Where Rockets Burn Through – Editor, Russell Jones
Released late last year and inspired by the science fiction poems of Edwin Morgan, some of which are presented here, this collection is subtitled contemporary science fiction poems from the UK and gathers over ninety pieces from over forty writers, grouped into four sections with titles taken from Morgan, A Home In Space, Hold Hands Among The Atoms, From The Video Box and The Ages.
The style and quality varies but there are some immediately entertaining choices across the vast horizons of possibility presented, from Joe Dunthorne’s fast and precisely worded Future Dating, making clear the hazards and perils of that inevitable development, to John McCauliffe’s Draft of a Novel, a fractured stream of consciousness that captures the twisting creative effort and all the tangled sources it pulls from, while Simon Barraclough’s Barren Moon tells a whole short story of exploration and discovery in around a hundred words.
A great many of the poems, some of which have been previously published, only feel peripherally science fiction, though some of the best are those that fall outside the category. Side by side and similarly themed are Photography by Sue Guiney and Monochrome from Lorraine Mariner, one a parent considering her son’s request for a digital camera and how it will change his perception of the world, frozen in a frame, the other a humorous reflection on how quickly recent history has regressed to the deep past simply because it is only recorded in black and white. Both are elegant, accessible and entertaining, but while they both focus on the impact of technology on lives, neither are in any way science fiction, as these are established changes, not speculations on the future or even the unfolding present.
Pining for a youth where the promise of spaceflight seemed on the cusp of possibility, Jane McKie’s Our Flight to the Moon contrasts the enduring mystery and romance of our closest neighbour with the dull reality of the dusty, lifeless surface, a theme expanded upon in the triptych of Lost Worlds from McKie, Andrew C Ferguson and Andrew J Wilson, who pinpoint the ennui of modernity by reminding us of when “Armstrong’s boot stamped on our illusions.”
The Costume and The UFOlogists by Aiko Harman and Claire Askew respectively namecheck popular science fiction, Blade Runner and Star Trek, thrown out for legitimacy in the way an ill researched journalist drops names in the hope of scoring points, yet both betray a lack of feel for their subjects, the costume described being more akin to a Cylon than a replicant, the latter’s darkly humorous tale of damp nights of foolish hope lending itself more to an X file. Askew does better in The Trekker’s Wife, a charming and warm observation of life with a fan that correctly uses the preferred term, but oddly refers to “a good cup of tea like a phaser in his fist,” then states “In his head he’s Captain James T Kirk,” when Yeoman Rand will confirm that Kirk prefers coffee.
Jon Stone at least shows wider reach, referencing Barbarella, Arrakis and Galactus as well as the obligatory c-beams glittering near the Tannhäuser Gate, though his inspiration is too apparent in Torn Page from a chapter on Ray Guns, which is exactly that, the page in question being the rearranged text of David Langford’s column in SFX issue 172, now on the original author’s Ansible website.
Kona McPhee approaches Blade Runner much more successfully in Poem for Roy Batty, as lyrical as the scene that inspired it, though while Andy Jackson’s Holidays on LV-426 is fun, neither that nor his Love Song of the Bodysnatcher live up to the expectation of their titles. Instead, enjoy The Real Hand of a Thunderbird, also from Barraclough, accurate and affectionate, cleverly referencing the style and limitations of that show and even the guest appearance of The Shadows while still managing a subversive edge.
Unfortunately, while some use the phrases and motifs of science fiction, their intent is so deliberately opaque as to be meaningless, among them the pretentious word salad of Robot Unicorn Attack, Infoworship and Automota Soup, though at least Kirsten Irving’s Supper manages displays clever construction if nothing beyond that novelty, whereas Peter Finch’s Mars Attacks! is an exercise in text alignment.
Daring though they may be, none of these pieces compare with novelist Ken MacLeod’s Looking Backward, On The Year 2000 (as it appeared from the year 1970), pithy, nostalgic, melancholy, funny, and managing to both scan and rhyme, or his Morlock’s Arms, a montage of references strung together in such a sly manner their origin is apparent only to those in the know, the almost Haiku starkness of Andrew J Wilson’s Alone Against the Night, or the images and allusions to historical literature and art in The Man in the Moon from Matthew Francis.
Two contrasting poems come from the pen of Pippa Goldschmidt; first is Physics for the Unwary Student, a brief series of questions, each double edged, to be considered first from the rational viewpoint of forces and masses but also as a human being in those circumstances, and also the final original inclusion, From the Unofficial History of the European Southern Observatory, a reminder that those who practice science are very real people with very real lives in a sometimes frightening world, and as far as we may be able to see in the night sky, closer by there may be much darker things hidden.
While the introductory essay does warn that the contents are predominantly free verse, too many of the inclusions are wilfully impenetrable, to be appreciated perhaps by other poets but not by the casual reader or crossover audience who would be the expected readership for a volume such as this, but as with the exploration of the universe, those scattered diamonds in the night are the reason for the journey through the dark spaces between.
Where Rockets Burn Through is now available from Penned in the Margins, and also contains work from Sarah Westcott, James McGonigal, Jane Yolen, James Robertson, Steve Sneyd, Sarah Hesketh, Ian McLachlan, Alan Riach, Dilys Rose, Greg Delanty, Kelley Swain, Tom Chivers, Chrissy Williams, Ryan Van Winkle, Joe Dunthorne, Malene Engelund, Barnaby Tidman, Brian McCabe, W N Herbert, Ron Butlin, Ross Sutherland and Mikesh Shukla
