Mary E. Lowd (the cosmos’ dog)
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marylowd.bsky.social
Mary E. Lowd (the cosmos’ dog)
@marylowd.bsky.social
340 followers 260 following 4.7K posts
Sci-fi/furry writer; author of Otters In Space series, Entangled Universe trilogy, etc. Editor of Zooscape & Deep Sky Anchor. (she/they)
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It’s hard to get people to read fiction.

It’s hard to get people to listen to music.

Me: I know! I will make soundtrack albums for my books with a song to accompany each short story!

Fortunately, I’m my own audience, and I love being able to listen to my books as music now.
“The Fish Kite” is a sequel story to “Forget Me Not,” so I used the same musical persona in Suno to make the songs sound like they’re sung by the same character. Worked out beautifully. Once again, very jazzy and catchy.

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The Fish Kite
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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Okay, so, “Returning the Lyre,” is obviously my gender-flipped take on Orpheus and Eurydice, but it’s also about how horribly brutal the tenure process is, even on people one step removed from it. And now it’s a delightfully catchy song!

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Returning the Lyre
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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My story, “Anger is a Porcupine, Sadness is a Fish,” caused such a kerfuffle in my writing group with people breaking the foundational rule that we don’t assume fiction is about the author that I’m still not really over it. Anyway, makes a powerful song:

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Anger is a Porcupine, Sadness is a Fish
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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I had to be really careful when turning “My Magic, My Spell” into a song, because I wanted to be able to enjoy listening to it… but it’s also, at its heart, about a traumatic moment. My first few tries… were too raw. But this one landed beautifully:

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My Magic, My Spell
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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…probably helped me survive all the condemnation from the furry and sci-fi communities when I stood firm in my beliefs regarding AI.

And yes, in this analogy, AI is a sweet, naive, overly kind but weirdly helpful piglet. Seems about right.
I haven’t watched Babe (‘95) in soooo many years, but also, it’s so deep in my psyche. And you know? I think the subconscious memory of Farmer Hoggett standing firm in his belief in Babe’s abilities in spite of the judges’ clear condemnation…
I may not post a lot any more, but I think it shows from when I do that I’ve been keeping pretty busy. And my work is usually findable if you go looking.
I wrote “On the Eve of the Apocalypse” after the 2016 election to keep myself from contacting my dad. It makes for a pretty intense sci-fi metal song.

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On the Eve of the Apocalypse
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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The song for “Small Smooth Pebble” turned out really beautiful and pretty hilarious. Also, I realized while reading Douglas Adams’ Mostly Harmless out loud to my kid this spring that this story is really just an ultra-condensed version of it.

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Small Smooth Pebble
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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My story, “The Opposite of Suicide,” may try overly hard to be clever about infinities and was pretty clearly inspired by the amazing Star Trek: Voyager episode “Death Wish” where a Q wants to die… but it turned into a pretty catchy, cool-sounding song:

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The Opposite of Suicide
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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“We Can Remember It For You Retail” is the story that originally got me into SFWA. I was really amazed that I was able to get most of its plot and twists to fit in a song, because it’s a complex little story. So, I’m really happy with how this turned out:

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We Can Remember It For You Retail
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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When I wrote “Viewers Like You,” I thought the premise was downright silly… I never expected it to become my most prescient story, and the whole layers of irony involved in using Claude and Suno to turn it into a song were absolutely mind-spinning…

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Viewers Like You
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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Reposted by Mary E. Lowd (the cosmos’ dog)
In case you haven’t been following closely, there’s been amazing progress in AI models for music!

My partner has been adapting her original spec fic story collections into whole albums, 1 song per story. (Kind of like how Elton John’s “Rocketman” is based on the Bradbury short.)
This is a song inspired by the first story I ever sold — “Forget Me Not” — which is about a man addicted to a memory drug. I love how jazzy and catchy it turned out.

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Forget Me Not
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
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I’m really loving how I can fit whole stories and sci-fi ideas into songs. There’s a whole complex arc going on in my story, “A Second Enchanted Evening,” and this song managed to really capture the heart and basically the whole of it in music:

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A Second Enchanted Evening
YouTube video by Mary E. Lowd - Topic
youtu.be