Voyagers
Page 2
This defi nition is inadequate – it would exclude a number of poems in this anthology – but it makes some key points:
• Science fi ction is a literature of change.
• It is often set in the future.
• Science fi ction is counter-factual: the universe is changed in at least one respect from the universe as it was known to the writer.
• The changes in science fi ction are extrapolations based on accepted or speculative scientifi c principles.
This is why some types of universe are excluded, such as
those of fantasy, where the changes are supernatural rather than natural, or of magic realism and fabulation, where the changes are not rationalised. In addition, we reluctantly had to exclude xiii
many excellent poems which dealt with astronomy, or with the history of space exploration, but which lacked the crucial element of speculation.
But what riches remain! You’ll fi nd the ‘traditional’ concerns of science fi ction here: aliens, space travel, time travel, the end of the world – and also concepts you may not previously have thought of as science fi ction. Whether questioning, apocalyptic or playful, these are poems which shine the fl ashlight of science fi ction on our universe, and relish the strange images which result.
In this way we have chosen to organise the sections using
well-known movie titles as thematic and fun links, i.e. ‘Back to the Future’ (futuristic or time travel poems), ‘Apocalypse Now’
(apocalyptic visions), ‘Altered States’ (robots and other altered states of existence), ‘ET’ (extraterrestrial sightings), ‘When Worlds Collide’ (explorations of other planets and stars), and ‘The Final Frontier’ (space travel poems).
2
Now for a few historical comments on the contents and make-up of this anthology. It is possible to trace a lineage of SF themes in New Zealand poetry, dating back to the 19th century. But it is not clear whether particular writers and their ‘schools’ or groups ever intended to create a specifi c genre of New Zealand science fi ction poetry. Whereas, in Britain, the New Apocalyptics (of the 1940s) and the ‘Martian School’ (of the late 1970s/early ’80s) emerged, and poets like D.M. Thomas specialised in SF poetry at various times, this was not the case in New Zealand. It is more likely that groups like ‘The Wellington Group’ of poets of the 1950s, several of whose poems are included in this collection, were ‘occasional’
writers on SF themes.
New Zealand poets have included SF themes in individual
collections, such as Louis Johnson, New Worlds for Old (1957), Bill Sewell, Solo Flight (1982), David Eggleton, People of the Land (1988), Robert Sullivan, Star Waka (1999), Alan Brunton, Ecstasy (2001) or Tim Jones, Boat People (2002) and All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens (2007). Other collections, like Owen Leeming’s Venus is Setting (1972), Cilla McQueen’s Anti gravity (1984), Bill Manhire’s xiv
Milky Way Bar (1991) or David Eggleton’s Rhyming Planet (2001), have shown an awareness of science fi ction themes in their titles.
Individual small presses too held that awareness, such as Merlene Young’s Kosmick Studios (in the ’70s) and Nigel Rowe’s Martian Way Press (in the ’80s), though they didn’t publish science fi ction poetry (the idea had probably come to them from pop culture).
Fleur Adcock’s ‘Gas’ (from High Tide in the Garden (1971)), Rob Jackaman’s Lee: A Science Fiction Poem (1976), and Bill Sewell’s sequence in Solo Flight are notable examples of longer New Zealand science fi ction poems; but they are notable for their rarity as well as their quality.
It’s a truism of SF criticism that SF, even if it’s set in the far future, is mainly about the present. The nuclear bomb and the new threat of a man-made apocalypse, the space race of the ’60s and the 1969 moon landing, SF fi lms and TV shows, popular music i.e.
classic rock to current electronica, the increasingly secular nature of our society, the information age … all have been refl ected in New Zealand science fi ction poetry. Some of the poems in this anthology were written long enough ago that their imagined future is now in the past; others lay out a speculative map of our future.
3
Due to permissions issues and lack of necessary funding for payments to authors, we have not been able to include all the poems we wished in this anthology. Instead this book is very much compiled on the cooperation and goodwill of the poets
included (and/or their publishers/executors), and as we complete the compilation of this anthology, we are sure that further New Zealand science fi ction poems have been and are being written.
