davidkm

who were we to know
we'd gobbled the peanut gallery
chatted up the hors d'oeuvres

#scifaiku

Unwelcome Guests is the newest full-length collection of dark speculative poetry from SFPA Grand Master and Rhysling winner David C. Kopaska-Merkel

There’s relatability and strangehood in the offerings, some miniature in haiku, a beautiful symmetry and ominous obscurity in the text, dread in the unspoken.
Where some poets hero the impact of the closing line, Kopaska-Merkel’s poems strike in the power between the lines. The reader can never predict what potency the text might disgorge
Unwelcome Guests is a spectral lover’s touch—tender, yet dooming. It’s a perfect marriage of poetry and prose, warm and chilling, starkly intelligent and reachable.
Ideal for anyone.

--Eugen Bacon, Aurealis

At turns disquieting and quirky, playful and poignant, the poems in Unwelcome Guests, like their titular subjects, will stay with you long after you've put the book down and gone to bed (perhaps leaving the light on). A welcome addition to any genre poetry lover's collection!

--Marsheila Rockwell, Rhysling Award-winning poet and author of the Scribe Award-nominated Shard Axe series

The first half of Unwelcome Guests slithers in and out of side-alleys in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, while the second strides avenues of science fiction. Gotta love “June Lockhart’s Recurring Nightmare”. And when “Medusa Buys a Car”. There’s so many environs of speculative poetry visited here, penned with a convincing voice and deft whispers of experimentation.

--Robert Frazier, author of Phantom Navigation

David Kopaska-Merkel’s poetry is like a twisted vein of black gold, with subtle tweaks of darkling humor. He brings to the fore other images that are like watching a glistening pool of oil, beneath which something moves. Whether disturbing sites near Carcosa, the unsuspecting traps of relationships, or unusual visitations, his poetry will inspire, entertain and make you think.

--Colleen Anderson, Rhysling Award winner

MERELY THE BUCKET LIST POEM (ON PAGE 79) IS WORTH THE ACTION ON MY MIND AND MY FUNNY BONES (MORE THAN ONE)

--Edward Mycue, Author of I Am A Fact Not A Fiction

To order a signed and numbered copy from the publisher:

https://weirdhousepress.com/products/unwelcome-guests-by-david-c-kopaska-merkel?_pos=1&_psq=kop&_ss=e&_v=1.0

You can get one directly from me, too ($18 postpaid). I also have PDFs for $3. PayPal to jopnquog [at] gmail [dot] com.

the cargo wakes
torn loose from
millennial dreams

https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/02/books-for-charity.html

Here is the deal. You send me a receipt, dated today or some day after today, showing that you contributed any amount of money to a non-profit that helps disadvantaged groups. This could be your local food pantry, Planned Parenthood, the Brigid Alliance, or any one of countless others. If you are not sure that I will approve of your donation, email me and ask.

When I receive the copy of the receipt from you I will email you a PDF of my 2019 dark speculative poetry collection The Ambassador Takes One For the Team, and my Elgin-winning 2022 collection, Some Disassembly Required. I have that one available in a variety of ebook formats. I'm sorry that I don't have ebooks of my 2024 dark speculative poetry collection from Weird House, entitled Unwelcome Guests

I just read Starter Villain, a novel by John Scalzi. This book, full of plenty of excitement in the form of explosions, murders, and the like, is also a very sweet book. You can't help cheering on the viewpoint character, a good guy who deserves more than he has. Charlie is a substitute teacher when the book opens, but he was a business journalist until layoffs took away his job. Now, like any teacher, he's burned out as hell, And like any substitute teacher, broker than that.

Also there are cats, very smart cats, and foul=mouthed dolphins. Not to mention trillions of dollars, private islands, James-Bond-level secret weapons, and evil billionaires who want to rob the world for profit. Spoiler alert: some people get hurled into lakes.

