story complete. Is there an email address to send it to yet?
Just got to make sure they are actually Lovecraft’s because if they were one of his followers they may not be public domain.
Always do your research on the subject. 
What is the copyright law today; the life of the author plus 75 years? Lovecraft died in 1937, so plus 75 years is 2012. I think almost all of his followers died late enough that their works would still be copyrighted. Robert E. Howard predeceased him, so his additions to the Lovecraft Mythos are fair game. Henry Kuttner died in 1958, Clark Ashton Smith in 1961, Frank Belknap Long in 1994, Robert Bloch also in 1994 – who else is there?
August Derleth, co-founder of Arkham House and, IIRC, the one who actually coined the term “Cthulhu Mythos” – if one were really worried about copyright, he might be the most likely Lovecraftian author to trip over.
True, on both counts. August Derleth died in 1971, so his copyrights will remain valid for awhile to come. But Lovecraft et al. meant the Cthulhu Mythos and its additions to become part of the whole and to be shared, not that each author had to get copyright permission each time he (well, yeah, he; the Cthulhu Mythos writers were all guys) wanted to cite someone else’s addition to the CM in his story. Is anyone really likely to sue if a FWG author uses a CM addition by Kuttner or Bloch in his/her (there are surely women CM writers today) story?
Come to think of it, haven’t there been several anthologies of new CM stories by newer authors in recent years? Did those authors have to get copyright permission from anyone?
Circlet Press put out an anthology of Lovecraftian erotica (really!) called Whispers in Darkness. When I’m not at work I’ll try to look up the call for submissions and see what they said about copyright.
It’s truly remarkable that we live in an age, not only where people want that, but we are able to sit down, look at the current state of affairs, say to ourselves, “yep, having this would improve the situation”, and then have the means to produce it.
On topic though; I’m wondering what the proportion of pre-existing to original gods will be. I’m guessing that the anthology is looking for a healthy mix of both. Also, I’m wondering, whilst I have no plans to go near the idea, would a story involving one of the 6 big religions (Christianity, Jeudaism, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism), be considered if it was done tastefully?
If it was done really carefully, probably. Remember that this is a FURRY anthology that should be attractive to potential buyers. An obvious furry version of Jesus, the Buddha, or the Hindu gods, no matter how tastefully presented, would be considered in poor taste by some. A furry version of Mohammed would probably be considered blasphemous by Moslems. Fortunately there aren’t many Moslems who are furry lit buyers, but even so … FuzzWolf, how would you feel about FurPlanet publishing a story about a furry Mohammed or funny-animal Moslems (especially dogs, considered as unclean by Moslems)?
Hinduism already has elephant-headed Ganesha and monkey-headed Hanuman. Speaking of which, I recently saw a preview of “Sanjay’s Super Team”, the next Pixar animated short that will be released with “The Good Dinosaur” on Thanksgiving. It’s by Sanjay Patel, one of Pixar’s top CGI animators, and is a reminisce/visualization of when he was a young Indian immigrant growing up in Riverside, Calif. in the 1970s. His father made him worship the Hindu gods while he was reading superhero comic books and watching American TV cartoons, so he mixed them up and imagined Vishnu, Hanuman, Durga and the others as Marvel-style superheroes.
I’d avoid Islam, even if it’s careful, since backlash for Islam can be as bad as extremist Christian denominations. It’s blasphemous to show Mohammed as is.
I remember that, In Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, a single panel shows DIO reading the quran, and during the fight between his and Jotaro’s fight, and durin the Vanilla Ice fight, they crash through several Mosques - it’s set in Egypt, so it makes sense, and there was no real mention of Islam, but the backlash was so heavy that they had to edit the manga entirely to remove those elements. It was released in the 80’s, but the backlash didn’t start until the OVA came out in the 90’s. Personally, with such a minor detail having such a major backlash back then, I would be really, really, careful about putting out anything with Islam.
The same goes for being careful about some denominations of Christianity, but, I think you can get away with more. Steel Ball Run had Jesus show up as a character with a stand called “Ticket to Ride”, and that’s yet to get taken down. :3
Wikipedia has highlighted today (October 19) an article on eight gods or goddesses of bees & honey: Ah-Muzen-Cab (Mayan god); Aristaeus (Greek god); Austéja (Lithuanian goddess); Bhramari (Hindu goddess); Bubilas (Lithuanian god); Colel Cab (Mayan goddess); Melissa (Greek goddess); and Mellona (Roman goddess). Another article on “Bee (mythology)” names others such as Potnia (Minoan and Mycenaean goddess). These usually appeared as humans, but for story purposes they could be anthropomorphized bees or bee-human hybrids. Is anyone using them in stories?
This is the origin of Melissa as a woman’s name. Since Melissa was associated with Venus in ancient mythology, you can ask anyone named Melissa if she knows that Melissa went from a Greek goddess and nurse of Zeus who fed him honey instead of milk, to the high priestess of a Greek sex cult.
On the hypothetical question of “furry” inclusion in Islamic practice:
The matter boils down to questions of ritual cleanliness. With dogs, most consider the hair to be nijaz (ritually unclean), although the Maliki madhab considers only the saliva to be unclean. However, as sapient beings, I expect the majority of fatwas would declare that the fur and/or hair are nijaz only to human beings, and that unclean animals must pray in a separate space.
As for swine, they might well have a tougher time of it.
Cats, on the other hand, are considered especially clean. It’s even permissible to do ritual ablutions with water from which a cat has been drinking. Muhammad (saws) is reported to have been fond of cats, and would do without his coat rather than wake a cat sleeping on it.
I actually did write a furry story which was a retelling of the early history of Islam, in a sci-fi setting. I think the lack of interest from publishers was mainly to do with it being badly written. XP I still do use a thinly-veiled version of Islam in my fiction, though.
EDIT: That should be “najaz.” Sorry, it doesn’t come up in conversation much. XP
I haven’t even finished reading this paragraph, but just had to say no as quickly as possible. No no no.
That’s what I thought. It’s a sensible policy to work with.
I like how everyone just ignores what the Muslim has to say. XP
I haven’t ignored it. 8) But then, it feels like just this summer that I learned you were Muslim.
I was thinking about doing a Xristos story set in Aesop’s World, but then I would have to fix what species Christ was in that universe and I’d rather not. Plus, there was a lack of plot.
If I had a good plot for a Furry Christ (or a Furry Mohamed or a Furry Buddha story) I would absolutely write it and leave the commercial decisions to Fred. Because that’s his job as editor and mine, as writer, is to the art. Hurting and insulting people’s not part of my agenda; but neither is sparing them introspection.
Although, I humbly submit, that if someone were to write a Furry Christ story, I would suggest a riff on The Little Drummer Boy. That song still makes me cry if I am not careful. The endless glory that can exist in even the poorest of us… if you could tell that story in a furry universe then it doesn’t matter whose is in the manger when the drummer starts…
I would love to see somebody write something with a Middle Eastern theme, maybe Persian, Ottoman, or Mesopotamian.
A story with Mesopotamian or Persian pre-Islamic furry gods might be interesting. As for an Islamic theme, FuzzWolf’s “no no no” settles that since “Gods With Fur” will be a FurPlanet book. Considering what’s happened in France with “Charlie Hebdo” and in Denmark with cartoons about Mohammad, it would probably be dangerous to even ask.
Pre-Islam Persian religion was Zoroastrianism, I believe.
DUALISTIC THEOGONY
That is the only thing I know about Zoroastrianism. And one of the few facts from my degree that’s apparently stuck.