas are not too close to others already approved. We don’t want an overabundance of stories, for example, featuring the Egyptian animal-headed gods.

Deadline: May 1st, to allow a month for requested revisions.

Payment: ½¢ per word upon publication and a contributor’s copy of Gods With Fur, a $19.95 anthology. Contributors may buy additional copies at a 30% discount.

Send submissions to fredpatten@earthlink.net.

(Edited to add email address. --PT)

hmmmmmm… must come up with something Ryan Campbell and Fuzzwolf have not already done…

Why no single god stories? No single god who is a twelve headed hydra, each head governing a different as entity either?

This sounds interesting, and it is a topic I would like to explore.

Hmmm…I do have a story I wrote about a year ago that’s been sitting on my hard drive, unfinished, and at least mentions an anthropomorphic god. I’ll have to think about this one since I’m still new and haven’t experienced the publishing process (rejected or accepted).

Really interesting idea!

A battle between the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn… hmmmm…

Are you looking for legend-type stories, or can this be set in modern day? And are you looking for a particular tone, serious or humorous, etc?

Everything! I’d love a mixture of legend-type stories; modern-day settings; serious and humorous. I wrote one of the stories in my “The Furry Future” myself because nobody else submitted any humor.

A battle between the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn… What if the most popular imaginary animals of today’s popular culture materialized everywhere as today’s gods, like the computer game monsters in “Pixels”? Pikachu! Hello Kitty! Cthulhu in his plush doll form! A lolcat! The MLP:FIM ponies! Wonder Woman; acknowledge that there would be some modern human gods in this mixture! China would get Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf; they’re reportedly super-popular with Chinese kids today. Keep the story centered on public-domain characters like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, with copyrighted others like Bugs Bunny only mentioned.

Be imaginative!

Sounds interesting! That’s a date to put down on the calendar!

Considering my degree in religious studies, this seems built for me. ;D

Who Prayed to Roger Rabbit? (free title)

A Lapist, perhaps? =;)

Not to poach submissions… BUT…

The deadline for ROAR 7 is safely before the deadline for this, and gods do sound rather… LEGENDARY.

I don’t know if your submission is considering reprints or soliciting for them, but uh, if I can suggest some HELLA GREAT stories that would fit fabulously into an anthology with this theme:

“The Horrid Glory of Its Wings” by Elizabeth Bear. I believe last published by Tor on their website, here: http://www.tor.com/2009/12/08/the-horrid-glory-of-its-wings/

“Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon. Last published by Apex magazine in January of 2014: http://www.apex-magazine.com/jackalope-wives/ (This would also fit extraordinarily well into ROAR #7…)


Meanwhile, I think I’m calling Ouroboros.

“Gods With Fur” is to be an original-story anthology, so reprints aren’t wanted. Gods can be legendary. I think that one of Lester del Rey’s early stories (or was it one of Theodore Sturgeon’s?) was about an ancient god whose last worshipper has just died, and who becomes reduced to a legendary or folk-tale wanderer. Pan? (It’s been over fifty years since I read it. I should look it up again.)

Lapist gods… Do the Lapists have gods? I thought that Lapism was more of a philosophy than a religion. I can see a story about an extremist offshoot of Lapism who invent their own lapine gods … or how would Lapists react to Nanabozo, the giant rabbit trickster of some Native American tribes? Whatever you’ve got in mind, Rabbit, I want to read it. And if it results in a story too long for “Gods With Fur” and you publish it elsewhere, I’ll still feel honored.

I’d love to see something about a species’ own gods and myths, like the stories of Frith and El-ahrairah in Watership Down. I realise that ‘write something like Watership Down!’ is setting the bar pretty high, though :slight_smile:

This reminds me of “Rememory” by John Betancourt. I reviewed it in Yarf! #9 in 1990, but it’s reprinted in Kindle today:

“This is a cross between BladeRunner and Total Recall, a fast-moving cyberpunk thriller set in a depressing future. The story, full of violent crime and political terrorism, is forgettable. What is memorable is the glimpse of new bioengineered societies that combine aspects of racial minorities, religious sects, and urban super-gangs.
There is superpollution to the degree that nose filters are needed to breathe in the streets. Aircars fly through the skies, but it costs $500 for three hours at a parking meter. Individual police forces have been absorbed into the SecurNet, a Gestapo that ruthlessly enforces national public order. Major government offices have become hereditary, although the pretense of democracy is still maintained.
People are dropping out of this society through bioengineering. It began a couple of generations earlier as cosmetic surgery. It has evolved into the rejection of a human race, which no longer offers anything to the individual, and the development of new artificial species that promise family and brotherhood. New ghettoes have formed for peoples such as the techs, proud of all their mechanical implants; the glitterfolk, pleasure-seekers who flaunt flashing electronics and neon body-parts; and especially the animalforms such as the catmen, the dogmen, the penguinmen, and others who have turned themselves into their chosen totem animals.
Slasher, Hangman, and Jeffy are three catmen criminals who specialize in robbing dogmen, the rivals of the cats. As the novel follows them, it flashes past intriguing details of the catmen and dogmen societies, with passing references to other animen. There are bodyshops such as Animen-R-Us, where humans can get themselves converted. Conversion used to be an individual adult choice, but now that animal communities have developed, parents have their children converted as soon after birth as possible. Catmen and dogmen can transform themselves at will, were-animal style, between a human bipedal posture and an animal quadrupedal stance. Animen adults have enhanced muscles and steel claws; children have plastic practice claws. Bioengineered body forms establish the basic feline or canine structure, including head-shape, fangs, claws, tail, and so on; but the skin and body-fur are easily interchangeable. A catman can appear as a tiger, a leopard, a cougar, a cheetah, a man-sized Siamese cat, or just about any other feline almost as easily as a human can change clothes. There can also be hybrids, such as a dogman smuggler with the head of a Doberman and the body of a wolf or a husky.
Rememory is worth reading for these glimpses of animan life, and for the semi-pathetic, semi-psychotic movement among the animen to deny their humanity and proclaim their adherence to their free animal nature, at the same time that they are developing their own political corruption and their own brutal Gestapo, the Shadowcats. The plot is for those who enjoy lots of blow-’em-up, shoot-’em-down action, chase scenes, and cynical double-crosses.”

Betancourt doesn’t go into his animen communities’ religions, but it makes sense that a catman, a dogman, a penguinman, a voleman, etc. community would create its own religion and its own gods. Betancourt’s work is copyrighted, but that shouldn’t keep anyone from creating a new anthro culture of one species or many, speculating about what gods they would worship, and then bringing those gods to life.

Indeed, the plot of what happens to gods when they become outdated is currently being developed as a forthcoming Chinese animated feature film, “Little Door Gods”, for release next year. They aren’t anthropomorphic gods, but they could be in a furry story. (On the other paw, if the plot has been used at least twice before…)

Let’s not forget American Gods.