Seed of Revolution

Novella by Daniel Hatch

On a planet where genetics works on some 4x4 matrix I've spent way too long thinking about, mammalian life has evolved to look like anthropomorphic dogs, pigs, porcupines, etc. These talking animals have their civilization altered by a human survey team, and proceed to change their government while lecturing each other about philosophy and economics.

Now the economics, and the spreading memes/genes theme are food for thought, but don't think this story takes itself too seriously. The police inspector is a dog named Mag'Rrrruff, one of the revolutionaries goes by Porkle'pi, and a scene at a bar named The Maltese Frog starts off a series of film noir references. And unlike some novellas, it turns out this story was part of a series and I didn't even notice; it worked perfectly by itself.

The ending to the murder plot did sort of come out of nowhere, but the investigation of the murder was more of a device to drive the plot than it was a plot itself, and it worked well as such. I found myself oddly much more drawn into this non-serious world than is common for a comedic story, I just got caught up in the revolution. I'm not sure exactly where on the seriousness spectrum it should go, but either way it gets a cool 3.5 out of 5.