Among poets not included whom we know to have made
contributions to the genre are Bill Manhire (‘The Selenologist’ and
‘The Next Thousand’), R.A.K. Mason (‘Latter-day Geography
Lesson’), and Cilla McQueen (‘Anti gravity’). Others like Murray Edmond, Hone Tuwhare, Denis Glover, James K. Baxter, Keith
Sinclair, Jack Ross, Bernard Gadd, F.W.N. Wright, Ian Wedde, John Gallas, J.C. Sturm, Kendrick Smithyman, Allen Curnow
(writing both as himself and as Whim-Wham), C.K. Stead,
xv
Australian-domiciled Douglas Stewart in Rutherford (1962), or more recently Albert Wendt in The Book of the Black Star (2002)
and American-now-NZ-based Bryan Walpert have written SF
pieces. This is a snapshot of the fi eld, and the fi rst such anthology we know of in New Zealand, and we hope that it won’t be the last such snapshot. Overseas, there have been several anthologies such as Keith Allen Daniels’ 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology (Anamnesis Press, San Francisco, USA). We’re sure there are others too well worth searching out.
Above all, we hope you fi nd this book an entertaining and
challenging selection that gives you a new perspective on New Zealand, on science fi ction, and on the range and scope of New Zealand poetry.
– Mark Pirie and Tim Jones
Wellington, New Zealand
January 2009
xvi
Back To The Future
Anna Rugis
the poetry of the future
it’ll all be like mine
but not for long
then people will get into
elaborate hand gestures instead
and there’ll be no applause because
then that will mean something else
3
Louis Johnson
To a Science-Fiction Writer
Strange how those in your fi eld have become
so uniform, now, in a bleak view of the future.
What happened to perfectibility? What became
of great-grandfather’s dream of progress –
the race aspiring always towards improvement,
perhaps becoming fulfi lled? It was this
festered for you, failed, showed the sickness –
Man, and not the machine. But then,
the hopeful ancestor’s sights were blurred
by braided nobility and the cavalry charge
blinding him to the ultimate use of the engine.
He had not known of the Marne or the Somme,
the millions rotting in trenches, gasping
against the poison gas. Not known of harvests
rusting or dumped in the midst of famine;
not known of the wheels and gears unleashing
the greatest terrors ever on civilised Europe.
Your lot is aware that under every bomb
is a kind of perfection – machine-turned
steel that mirrors the hand and satisfi es
touch quite impersonally. But beauty
stops there. In your apple, man is the maggot
who has not learned to live with abstraction
any more than the ancestor with his dream.
Effi ciency is fi re-power and obsolescence, and in
your dream of the future – which could be clean
and good – it becomes more clearly established,
30/6/70
4
A.R.D. Fairburn
2000 A.D.
The normal population
Has been evacuated from the South Island, which has been given over to the tourist industry for purposes of hunting, shooting, boozing,
mountaineering,
fi shing and fornication.
Rugby football having been discarded as much too tame,
Fighting with spring-knives has become the national game,
Carried on by a small class of specially-bred gladiators,
The rest of the public being bubble-gum-blowing spectators.
Votes for cows was carried some years ago by a show of feet; Totalitarian democracy is now complete,
And the present Prime Minister, known to everyone as Jackie, Is a ten-year-old steer from Taranaki.
His authority, and that of Bullamy’s, is only nominal, all power being vested (along with the right of self-perpetuation)
In GENERAL OECUMENICAL DEVELOPMENT (INC.), a
world with headquarters in Monte Carlo and branches throughout the Creation.
A complete monopoly of Radio, Television, News and Information Services, Education and Entertainment, including six selected sub-varieties of religious practice
Is operated on behalf of G.O.D. (INC.) by the New Zealand Broad-serving
Cactus,
Which is situated on the Desert Road, plumb in the middle
Of the North Island, where the major administrative fi ddle Of the nation is conducted
In an ant-hill suitably constructed.
5
Poets and artists are heavily subsidised by the State, on strict condition that their work shall be totally incomprehensible,
Because that which is incomprehensible cannot possibly be subver-sive, a working assumption that is eminently sensible.
The defence of the country is in the hands of G.O.D. (Inc.) and (for decorative effect) a standing army of 100,000 marching girls (‘Don’t shoot until you see the whites
Of their eyes,’ counsels the Ministry of Tourism), along with (not to be out-done) 50,000 marching bodgies in gents’ Hawaiian fl oral shirtings and shocking-pink tights.
Now therefore, although everything worth buying has become pro-gressively scarcer and dearer,
Lift up your voices in joyous celebration of the Second Millennium of the Christian Era.