A quick read and I loled several times. 4/5 stars.

https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/dreams-and-nightmares-129.html

The latest issue of a magazine publishing speculative poetry since 1986. The makes it the second oldest such magazine afaik. Interested in submitting or purchasing? See below:

I print primarily poetry, but also publish a small amount of short short fiction. The genres of fantasy and SF are preferred. I am interested in experimental formats and content, and prefer fantastic horror a la Lovecraft or Blackwood to the blood and gore type. Any SF or fantasy is appropriate if it isn't sappy or trite. If your poem rhymes, be sure that the rhymes are not forced, and that the meter is consistent.
The magazine consists of 24 digest-sized pages with card-stock cover. Publication (dead trees and PDF) is thrice yearly, issues are numbered sequentially. Issue #1 was published in January of 1986. Print run 120 (plus about 25 PDF). Most-recent issue is #129. DN is distributed free to interested libraries. Maximum length for poetry or fiction is 2 single-spaced typed pages, but I prefer less than one page. I prefer e-submissions in the body of the message. Buying 1st N.Am. serial rights unless stated otherwise. Payment is $15 on acceptance + a contributor's copy. (You can request 3 extra copies instead of cash.) I prefer to pay using PayPal. DN is a tough market because of the high volume of poetry submissions I receive. Fewer than 5% of submissions are accepted. Response time ~ 2-4 weeks. Sample copy for $5 (print) or $1 (pdf). Print subscriptions are $25 for 6 issues inside North America and $30 U.S. outside North America. Lifetime sub., with available back issues, for $90. Pdf copies $1 each. A lifetime pdf subscription, with all back issues, is $39. Checks should be payable to me. Subscribe with PayPal to jopnquog@gmail.com.
Artwork should be line drawings; no half-tones (although any color will be visible on digital copies). Good photocopies OK, but I prefer to receive JPEG's as e-mail attachments. Art will be printed no larger than 4 1/2 by 7 1/2 inches, but I can reduce it. Payment $15+1 copy, but $30+1 copy for (color) covers. I always need covers, and small filler illustrations. Filler illos that are the right size and shape to fill up the bottom of a page are particularly useful.

https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/011525b.html

A few updates on writing and publishing. Latest Dreams & Nightmares is out!

I did not remember, if I ever knew, that John W. Campbell, that bastion of hard science fiction, published a story* in 1952 by A. Bertram Chandler, that hero of Space Opera, in which human werewolves battle alien bunny-hopping weretigers for mastery of the stars. It's a great story. Well worth re-reading my old magazines for gems like these.

*"Frontier of the Dark," September issue.

When all the tomfoolery is done, and I want to read a paper book, I find it has fallen on the floor. Because I am a quadriplegic, I need someone else to pick it up for me. It's a good one too. A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller. This is my third time reading it, the first was in the 70s, and I recognize a lot of the people who voted for Trump in its early pages recording the fall of civilization. The book was written before I was born, in the mid 1950s, but it has aged very very well. I recommend it to anyone who likes to read apocalyptic science fiction. Five stars.

Looking out post-prandially at the warm rain (24C) nearly at year's end, I'm conflicted. Something about my spinal-cord injury* makes me feel cold when others are uncomfortably warm. Much of the time climate change feels very good to me. I'm not even comfortable until it gets this warm, and then only if it's sunny. Yet I know that Earth's climate is dangerously out of control. I've been lucky so far. Many are suffering who would not on a stable planet. For centuries we've been perturbing the climate system, and now there are well over 8 billion of us. Don't let's become a cautionary tale for young ETs to tune out in their classrooms. Let's give ourselves the gift that keeps on giving.

*Relic of a car accident many years ago.

Watts, JS, 2012, Songs of Steelyard Sue, Lapwing Publications, lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com
http://www.freewebs.com/lapwingpoetry/, ISBN 978-1-909252-02-8, 24 p. This is a print publication, but I reviewed a PDF file. £10.00 plus shipping, or $22 from Amazon.

Songs of Steelyard Sue is a small book of 12 poems about Steelyard Sue, a metal inheritor of our world. Two of the poems were previously published elsewhere. I gotta tell ya, as I was reading this book I kept silently saying to myself, “that couldn't happen,” or “that violates the laws of physics” and so on. I fully intended to not write a review. But somehow I couldn't do that. I couldn't dislike these poems. J. S. Watts didn't write a science fiction book, in which robots are supposed to do only those things robots plausibly could do. Even though it is about a robot. This is, at its most scientific, perhaps a science fantasy book. Of course it is really about a lonely woman, the last person on earth, if a robot who admits that she has no heart and no human soul is a person. Whatever she isn't, she is, at least, a gardener, even in the absence of plant life.

