Of Course the Scythe Got Him

By John Hertz:   I’ve been thinking about Steve Sneyd. Maybe you have too.  He died last June (1941-2018).  His name meant the handle of a scythe.

In 2015 the Science Fiction Poetry Association named him a Grand Master. Here’s a short poem.

red mist all round this
far realm, we can no longer
see to add more blood

He called it “A Real Test of Human Resorce”.  I’m reluctant to change his spelling; he was hardly illiterate; consider if he might have meant This may happen if U aren’t there.

You can and you might like to look around for things he wrote.  Maybe you have, some.  I often disagreed with him.  That doesn’t always matter.

Among other expressions he published the fanzine Data Dump, quarterly for a quarter-century.  I was a regular contributor for half its life.  He published five dozen of my poems.

Among things from me that couldn’t fit in Data Dump –  four pages handwritten on both sides of a sheet of A5 paper folded in half (oops, out of room!) – you might like these, so far not appearing elsewhere.

* * *

Besides Toledo, whose claims are old and sound, I am told that since 1998 there has been a Marzipan Museum at Kfar Tavor, i.e. Mt. Tabor, in the Galilee, i.e. north Israel, where almonds grow.  You yourself are an Almondburian.

* * *

To call Will Yeats a cubist
May seem a jolly lark,
But shoot your next shaft better.
This one has missed the mark.
His painting never left a view
Mechanical and stark;
For him the link of heart and eye
Kept hold of skin and bark.

* * *

An Irish friend has explained to me there’s only one bean sidhe (“banshee”).  One, she comments, is quite enough.

* * *

Barbarella is the eponym, and Durand Durand is another char­acter, in Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella comics, translated from French by Richard Seaver and published in the Grove Press Evergreen Review (##37-39, 1965-1966) then separately by Grove Press (1966).  In French the final “d” of “Durand Durand” is silent.  Haven’t seen the film, whose images do not suggest any grasp of the original – maybe I’ll let that pun remain.

* * *

The doltish accusation that Poe was against science is sometimes made to rest on his 1829 sonnet

To Science
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine –
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.

– an argument which ignores Poe’s exquisite irony, and may earn its place in the Hall of Shame simply by not troubling to look up “Lamia”.  Tender-person’d!  A tender-person’d succubus!  Poe is applauding science, and satirizing those to whom its help at best seems the ghost of folly haunting their sweet dreams (Keats, “Lamia” ll. 376-77, 1820).

* * *

Indeed Austen’s world is alien to us.  So few of us who read her now trouble to look what it is, instead of only seeing our own notions in it, that I tremble at the thought of our meeting off-planet aliens any time soon.

* * *

Any man who seeks a sexbot deserves what he gets.  Courtesans laugh at us.  “Love for sale – old love, new love, every love but true love” (C. Porter, 1930).

* * *

Eliza Butler’s Myth of the Magus (1948; 3rd ed. 1993 pp. 100-101) calls Phoebilla a treacherous woman.  But Domenico Comparetti’s Vergil in the Middle Ages (1872; Benecke tr. 1895, p. 361), discussing Jean d’Outremeuse, Ly Myreur des Histors (14th Cent.), points out that Phoebilla, in love with Virgil (so spelling since we discuss the legendary magician, not the historical poet), made clear she expected marriage, and only after he took advantage of her by enjoying relations while con­tinuing to defer legitimating did she humiliate him with the basket – or, if he was omniscient, put him to the trouble of sending a demon in his semblance.

* * *

We can certainly do call and response if you like.

Ozymandias, King of Kings!

Ozymandias, King of Kings!

Ozymandias owns nothing!

Ozymandias owns nothing!

Ozymandias, great and strong!

Ozymandias, great and strong!

Ozymandias, gone so long!

Ozymandias, gone so long!

Ozymandias was so vain!

Ozymandias was so vain!

Ozymandias’ legs remain!

Ozymandias’ legs remain!

Ozymandias, mighty man!

Ozymandias, mighty man!

Ozymandias, empty sand!

Ozymandias, empty sand!

* * *

Why should poets be useful?
We’re busy being juiceful.
Let the prosy be newsful
And harden their minds to be ruseful.
The sterile may dream us seduceful
And press us back to a cabooseful
Where we’ll play.

The French painters know we’re Toulouseful,
To U.S. folk Dr. Seuss-ful,
But Ogden Nash was the most gooseful
Of his day.

* * *

“Ents & Tech”.  Now there’s an image.

* * *

Once I saw a large graffito

There is only

ONE
ENO

whose tautology so impressed me that I verified by adding below

naturally

although, or perhaps because, I had then neither heard, nor heard of, Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDI.

