existentialcowboy

[existentialcowboy]

My latest @guardian books cartoon.

[existentialcowboy]

from my sci-fi-writing alter-ego

An excerpt from OD Pike's science fiction novel ALIENESE. Our hero has been abducted by thirsty aliens. Available at arachispress.com

#science fiction #novel

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As far as I know, there was no AI involved in writing my latest book. Of course, a robot could have snuck into the house while I was distracted.

#writing #artificial intelligence

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Many readers, many critics, and most editors speak of style as if it were an ingredient of a book, like the sugar in a cake, or something added onto the book, like the frosting on the cake. The style, of course, is the book. If you remove the cake, all you have left is a recipe. If you remove the style, all you have left is a synopsis of the plot. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

#writing

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Ignore

Ignore your problems long enough, they go away or you do

and that’s the same thing, right? Let’s pour another drink and wait.

Stephen Brooke ©2017

a tanka from the poetry collection A POET'S DAY from Stephen Brooke and Arachis Press

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choosing a helmet before I ride the bike ~ my fashion statement

I’m partial to the blue fade but all-black does look classy

Stephen Brooke ©2024

a piece in the form of a tanka

#poetry #poets on tumblr #tanka

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I've been a fool more Aprils than I can count why not one more?

Stephen Brooke ©2024

#senryu #poetry #april fools

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the sun rises red behind the distant land-fill I dream of mountains

Stephen Brooke ©2024

#poetry #senryu #haiku

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time turned upside down the hours spilling on the floor who will sweep them up?

Stephen Brooke ©2024

#senryu #poetry

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An oldie but, like the game and springtime, making its reappearance. Fields of Summer available from Arachis Press.

#poetry #poets on tumblr #baseball

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I forge my name on the social contract becoming no one

Stephen Brooke ©2024

#senryu #poetry

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a moment that should have lasted forever has come and gone

Stephen Brooke ©2024

#senryu #poetry

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#poetry #tang dynasty

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headlights loom and disappear into night the stars still shine

Stephen Brooke ©2024

#poetry #poets on tumblr #senryu

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Blossoms

If you wish, I’ll say I loved you, some long-past spring. My memory is no better than yours but I can imagine us hand-in-hand beneath the flowering trees of then. I might even have kissed you, or maybe it was the other way around. You can decide and I’ll remember only the blossoms drifting like snow.

Stephen Brooke ©2024

#poetry #poets on tumblr

[existentialcowboy]

Super-Genres

All fiction can be said to fall into three categories, which I choose to call Super-Genres.* These are Realistic Fiction, Surrealistic Fiction, and Speculative Fiction. This idea is neither new nor original to me, but it makes a great deal of sense (although, as all such ideas, it must by nature be a bit arbitrary).**

Realism—Realistic Fiction—is self-explanatory. It tells of the ‘real world,’ or, more accurately, our experience of the real world. It strives to tell of things as they are. Historical fiction, contemporary realism, crime stories, and so on fit into this category.

The Surrealist then takes that realistic world and twists it. There are no rules involved in what happens. Strange events are intended to jar rather than to make sense. This is not the same as genre Fantasy, with its internal logic and world-building.

This leaves Speculative Fiction, which covers a wide swath from ‘hard’ Science Fiction to ‘high’ Fantasy. This category differs from Surrealism in that it creates an entirely separate world with its own rules. Everything that happens is according to those rules; this is why Magic Realism is not Speculative Fiction (i.e genre Fantasy) but, rather, a subcategory of Surrealism.

‘Mainstream’ novels are, of course, Realistic Fiction. It is what is likely to be taught in most college writing courses. Some even consider it the only valid form of fiction, the only serious form, and feel the need to circle the wagons to protect it from those frivolous popular entertainments that lurk outside academia. But the Surrealist and the Speculative have coexisted with the Realist from the beginning of story-telling. They are every bit as much a part of our legacy.

Bits of surrealism do occasionally slip into the other two categories, bits of absurdity. That has always been true; it might be argued that a dash of the Surreal is a necessary component of humor. We have to look at the overall work to assign it to one of these three categories and even then it is not always completely clear-cut. Still, most will fall into a Super-Genre pretty readily; one can not find a more basic division of fiction. All genres and categories grow from these roots.

Stephen Brooke ©2024

*It seems as good a name as any.

**I’ve written (more than once) of this concept before, but could find my essays neither online nor in my own notes. So this is a complete rewrite ‘from scratch’ on the subject.

#writing #literature #genre

[existentialcowboy]

Drop

One can not drown in a drop of water nor cross so tiny a sea; yet that mote holds in liquid promise all the oceans that be. Yes, all the waves and all the storms wait to be set free; but, alas, I drank that drop and now they surge in me!

Stephen Brooke ©2024

This started out with the intent of being a serious poem (as serious as I get, anyway) but wandered off in its own direction.

#light verse #poetry #poets on tumblr