Sunday, August 14, 2022

To the Lighthouse: Sci-Fi Tanka

                                                                                              all doors
                                                                                              and my wife's broken heart
                                                                                              she-locked ...
                                                                                              I ride the light beam
                                                                                              to a remote sky house
                           
                                                                                              Chen-ou Liu

A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.”
-- Theodore Sturgeon


In the universe of sci-fi short form poetry, sci-fi haiku, also known as scifaiku (see "To the Lighthouse: Scifaiku"), have received more attention than sci-fi tanka. To even the playing field, I've selected the following tanka, which explore the potential consequences of scientific, sociocultural, and technological innovations, for your reading pleasure: 


blue-fingered dawn
reaches over biodome park --
nanobot pollinators
flit, harvest, dance
in one-third g

Patricia Larash

spring deepens --
within its swollen belly
a planet rumbles,
ready to cut
the third moon’s birth cord

Norman Darlington

weaving 
threads of starlight 
in my shawl
the weight of ancestors
wrapped around me
 
Dru Philippou

event horizon
looms on the port side
I synch the chips
to recompose myself
on the other side
 
Peggy Hale Bilbro

a flying saucer
crash-landed in a field
in America
somewhere in a locked vault
the remains of aliens

Patricia Prime

the Martian cop
throws cluster f-bombs ...
greenfaced, he shouts
nothing more provocative
than a human in uniform

Chen-ou Liu
 
the last earthling 
frozen some six thousand years 
now on display 
here on Centaurus Seven
in the lower primate zoo

William Kerr


Happy Reading

Chen-ou

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