* * *

Of course a preacher fails if he is taken for a free-floating miasma of misdeed.

* * *

What a name for a poet-scientist is Valerie Laws!

* * *

In Vanamonde I’ve like others elsewhere wondered about the reality or existence of fictional characters.  Perhaps few today believe in Thor. Yet in a sense he exists.  O’Brian says to Winston Smith “You do not exist.”

* * *

You very nicely begin [DD 221 p. 2] with the Space Race and end it “Out of Space”.  Indeed one wonders what could be out of space.  Maybe this is like Hui Neng’s “What was your face before you were born?”

Pixel Scroll 6/14/18 When The Scroll Hits Your Eye Like A Big Pixel Pie, That’s A-nnoying

(1) PUTTING SOME ENGLISH ON IT. Should the Hugo Awards add a Best Translated works category? Here are Twitter threads by two advocates.

(2) EXPANDING STOKER. The Horror Writers Association will be adding a new Bram Stoker Awards category for Short Non-Fiction in 2019.

HWA President, Lisa Morton welcomes the new addition, stating: “As a writer who has written non-fiction at all lengths, a reader who loves articles and essays, and an admirer of academic study of dark fiction, I am pleased to announce this new awards category.”

(3) WEBER DECLARES VICTORY. David Weber’s Change.org petition, “Ensure Freedom of Speech & Assembly at ConCarolinas”, recorded 3,713 signatures. Weber’s fans were so enthusiastic one of them even signed my name to the petition. Although I asked them to remove it I’m still getting notifications, like this one — “The Vote Is In…”

Our petition in favor of the policy on guest invitations for ConCarolinas enunciated by Jada Hope at the closing ceremonies of the 2018 convention is now closed.

That policy, simply stated, is that ConCarolinas will issue apolitical invitations to genre-appropriate guests and that guests, once invited, will not be DISINVITED because of political hate campaigns waged online after the invitations are announced.

In the week that it was open, it accrued over 3,700 signatures, many of whom left comments explaining why they had signed in support of that policy. We believe this is a fairly resounding statement of the fact that many more members of fandom support a policy in which individuals are not excluded because of the political demands of a vocal minority who assail conventions online. We believe the fact that NONE of the signatures on this petition were anonymous speaks volumes for the willingness of the signers to “put their money where their mouths are” on this issue.

At no time have we suggested that conventions are not fully entitled to make their initial guest selections on whatever basis they like, including how compatible they expect that guest’s apparent politics to be to the con goers they expect to attend. What we have said is that there is no justification for RESCINDING an invitation, once issued and accepted, simply because someone else objects to that guest’s inclusion. Clearly there will be occasional genuinely special circumstances, but unless something becomes part of the public record only after the invitation has been extended, it should not justify rescinding an invitation. That was that thesis of this petition, and that was what all of these individuals signed in support of.

Sharon and I thank you for the way in which you have come out in support of our position on this, and we reiterate that it does not matter to us whether the guest in question is from the left or the right. What matters is that true diversity does not include ex post facto banning of a guest simply because some online mob disapproves of him or her.

Fandom is supposed to be a community open to ideas that challenge us. Creating an echo chamber in which no dissenting voices are heard is the diametric opposite of that concept. Thank you, all of you, for helping to tone down the echo effect.

(4) WHERE STORIES COME FROM. Robert Aickman recalled, in “Strange, Stranger, Strangest” at The Baffler.

Like some of his more famous contemporaries—Evelyn Waugh, say, or Aldous Huxley—Aickman yearned for those pre-industrial times before the democratic rabble began making all their poorly educated and unreasonable demands; and while his political prejudices didn’t yield what some of his contemporaries considered a satisfactory person (one of his closest friends recalled him as being incapable of any “real commitment to anyone”), they inspired him to explore narrative ideas that were always idiosyncratic, funny, disturbing, and unpredictable. No two Aickman stories are alike; and no single story is like any other story written by anybody else.

The most dangerous forces in an Aickman story often emerge from common and unremarkable spaces: tacky carnival tents, rural church-yards, the rough scrim of bushes at the far end of a brick-walled back garden, the human rabble who visit their dead relatives in decaying cemeteries, or remote (and often unnamable) foreign holiday isles. And while supernatural events may often occur in Aickman stories—at other times they only seem to occur, and at still other times they don’t occur at all.

(5) JEMISIN GETS AWARD. The Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Council has announced the lineup of initial 150-plus authors for this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival (“Brooklyn Book Festival Announces Stellar Fall Line-Up”), September 15-16. Hugo award-winning author N.K. Jemisin will be the recipient of the annual Best of Brooklyn (BoBi) Award.

