Anthropomorphic Dreams Publishing

Escape Pod, the science-fiction audio-magazine has a couple of stories, one recent and one from a couple of years ago, dealing with uplifted canine characters working on the police force. Both stories give an interesting look into the minds of the characters who bridge the gap between animal and human. They also capture the essence of dogs’ personalities quite perfectly and are a treat to listen to, especially for dog lovers. The stories are:

The Drabblecast, the podcast of strange-fiction has a nice tribute for H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday again this year.

The Outsider does not have animal characters, but it is another wonderful use of anthropomorphism and dealing with The Other. It’s a nice bit of dramatic and sympathetic horror and Norm Sherman does a wonderful job narrating the tale.

PodCastle, the fantasy podcast ran an interesting story with a different kind of anthropomorphism.

While it doesn’t have any animals in it, Remembrance is Something Like a House by Will Ludwigsen is a wonderfully inventive idea. In it a long vacant house, haunted by a dark memory of the past, goes in search for the family who used to live within it.

Early on when PodCastle, the fantasy podcast, started up they ran two stories, back to back, which have heroines going up against both menacing dragons and social conventions and norms.

These stories were Fear of Dragons and Run of the Fiery Horse. The stories get a little political, and the first one is a bit heavy handed, while the second is more balanced. Both of them had neat takes on Easter and Western tales of dragons (or serpents) and they had wonderful  mythology of them, especially the Fiery Horse one.

This music video is a few years old, but still worth mentioning for an interesting concept and some dark comedy.

Moby’s Beautiful is a wonderfully twisted skewering of the party crowd, done at a key party with a bunch of people in animal mascot suits. It’s like a furpile on the set of Boogie Nights. The poor rabbit guy is reminiscent of William H. Macey’s character in that film.

There were cries of “fursecution” when it came out, how everyone thought he was making fun of furries. In truth it looks pretty obvious that it doesn’t have anything to do with the fandom. Instead it’s using the suits to create a cartoonish scene and an interesting take on anthropomorphism. They used the costumes to good effect here, playing on the lack of good facial expressions, to heighten the surreal drama.