_I bent the wire
in pretty shapes
and made flower faces
from black rubber scraps.
I saw a bird there, once,
perching on a sonic shell._

(From “Steelyard Sue Plants a Garden”)

Sue is alone, the Earth is nearly a lifeless place, but she isn't completely alone. Metaphorically speaking, there are a few knocks on the door:

_It sat there for two days,
stone-like, good as dead,
until, on the third day,
I found the stone moved,
the toad gone,_

(from “Toad”)

And isn't that a hell of a thing? Did Jesus come back in the form of a toad? And Steelyard Sue, a seeker, but not human and not having a soul, didn't recognize him? Or is this allusion really just a cheap joke? I suspect the latter. The thing is, I like Sue. I like her voice. She doesn't know much about our world, but she's trying. She doesn't know how things are supposed to work, but she has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and wants to do right. The writing is lyrical and the story is a real human one, about an amateur self-taught archaeologist marooned all alone on a desert island 26,000 miles in circumference.

_Sometimes I go to church
three or four times a day. There are so many abandoned here,
churches, that is,_

[and]

_I once found a place,
multi-layered, open to the sky,
where rows and rows of cars
waited their turn in silence_

(From “Steelyard Sue Goes to Church”)

Sue doesn't really know what a church was, and she can't tell a church from a parking garage, but she knows they were important to us in a non-tangible way. She tries to experience them the way we did. She is doomed to failure, and she knows that, but she isn't anything by herself. She exists in relationship to our vanished species.

_A woman of many parts, all man-made
and without a human soul,
not even the soft-skin touch of polished chrome.
I make no concession to organic,
the full moon has no pull upon me.
All I am is corners, sharps and rust:_

(From “The Last Lament of Steelyard Sue”)

Sue is a post-human commentator, solitary, strangely knowledgeable about some of our affairs, yet profoundly ignorant of others. She isn't independent of us. She was not made by us, but she was assembled out of what we left behind. The funny thing about Sue, is that she is also a sort of bridge. A bridge between the human world and a robot world about which she knew nothing, because it came to be when she was already gone. Exactly how this happened is not explained either, but it does provide an explanation for the book. The poems are what the robot world knows about Sue. We don't learn much about the robot world, but we do get the sense that there is a real society, developed at some future time with no direct reference to us. Instead, the robots refer back to a legendary past in which Sue was the only inhabitant.

Vinge, Vernor, 1992, a fire upon the deep: Tom Doherty Associates, 613 pages.

I haven't read everything by Vinge, but I would be surprised if he's written another book better than this one. It is a thriller, in which an extremely powerful and implacable foe pursues relatively helpless and inoffensive people who, paradoxically, are the only ones who can protect the galaxy from it. But what does a plot summary tell you about a good book. This book is full of edge-of-the-seat drama, delightful aliens, futuristic technology, and the equivalent of e-mail messages from a galaxy spanning information network that add realism and allow the author to tell us things the characters can't know. It is sort of a perfect storm of the book, as far as I am concerned, and I can't believe no one's yet tried to make a movie or series of movies out of it.

