About the Index

About the Anthropomorphic Index: To be listed on this index a novel must meet the following requirements:

1. Except for manga and graphic novels, and books that are meant to be a showcase of an artist's or artists' anthropomorphic works, listed publications MUST have more words than pictures (i.e, children's picture books are not listed, if they were this list would be far too large to index)

2. The book MUST be about animals, plants and/or inanimate objects, or have any of those as a major character. No exceptions.

3. The animals, plants, and/or inanimate objects MUST talk or have their native tongue translated into English for the sake of the narrative, and/or the book MUST be told from the first person perspective of an animal/plant/object, and the animal/plant/object characters in the book MUST possess the full range of "human" emotions. Non-talking animals are listed ONLY when the creatures possess incredible degrees of intelligence and are able to communicate with humans (such as the dog in Dean Koontz's Watchers). So called "true to life" (ha!) animal stories such as the work of Jack London or Jim Kjeeglard are not listed, as they do not fit these criteria.

4. Books about weres, or human shapeshifters, are in general not considered furry unless there are other animals involved, as in Jennifer Roberson's Shapechangers series, which features many sentient animal characters (When it's the animal who does the shapeshifting, however, such as Kij Johnson's Fox Woman, it IS considered furry). To be listed on other criteria than that, however, the human shapeshifter -

MUST be in animal form for more than half the novel or stay in a mutual form that is chimerical (such as the wolfmorphs in Tanya Huff's Blood Trail) OR-

MUST be transformed into a furrymorph/chimerical form (like the case of John Dashney's Mishka the Mouseware) OR-

The character MUST never regain humanity (such as Kafka's famous Gregor Samsa) OR-

The shapeshifted human, when in pure animal form, MUST associate with fellow animals. The "true" animals in the story must meet the criteria in Section Three EXCEPT when the transformed human retains their powers of speech or when the book focuses on an "animalization" of a person inside as well as out (such as in Whitley Strieber's The Wild, where character Bob must learn to deal with the conflicts between his wolf brain and his human brain).

5. The animals in the story do NOT have to be species as we know on earth - but they have to resemble Terran species at least somewhat to be listed here. For example, Eet in Andre Norton's Zero Stone series doesn't look much like the cats we find on earth, but he is feline, and is enough like a cat to be conistered one for the purposes of this index.

6. Media novels, or books based on movies/TV shows etc., are listed as long as they are original stories and not merely novelizations of episodes/etc.

7. Graphic novels and manga are listed here. PLEASE contact me if you know any more furry comics!

8. Typical comic books, i.e., individual issues of the type that can be bought at supermarkets, drug stores, comic book stores, etc are not listed for the same reason as picture books (would make the list far too long).

9. Only English-language books are listed here, mainly from America and Britain. There are also a few Australian books, and books from other countries that were either written in English or were translated into English. English is the only language I speak, therefore I have no personal interest in seeking out furry books in other languages. I will leave that up to other fans.

Credits: I would like to give my thanks to a number of websites and establishments that have greatly helped me with this project: