An e-zine about spaceships, aliens, science, memory, motherhood, magic, and cats.
by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November/December 2020
Addie stepped onto the fanciest spaceship she’d ever seen and thrilled at the idea that she might soon own it. The twinkling lights, the shining displays, the dashboards of brightly colored buttons — all hers! She’d been saving credits for years and finally had enough to buy a fully AI-equipped, FTL-drive starhopper. Continue reading “Courtship FTL”
The Bengal cats refuse to believe that my keyboard is not for walking on. They are adamant. They are stubborn. They are plural. They are winning this fight.
Me: 52 hours until new puppy!!!
My brain: what if… getting a puppy doesn’t magically fix everything and make us perfectly happy? Continue reading “Stray Thoughts While Waiting for the New Puppy”
My fursona is usually a cat with a tortoise’s shell. So, like, a turtle-cat.
But I’ve thought of a new fursona that speaks to me: an octopus who got ahold of an abandoned human skeleton, wrapped its tentacles around it, and wobbles about that way. Continue reading “My Fursona”
That feeling when a man has asked you to help him learn how to be better by pointing out when he does something wrong, and yet when you do so, he makes it all about his feelings instead of the actual thing.
I rewatched Dead Again (1991) for the first time in ages, and that script is tight. So smart and well-written. So, I looked up the writer’s other credits…
Scott Frank wrote Logan (2017). Yeah. Continue reading “From Dead Again to Queen’s Gambit”
Out of context quote: “Well, on the bright side, there’s already butter everywhere anyway.”
New game! Add/change a word to make a song furry…
—“Walk Like an Egyptian Mau” by the Bengals
—“Dog Only Knows” by The Beach Dogs
—“I Want to Hold Your Paw” by The Beagles
—“My Favorite Strings” by the Von Catt Family
—“The Boxer” by Simon & Garfield
I’ve gotten to the part of Star Wars: The Clone Wars concurrent with Revenge of the Sith, and wow, it is really, really cool how all the threads of the show and the threads of a movie from fifteen years ago are all tying together, braiding so beautifully.
Also, I love Ahsoka.
About a year ago, I decided that I loved Star Wars enough to try watching The Clone Wars again… now I’m up to the last few episodes, and it’s hard to believe that I ever knew Star Wars without Ahsoka Tano being part of it. She’s becomes one of my absolute favorite characters.
I did a full editing pass tonight on the titular novella from my collection, “Commander Annie and Other Adventures,” upcoming from Argyll Productions, and that story is still so close to my heart.
The main character is hard-edged, prickly, & so heart-breakingly lovable.
“Commander Annie” is me when I was twelve, flaws and all, and re-reading the journey I wrote for her… it takes me down into one of the deepest wounds from my childhood, and then pulls me back up from it.
I can’t wait for people to be able to read this story.