Here is how it begins. 5 billion years before the story opens an evil computer program that was intelligent and self-aware tried to take over the galaxy. This conquest would have included its extinguishing all independent thought in the galaxy. But something, we never meet in, destroyed the evil thing and all recorded history in the galaxy's civilizations begins 5 billion years ago. That is so long that nobody really thinks about how odd it is to have a clean slate then that's as wide as the galaxy. A chunk of memory, as in RAM or the futuristic equivalent, exists just outside the main civilized part of the galaxy and it is in active. But a human civilization, not a very important one, finds it and tries to mine it for the valuable information it contains. We all know where this is going and soon enough the investigators are destroyed. But that's just the prologue. The entity immediately embarks again on its original plan, interrupted by a mere 5 billion years in suspended animation, and it creates what soon becomes known as "the blight." But I have to tell you another thing. The author hypothesizes that for some unknown reason the interiors of galaxies contain a field that suppresses intelligence of both natural organisms and artificial organisms like computers. So the interior of the galaxy is the unthinking depths, old earth is in what's called the slowness, were faster than light travel is impossible, above the slowness is the beyond, divided into three syllable airs and above the beyond is the transcend, which is really outside the galaxy entirely. If you move up into the transcend and are not soon destroyed, you become a power and may ultimately evolve into something like a god, although those are not usually interested in mundane things like galaxies. Some of these powers or even greater entities are perverted and instead of doing what ever they are supposed to do they decide to control and destroy a helpless little creatures inside galaxies. Like us. It's one of these that is creating the blight. So while the blight is systematically subverting and destroying the vastly powerful civilizations of the high beyond, subsisting on computers more intelligent than Einstein, faster than light travel, and technology based mainly on force fields and things even weirder, when human spaceship escaped the initial attack and headed for the bottom of the beyond where something mysterious might be able to defeat the blight. I'm not going to spoil the story by telling you what happens with that plot line. But the world where much of the rest of the story plays out is inhabited by arrays of intelligent doglike creatures. Each individual member of that race consists of three to six doglike beings, which are individually about as intelligent as dogs. But a pack communicates within itself telepathically. Keith Laumer explored something a little bit like this in one of his amusing Retief stories. Retief was stationed on a planet where the natives consisted of isolated organs, like spleens, eyes, feet, and so on. A bunch of organs got together to make a more powerful being. Just like with Vinge's story, in Laumer's older story the intelligence rose with the complexity of the organism. That book was written with firmly in cheek, but "a fire upon the deep" makes a serious attempt to portray the colonial doglike organisms realistically I think the attempt is pretty successful. This is just one example of the care that Vinge used in putting this story together. You need to read it.

Bus Stop, John Francis Haynes and The Long Trip, Dainis Bisenieks, 2006, Hilltop Press, ISBN 0 905262 38 7, distributed by www.bbr-online.com/catalogue. $4/£1.75. Not paginated, but 16 pages total. Saddle stitched with a color photocopy cover on front and back. Both covers are by Gunter Wessalowski. This slim volume has the appearance of a typical small-press chapbook, except it is laid out like an Ace double; one poem is right side up beginning in the front of the book, whereas the other poem is upside down and progresses from the back. Or the other way around.

Of course the whimsy in this book is European (British and German) and Pennsylvanian (which is east for me). I like the covers. The reproduction could be better, but it's quite acceptable. Let's look at "The Long Trip" first. Stark geometric objects, organic forms, and bleak emptiness on the cover go well with this poem about an interstellar voyage. The poem only hints at the outcome of the voyage and says nothing about the long trip's purpose. The purpose of the poem, if I may presume to claim that I understand the author's intent, is to show us the dark side of voyaging. If you don't know where you're going, or why, and you don't know where you are when you stop on the way, and you don't know what you are looking at when you make that stop, what does that say about the trip, you, and the universe? For Bisenieks, the universe is just this sort of unwelcoming and unfathomable place. In a few pages, he takes us there.

_The rainstorm ends, and the clouds draw away.
The captain gives orders: continue the trip.
Back into a world of neither night nor day
We follow our shadows into the ship._

Turn the book over. "Bus Stop" has a lush cover full of organic forms: plants, animals, and things that could be one or the other. There is a moon, which might be living, a spaceship, and a plethora of odd alien life forms. Open the book and you step into a dream. It doesn't seem to have a direct relationship to the cover, but by the time you get to the end I think you'll see the connection. The protagonist in the poem (I hesitate to call him that because he doesn't make any progress) is trapped in what he believes to be a malignant dream. Alien landscapes and creatures are a dime a dozen in this dream, if dream it is. It reminds me a little of a dream I once had. The dreamer in this poem tries to escape back to reality, but he cannot. There is no explicit resolution, but the reader is left with some questions. Was it really a dream? Could it be reality? And if it's a dream, why? Drugs, the influence of mind-altering machines, bad luck? We don't know any of these things, but we do get a glimpse into mystery.

