“The world belongs to us now. The humans were amazing, but their day has passed. Oh, there’s still a few of them out there, trying to take back the world they squandered. But without claws? Without fur? Without scent? Heh. Good luck to ‘em.”
The Reclamation Project: Year One was the first foray into shared-world tales of future fantasy and solarpunk from some of the brightest stars of anthropomorphic literature. Year Two hits the ground running as the healing world of Ambara Down deals with catastrophe, assassination, and betrayal. As their flying cities begin to fail, humans must find a home on this new Earth, among the sentient animals that are its inhabitants. Love and danger, power and promise, and a world to win or lose in the balance!
Casablanca Meets Thundarr: The Barbarian
…With a Touch of Studio Ghibli
The world of The Reclamation Project is designed to provide a wide variety of avenues for storytelling.
- Intrigue? Every community on the planet is a world to itself, isolated by geography, species, or old rivalries and competition for resources. The Reclamation Project—a handful of high-technology human enclaves who seek to establish order from their floating cities—are either benevolent unifiers or thieving tyrants, depending on who you ask.
- Beauty? This is a world of skyscrapers overrun by kudzu, of pearlescent-skinned airfish floating in the twilight mists, and dragonflies the size of a bus. A thousand different intelligent species, uplifted to sapience during a lost age, come together, mingle, fall in love, and build communities with unique and vibrant cultures.
- Mystery? How the world of The Reclamation Project came to be is not entirely known, even by those who study it the most diligently. A great dark age between the days of High Humanity and the beginnings of the Reclamation Project has left tantalizing clues and rampant speculation, but precious little proof.
- Weird powers and wild action? This is a world of superscience that can be indistinguishable from magic. Reclamation Teams and desperate treasure-hunters explore ancient and crumbling vaults for lost technology, under the order of AI hiveminds. Slavers and bandit kings carve out petty kingdoms and form nation-alliances in the hopes of competing with or one day even taking the fight to the Reclamation Project.
How Does a Shared-World Anthology Work?
If your story is accepted for the anthology, you grant us (The Gneech and FurPlanet) permanent but non-exclusive rights to include that story and any characters or elements you’ve created for it into the Reclamation Project setting and derivative works, and those elements thus become available to other creators also working in the setting. You still own the character or element and may create works of your own with those things that do not reference the setting.
Think of it like Into the Spider-Verse: if you write us a story about a cheetah bounty hunter named Javenar, then Javenar will always be part of the setting and other writers will also be able to use her in their stories, but we own A Javenar, not THE Javenar. The point is to build a sandbox with lots of cool elements for creators to play with.
This model was inspired by the Thieves’ World series by Robert Lynn Asprin. If you’re familiar with how that works, you’re good to go.
Story Requirements and Submission Guidelines
Setting Info/Other Reference: The Reclamation Project Wiki. You may also e-mail to request access to the “anthology bible” working document to participate in brainstorming with other creators on the project.
We’re looking for excellent general audience, furry stories between 3,000-15,000 words that fit into the themes and aesthetics of the book. Besides the setting wiki, there is also an “anthology bible” that your story will have to conform to before its final inclusion in the book. If accepted, the elements in your story will become part of the setting and available for writers contributing to future projects. We are eager to hear from marginalized voices and LGBTQA+ perspectives.
General Audience: Danger, adventure, romance, all of these are terrific elements! But we are not looking for erotica and fair warning, your editor is squeamish so extreme violence is a good way to get your story rejected. Do not include rape or explicit torture scenes of any kind.
Furry Stories: Humans are an important element of the setting but even in stories in which they may be ascendant or victorious, they are supporting characters. Furries should be your protagonist characters and the stars of the show.
The Themes and Aesthetics: Rebirth, regrowth, integration, transformation, adventure, building a new world from the bones of the old. Hope in the face of difficult challenges. Gonzo ’70s Van Art Craziness. Your story does not need all of these—although that would probably be a wild ride—but it should definitely have some!
I’m Not Sure My Story Will Fit! If you have confidence that it’s a good story and are willing to make it fit, submit it! If you are absolutely wracked with indecision, query with a synopsis.
Please send submissions as an attached .doc, .docx, or .rtf file in Standard Manuscript Format to himself@gneech.com with a subject line that reads: SUBMISSION: “Story Title” – word count. (For an example of Standard Manuscript Format, see this essay by William Shunn. For help with writing a cover letter, check out this excellent advice from Strange Horizons.)
- Length: Between 3,000 and 15,000 words, but we will consider more or less for excellent submissions.
- Multiple Submissions: Keep it reasonable; two or three stories at a time is probably okay; ten isn’t.
- Reprints: Yes, but include information about where the story was previously published and be sure you retain the rights. We’re more interested in stories that will be new to the majority of our audience, and you must be willing to revise to the setting bible if necessary.
- Simultaneous Submissions: No. If you send a story to us, please don’t send it anywhere else until you hear back from us.
- Response Time: You should get at least some kind of response within 8 weeks of submission, in order to have time for access to the setting bible and any necessary revisions.
- Payment: 1/2 cent per word and one contributor’s copy.
- Deadline: October 31st, 2020
- Expected Release Date: Late 2020 or early 2021, TBD