6
Janet Charman
in your dreams
Transit passengers
who wish to refrain
from inhaling
may simply press the icon
you see below you
on your left screen now
apply the mask
that falls from the bulkhead
directly above
If you are
disembarking
inhale
a spray
from
the kete
as the language ministry
offi cials
pass among you
and you will notice
a slight change
in cabin pressure
which is the effect of
crossing
the language barrier
7
Ladies and Gentlemen
Girls and Boys,
thank you for fl ying Air Aotearoa
8
Bill Sewell
Utopia
nowhere is there
to be found such health
as in the city of the mind:
marble gleaming white
under a gentle sun
and men & women
in freshly laundered robes
walk up & down conversing
cooling refreshments are offered
from well-situated stalls
(courteously & without charge)
respect and not subservience
sways the nods & smiles –
not a rag to be seen
not a smear of excrement
on the paving:
all this projected from the mind
onto faraway places & faraway times
while here & now the world
wobbles on its axis:
the bickering the jostling
and the passing of coins
one system soiling after another
no salve yet concocted
to remedy these boils –
9
or disease beyond disease
spreading out of the mind
to a living relic who
meets a lesser breed of men
conversation monitored
by a vigilant bureaucracy
hoodlums roaming the streets
to prey upon the feeble
or everyone just too happy
to give a damn about anything
(an 18th century adventurer
found more to admire in horses):
nowhere is there
any health and the boils
keep on erupting.
10
Alistair Paterson
Time traveller
Somewhere
you’re writing, putting words together
but because I can’t see you doing it
I have to visualise, guess
make inventions, imagine as
in the behaviour of blue penguins
what’s happening to you
that you’re hidden by water…
or you’re riding a bicycle where
afternoon is trees & the sun –
summer is endless…
You inhabit
a distant, an imaginary country
you live on high hills far from the sea
you’re a time traveller
moving through the dust of centuries –
who travels like that because
it’s the way you see yourself
or because someone’s imagined you there
in front of the Parthenon
a thousand years on –
at the sea’s edge watching the sun…
11
You’re writing
(uncomfortably) at a kitchen table
or you’re kneeling by a stream
looking into the water
you’re working in a library
(to the sound of bells, a fl ight of music)
you’re using the telephone
or as in a painting by Chagall, moving
through the powers
– the impossible, unbelievable powers –
of the mind…
And suddenly I recognise
it’s a mystery:
the fall of leaves in autumn
clouds drifting across the sky
light across a footpath, a roadway
that you’re a long way off
& driving away from me –
driving along a highway towards
something, somewhere neither of us
has ever heard of
or is likely to arrive at…
12
You telephone to say
you’ve discovered
there are places where
the sky is luminous, the moon dark
the sun moves west to east – backwards –
that you can’t understand
why no one else seems to see it:
I tell you I believe you – which I do
because there’s no reason not to
because belief gives shape to things
structures the world…
You write at the kitchen table
& I remember
how the weather follows you
– the clouds, the moon, the night –
that the trick isn’t
to think logically, be reasonable
but to work in a place with windows
that’s open to air & light:
when the day’s over, to walk in the park
/> & look at the harbour –
at leaves, at trees & the sky…
13
David Gregory
Einstein’s Theory Simply Explained
When I returned
I went to see myself,
still working on the motor of the thing.
We had a pleasant chat,
so startling.
We talked of time, Einstein and you.
Then I went out,
denounced the project
and bought the weapon.
Knowing how he sleeps,
I shall kill him in the night,
so he will not have you
again.
14
Jenny Powell with John Dolan
Note to the Aliens
To be fossilised is actually a long shot
and yet, in yesterday’s assembly
two children showed fossilised shells.
Th
ey, of course, have the calcium advantage.
Th
ey pay for it in mobility though –
and the long wait to be pushed, sea for hilltop.
In the layers of time where would
you be?
Upper-middle at best. If that. If ever.
But if I get lucky, let me explain
the much repaired teeth: don’t assume
this skull ranked high in my tribe.
We had conquered; dentists needed work;
cake was everywhere. Until dentists
became rare. You can tell from
the following layer; greater prevalence
of untreated dental decay.
– A more honest portrait, all in all.
We are pressed there to prove something else.
Even fossils can lie.
15
Raewyn Alexander
in the future when we grow new brains
old ideas will not fi t
same as new cars with improved engines
we’ll be streamlined too with sleek genes
part eggplant and olive oil
lick your arm and enjoy a salad in Greece
in the future when we learn to love completely
broken hearts will be a joke
same as how wooden spoked wheels are laughable
tears will be rare and set into jewellery
our past blue but tomorrow lipsticked kisses
in the future we shall choose how to die in style
death the new black
every clone and thought kept on silicon chips
rebirth as natural as a botox break
grief played out in theatres for the old fashioned
in the future we will look back at now and smile
the colours and aromas rejuvenated in theme parks
revisiting who you used to be