_The howling wind screamed around his ears.
Through chattering teeth and half-shut eyes he peered
At walls of ice and two pale, limpid suns.
It really must be time to wake up now_

Certainly these two poems go together like left foot and right. They could be pages torn from books in a library of SFnal dementia. Steve Sneyd, science fiction poetry's historian and publisher of Hilltop Press, knows how to pick them.

Snyder, Lucy A., 2009, Chimeric Machines, introduction by Tom Piccirilli, cover by Ursula Vernon, Creative Guy Publishing, www.creativeguypublishing.com, 85 p, perfect-bound pb, ISBN-10 1-894953-55-X; ISBN-13 978-1-894953-55-9, $10.95.

This small book contains three dozen poems. Most were previously published in various periodicals. . The book is divided into seven parts with titles like "Quiet places" and "Dark dreams." Some groups of poems are highly integrated (one set tells a single story from various perspectives), while others merely share themes.

Tom Piccirilli tries hard in the introduction to sell the book. I think most people who read the introductions to small-press books have already bought them. Still, Tom's clever prose provides excellent quotations for marketing, which is a traditional use of book introductions. Most people don't read introductions, anyway. I'm that way, but this one is entertaining. Don't skip it.

I really like the cover. I don't think it was painted for Chimeric Machines, but it's very appropriate (to the title). The machine in the illustration is made of parts that don't seem like they belong together: a skull, gears, wood (?), and more. It is a chimera: something cobbled together from disparate parts. The poems are not. These poems are not frankensteined out of mismatched bits. They are seamless wholes, moving windows into the mind of humanity. They are sharp and hard, but compassionate in their way. To end abuse one must first recognize it, and Chimeric Machines is halfway there. There is humor here, too, but chiefly there is intensity and piercing insight. These poems are mostly pretty short. Most fit on single pages. It doesn't take many words to make a point if you do it well.

One of my favorites is "Home for the holidays," a chilling poem that turns everything on its head at the end and makes you read it again. I also particularly like" Prometheus." I haven't seen the legend treated just this way before, which is one of the things I like about it. Let's just say that this version would not be printed in a book for children.

My pain's become an impure joy;
I wait for you on this windswept rock,
the granite and iron hard against my flesh.
My blood quickens when I hear your call.

From "Uncanny Valley Girl,"

Your polymer skin is smooth as bisque,
your eyes a ceruleun unseen in Nature.
Swains may recoil from servo whir and whisk,
the deus of your machina's my favorite feature.

Atypical in possessing both rhyme and meter, and also in its light tone, "Uncanny Valley Girl" is one of a few exceptions to this book's rule. A pause for breath, a shift in mood, and proof that Snyder's skill encompasses a greater breadth in form and tone than readers might think after reading the first few poems.

What else? The "Crete, Kentucky" poems combine to yield a harrowing look at a suffering family. "Dumb" is a dip inside academia's seamy side. Multiple layers of meaning, some turning on juxtaposition of title and text, some on line vs line alternative uses of versatile words, are the rule in these poems about cruelty, bad choices, bad luck, and harsh reality. It's not all grim. Humor, yes, and beauty too, in "Ocean," for example, in which a trip to the beach doesn't stop with the water. I enjoyed the diversity of this thin, themed book. I see a lot here. In fact, what I don't see are chimerae!

Although I can't understand why Snyder called this book chimeric that doesn't inhibit my appreciation of it. Aficionados of dark poetry and Snyder fans will be glad they snapped this one up.

Sneyd, Steve, 2008, Mistaking the Nature of the Posthuman, perfect-bound trade pb, Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, HD5 8PB, England, ISBN 978-0-905262-42-0, 107 p, ￡6.99/$14.

Historian of SF poetry, chronicler of global SF poetry news, prolific English SF poet whose work is well-known everywhere among genre poetry readers. That is Steve Sneyd, and any new collection from him is eagerly anticipated. Here it is, with an intriguing and disturbing cover by Gunter Wessalowski. If I counted right, there are 96 poems in this book. According to the introduction, these poems were all first published in the 21st century, not many years on, yet the book reads like a best-of high-graded compilation. There is not a dud in the lot.

