Science Fiction Double Feature

I chose this pseudonym and almost regret it because this forum seems like a great opportunity to discuss Science Fiction. I'll just start with the most recent novel I read.

Beasts by John Crowley
This novel is pretty appropriate for starting out given where we are. Furries didn't just start with the internet, they really started in newsletters or in conventions, through science fiction magazine and independent comic books. Red Shetland anyone? Well it's hard to find information about that early formitive era of furrydom, considering there wasn't really an internet and Usenet didn't even exist when this book was published (1975), but even so it'd be hard to find this information in a sea of fursonas and Sonic the Hedgehog recolors.

Well Beasts is sort of a strange hybrid of Science Fiction and furry erotica. We get too much description about Painter's lionman dick. Let me back up. In the future, the US split up, and one part of it is the United Genetic States or sommat, they created all sorts of animal people, but one was fertile, the leos, and they decide to recall them like a McDonald's Kid's Meal. The rest of the world's pretty shit too, with people trying to over throw each other.

Painter is the only Leo who talks he also fucks a girl for... reasons that are unclear. I have to admit it's not a book that isn't terribly clear thematically, except, maybe John Crowley believes in some form of naturalism, returning to the Earth, living off the land.

 

One of my favorites was Call Me Joe, about how to explore a gas giant planet humans genetically engineered a lifeform to psychically control from space. A paraplegic scientist took a real liking to this, having four legs to work with instead of none and the greater freedom this brings.