Of course, reading and writing are the central activities of the SciFaiku movement. You'll find poems to peruse throughout the SciFaiku booth here at SCIFI.CON. On this page I present a few of my own SciFaiku just to give examples, followed by a longer story (a renga) written by Eva Eriksson.

SciFaiku by Tom Brinck

shattered test tubes -- dog barks as I lift my hand, my flesh transparent. as we kiss, your thousand nanoids giggle, fluttering around us. I thank the armless gorilla and walk away on my knuckles. the space station turns: outside the windows, he struggles ...a broken airline... colony world: rendered uninhabitable by cockroach hoardes.

what happens when the antigravity fails while the saucer hovers over you? the last child clones herself before she dies. thru the bars, the monkey imitates my face and passes food inside my cage. frozen bodies rattle down the processing tube. she invites me to her bedroom, but I see the tentacles under her door...

A Renga by Eva Eriksson

The Last War

The Last War is the nuclear war that can start here and now. There are no aliens here, just peeks at ordinary humans at our technical level. The time may be tomorrow, next week or ten years from now.

We avoided The Last War
by an inch.
Third time this year.

Building shelter
just hoping
it's a waste of money.

I won a million yesterday.
Today:
The Last War.

Nuclear alarm.
Running to the shelter.
The door is already locked.

Shutting the door
to my shelter.
Salvation.

Forgot
to store water
in my shelter.

Staying here
rest of my life
in shelter

My son keeps asking me
why we can't
leave the shelter

Telling my son about sun
in our shelter.
He is 52 now.

Lamp in shelter.
Could the sun
really be brighter?

Supplies run out.
Must leave shelter.
Exit blocked.

Like white worms
crawling from earth
forced from shelter

Bleak thin people
coming out
from shelter.

Shining in the night,
lovely colors.
Radioactivity.

It's a jungle out there
full of mutants
and radioactivity.

My cat must be hungry
she doesn't give me
her prey anymore.

Finding scraps
defending it
against mutants.

Found a rat
in my home.
Delicious.

Trying to get
anything to grow
after The Last War.

Bought more food.
Traded
my right arm.

Survivors
on surface,
all scarred by sun.

My love
has twelve fingers
on his left hand.

Never seen the sun.
Born without eyes.
My sister got three.

Yesterday
I went into labor.
All twelve stillborn.

We have always lived
in the dark cave.
Now the mutants have found us.

Mutants
are common prey.
Shot ten today.

The Last War
actually wasn't.
Now we use clubs.

Almost all
surviving mutants
have geigersense

After The Last War
cockroaches
rule the world.

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Poems are (c) 1996 by their respective authors.