The introduction, written by the author, appears to claim that the book is published as a guide to surviving the future. Works for me. Although if you use this book as a guide to survival it might just convince you to give up right now. But don't do that! At least read the book first.

The first poem is "If the doors of perception were cleansed." Here's an excerpt.

... just like today only nicer and
futuristic how it ought to be the
best of home only better smoother
cosier somehow if we didn't have
to get back jobs to go to and
Elaine's mum and the kids and anyway

Well, you get the idea. Sneyd doesn't believe in punctuation and has heard rumors of pronouns and prepositions, but does not believe they have been sighted in the wild. Somehow it's all quite understandable (albeit occasionally with a little work).

From "We are also keys to the experiment"

snakes bred russet-red for survival camouflage
in case just in case with monster multifiltered
lungs to breathe
in hindsight the russet we suspect aesthetic
and fangs megafangs manipulated into drills
to search subsurface water out that too late we learn
In this low gravity will also grow

In Sneyd's future nothing ever works like we expect or plan. And when does it ever? Maybe these cautionary tales are spot on accurate. Let me just give you a further taste of the content of this remarkable book. Open it to any page.

From "As is written in the emergency manual,"

Airless Extraterrestrial Enterprises tests our faith
will at very last possible instant as we hallucinate
flake into non-sentience save us reward such loyalty

From "Included out,"

sure beyond doubt more than half at least
the others at these dos are same as me are
not the humans they appear to be at all and
all the towers of the world I am so sure
full night on night of humans hiding from
each other...

What if, all unknowing, you take one of these androids home? Androids who can't be sure of each others' humanity. At least, with clothes on.

From "The sanctity of his mission,"

and
before
sending the virgin to her doom
who otherwise would have anyhow within
a cycle gone into ground

a crop-source-placator she
at least now will not have to
burrow down alone: a hybrid in
her belly, a tasty

extra bonus for the god or gods.

One gets the impression that what is being said is so very important the words tumble over one another in a hopeless attempt to get out before it's too late. I guess if this is a handbook of the "break glass in emergency" kind that might be true. After all, aren't we waist deep in the future already? If this book is instead a metaphor about how hopelessly stranger and more desolate we ourselves will become than most of us can imagine, nevermind what our tools or aliens will be like, then there's no hurry. Cherish your illusions. Don't read this book. Trust me, you don't want to knw what can happen to us, out there, or even right here at home. What you do want to know is, if you buy only one SF poetry book this month, or this season, Mistaking the Nature of the Posthuman should be it.

I know I'm giving what some will misconstrue as contradictory advice, but I maintain that's the best way to deal with the future. In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit I was the first publisher of one or two poems in this collection.

Reynolds, Eric T., ed., 2007, Ruins: Extraterrestrial, Hadley Rille books, Box 25466, Overland Park KS 66225, www.hadleyrillebooks.com. Perfect bound trade paperback, 345 pages, $15.95.

"Nice cover," I thought, though that seems to be typical of this publisher. I enjoyed every story too. There are 23 them, and the theme is obvious from the title of the book.

I have always been fascinated by ruins. Studying them, we catch glimpses of other people, doing other things. Ruins give one a feeling of mortality and also immortality. Here we are, receiving something from those who lived long ago. Some of what we get is passed on unintentionally, and this can be at least as revealing as estimates that are meant for posterity. Considering the past reminds us that we could pass something on too. The fact that we may only have a few crumbs from the biscuit just makes vanished worlds more intriguing. We can take as a premise that ancient people were not so different, really, from us, because varied circumstances have the same basic human material to work with in creating cultures and societies. Could the same be true of ruins left by aliens? Maybe, maybe not. In _Ruins: Extraterrestrial_, a couple of dozen authors consider this question and others

A few excavations.

I'm not familiar with very many of these authors, which may be a function of my ignorance more than anything else. I was quite impressed the quality of writing.

In "stonework" by Wendy Waring, an archaeologist of sorts encounters a relic of a civilization that isn't quite as dead as it seems. This story doesn't answer any questions, but it raises a few.

Justin Stanchfield takes us "Beyond the wall." The concept of a mysterious wall whose far side is unknown is almost a cliché in science fiction. Stanchfield does manage to bring a new twist to the idea. I like the way he like the way he shows, rather than tell, what is going on. And what is that exactly? Is the wall a device that manipulates time? Does it merely manipulate minds? Maybe the difference really makes no difference.

Christopher McKitterick introduces a new riff on the end of humanity theme, so wonderfully played by John W. Campbell and others over the past few decades. "The empty utopia" isn't completely empty, but the last cup is about to be drained when the Martians show up in the nick of time. It is a sweet story.

I don't really mean to say something about every single story in this book, because that would make this review longer than it ought to be. The truth is I like just about every story in this book well enough to tell you something about it. I am afraid that talking about these stories is a bit like eating leaves potato chips. "Borrowed time" by Gustavo Bondoni left me wondering what the ending meant. That doesn't happen too often and I quite enjoyed it.

Harvey Welles and Philip Raines use "The dam" to look back from the far side of a profound cultural transition. Something like the singularity of Vernor Vinge. It's almost impossible for us to understand what the far side of such an event would be like, but this story provides a few clues.

One more. "The fateful voyage of _Dame la Liberté_" by Lavie Tidhar reminded me strongly of RA Lafferty. There's nothing like surreality to enhance a story about archaeology.

The bottom line is that Eric has done something really remarkable in this volume. If you are anything like me, you will like every story. Don't wait until it goes out of print!

In the interest of full disclosure: Eric and my wife are old friends.

Sneyd, Steve, 2005, Ahasuerus on Mars, Atlantean publishing, 38 Pierrot Steps, 71 Kursaal Way, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 2UY, United Kingdom, checks to DJ Tyrer, £1, saddlestitched with cover of lightweight cover stock. Not paginated. Illustrated by Alan Hunter.

This book contains one 8-page poem. Ahasuerus is of course the wandering Jew, and in this poem he wanders pretty dang far. To his sorrow he discovers that no matter how far you go it is pretty difficult to escape your own thoughts and memories. Steve departs a little in this poem from his usual highly compressed style, although you can't read a stanza without knowing who wrote it.

The poem begins with Ahasuerus telling in the first person how he relates to his short-lived crewmates, then that he did not expect the curse would allow him to leave Earth. He speculates about the reasons, and also tells facts about his life, as if to a curious questioner. We learn that he can father children, cannot be killed (although he can suffer pain from physical injury or illness), has little in common with vampires, and so on. He goes on at great length about his millennia of suffering. This is followed by a long section in which the Wandering Jew reminds the reader of why he received his curse in the first place. Finally, the trip down memory lane ends, and the story comes back to its present on Mars.

As a story the poem is not entirely successful. I did learn or remember a number of things about the biblical story. We can all picture what life must be like for the reluctant immortal, though Steve fleshes it out more than we might have in our imagination. Mars seems like a contrived vehicle for telling the protagonist's story. He could be anywhere, and that is the problem I have with the plot. It is not a true science-fiction story because the science-fiction elements are grafted on like Frankenstein's monster's head.

As a poem this comes closer to the mark. Here are a couple of examples.

First he whines...

though in fact I have tried madness
too and that is also too self-heal
to help at all or any drug
or anything to change to shut
the tick of brainpan down

then he tries to justify himself...

did him a favour really made sure
he didn't let himself down
weakness shown before his following his fans
the silent majority of the town

artfully damning himself more with every phrase. This is where Steve almost always excels and he certainly does it here. The reading is both a challenge and a delight.

The layout in this book leaves something to be desired. The right hand pages, those that would have odd numbers if they had numbers, have no left margin at all. The words almost run right out of sight. When it was realized it was going to look like this, the publisher really should have reformatted the manuscript. However, everything is actually visible and can be read.

To summarize, the book could look better and to the plot could be more believable, but the writing is superb.

Cox, Cardinal, 2014, From Space, Starburker Publications, c/o 58 Pennington, Orton Goldhay, Peterborough PE2 5RB United Kingdom, unpaginated saddle stitched chapbook. Available from the publisher for a C5 self-addressed envelope, or email cardinalcox1@yahoo.co.uk. This collection states that it was inspired by the exhibition "Space Fact and Fiction" held at Peterborough Museum June to October 2013, and by the National Space Centre in Lericester.

This chapbook has the same format as the numerous Cthulhu Mythos themed booklets that Cardinal Cox has written recently. In contrast to those books, most of the poems here owe their genesis to golden age science-fiction books and movies, with some real life space science and politics thrown in. The usual bottom-of-the-page notes explain where some poems came from, and dedicate others to notable SF fans. The poems vary from rhymed and metered to other forms and even free verse. This works, I think, as the chapbook's space theme ties them together.

I particularly like the (to me) new insight of “Orbital Observatory”

And as we look into the past
Because the Universe has grown
Those distant vistas are smaller
Than the space we inhabit

If we could look far enough, would we see a tiny post-Bang blaze? Another science poem, “Space Suit,” also appeals to me. An excerpt:

We can't imagine what drove
The fish first onto land
Had a pool dried?
Did it chase an arthropod?

These by no means represent the range of this pamphlet, but do, I hope, indicate its quality. Get it before it's too late!

Boston, Bruce, 2005, Etiquette with your robot wife and 30 more SF/F/H lists, Talisman, Box 565572, Miami, FL 33256; Talismanpub@BellSouth.net, $4.95, saddle-stitched with cardstock cover. 44 pages. Illustrated by Marge Simon.

This book contains 31 of Bruce's list poems, which have been popping up in various publications for the past few years. One, "Things Not to Do or Say When a Mad Scientist Moves into Your Neighborhood," received the Asimov's reader's choice award in 2003. Lists are fun and I have written a few myself. However, it would be hard to deny that Bruce has covered the territory more thoroughly and well than anybody else in the genre.

Here are some of the titles: "Signs your parents are being replaced by automatons," "Reasons the Druids did not survive," "How a werewolf chooses an agent," "The car of the future," and "Advice on meeting the devil in hell." How to tell if your parents are being replaced by automatons ? Here is one way:

_They keep saying the same things
over and over again._

Some of these lists are just silly. Not that there's anything wrong with being silly, but 10 minutes after you read it you want some more. Or something more. Some of these poems tell the truth, which I would argue is the ultimate aim of all literature. Here is one thing not to say when you meet a famous SF writer:

_I've never read anything by you.
But I hear it's pretty good._

If you have a vivid memory of your adolescence, this might make you cringe. By contrast, anything you should not say when being tortured to death is going to sound kind of silly in the comfort of your own home:

_It will actually get hotter if you hold it near
the top of the flame._

or

_I never use my nipples for anything anyway._

Been there, done that, wished I didn't. Seriously, this is a good book. The poems, like all good poems, don't need explanation, because they already tell their tales in the most concise and clear way possible. I have discovered through experimentation that, like an encyclopedia or dictionary of any kind, "Etiquette..." is most enjoyable when browsed rather than read cover to cover. When at a loss, open it up, read one poem, see if that doesn't help. And the next time your domestic robot acts like this it probably needs a tune-up:

_Insists on wearing a sombrero
when it serves enchiladas._

Most of the drawings by Marge Simon are of couples, and illustrate poems for which that is appropriate. They complement the poems nicely.

I recommend this small book to any fan of Bruce's work. Chances are, you have not seen too many of these poems before, as they (collectively) have been printed in so many different places. Even if you have seen many of them before it is nice to have them all in one place. This might be the sort of book to put out on a very small coffee table when hosting a party. It could get people talking. Then again, watch out for the bean dip.

A poetry reading has been approved for Mid-City Microcon (Baton Rouge, Saturday, Feb. 8). How many of you can say that you are likely to participate? I don't need a firm commitment at this time. I'm also going to allow fiction if you only read a few minutes worth. I need to let the library know about how much time the reading will encompass, so I need to get an idea about how many people are likely to be participating.

David

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