Brooklyn author N.K. Jemisin has been named the recipient of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s annual Best of Brooklyn (or BoBi) Award. The annual award is presented at the September Gala Mingle to an author whose work exemplifies or speaks to the spirit of Brooklyn. Past honorees have included Colson Whitehead, Jacqueline Woodson, Jonathan Lethem, James McBride, Lois Lowry and Pete Hamill.

(6) LE GUIN TRIBUTE. John Lorentz, who attended, says the video recording of last night’s tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin is now available online at http://www.literary-arts-tribute.org/.

It was a special night (Ursula was a real treasure here in Portland, and throughout the literary world), and we were very happy that we could be there.

It was a mix of videos of Ursula and live speakers, such as Molly Gloss, David Jose Older and China Mieville.

And a dragon!

(7) AROUND THE BLOCK. Mary Robinette Kowal says NASA astronauts are now doing the spacewalk she saw them rehearse. Get on the Twitter thread here —

(8) SNEYD OBIT. Steve Sneyd, a well-known sff poet who also published fanzines, died June 14. John Hertz, in “The Handle of a Scythe, commemorated Sneyd after the Science Fiction Poetry Association named him a 2015 Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry.

He was poetry editor for Langley Searles’ unsurpassed Fantasy Commentator.  His own Data Dump has been published a quarter-century;

.. On the occasion of the Grand Master award, Andrew Darlington posted a 3,400-word piece “Steve Sneyd from Mars to Marsden” at Darlington’s Weblog Eight Miles Higher,  with photos, images of Sneyd’s various publications including Data Dump, electronic links, and things too fierce to mention

Sneyd’s own website was Steve-Sneyd.com. And there’s an entry for him at the SF Encyclopedia — http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sneyd_steve.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born June 14  — Lucy Hale, 29. Bionic Woman (2007 TV series) as Becca Sommers, sister of Jaime Sommers, and voiced Periwinkle in TinkerBell and the Secret of the Wings.

(10) NOW AUTOMATED. CockyBot™ is on the job.

(11) SWATTERS PLEAD. “Two rival gamers allegedly involved in Kansas ‘swatting’ death plead not guilty in federal court” reports the Washington Post.

…Late last December, Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill, two young men separated by more than 800 miles and a time zone, clashed inside the digital playpen of “Call of Duty: WWII.” The Wichita Eagle would later report that the disagreement was over an online wager of less than $2.

But according to a federal indictment, Viner, from North College Hill, Ohio, became “upset” with Gaskill, a Kansas resident. Plotting a real-world revenge for the alleged slight delivered in the first-person shooter, Viner allegedly tapped a 25-year-old  from Los Angeles named Tyler Barriss to “swat” Gaskill.

“Swatting” — or summoning police to an address under false emergency pretenses — is a particularly dangerous form of Internet harassment. But when Gaskill noticed that Barriss had started following him on Twitter, he realized what the Californian and Viner were plotting. Instead of backing down or running for help, Gaskill taunted the alleged swatter via direct message on Twitter.

“Please try some s–t ,” Gaskill allegedly messaged Barriss on Dec. 28, according to the indictment. “You’re gonna try and swat me its hilarious … I’m waiting buddy.”

The wait was not long. According to authorities, about 40 minutes after the messages on Twitter, police in Wichita swarmed a local house in response to a hostage situation. Twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Finch was shot dead by law enforcement — the result, allegedly, of Barriss’s fake call to police. The deadly hoax, sparked by an online gaming beef, quickly became international news.

Now Viner, Gaskill, and Barriss are all facing federal criminal charges stemming from the shooting. On Wednesday afternoon, Viner and Gaskill — 18 and 19, respectively — were in a Wichita courtroom making their first appearance in the case. The Associated Press reported that both men pleaded not guilty to a host of charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice and wire fraud.

(12) WARM SPELL. NPR reckons “Antarctica Has Lost More Than 3 Trillion Tons Of Ice In 25 Years”.

Scientists have completed the most exhaustive assessment of changes in Antarctica’s ice sheet to date. And they found that it’s melting faster than they thought.

Ice losses totaling 3 trillion tonnes (or more than 3.3 trillion tons) since 1992 have caused global sea levels to rise by 7.6 mm, nearly one third of an inch, according to a study published in Nature on Wednesday.

Before 2010, Antarctica was contributing a relatively small proportion of the melting that is causing global sea levels to rise, says study co-leader Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds.

But that has changed. “Since around 2010, 2012, we can see that there’s been a sharp increase in the rate of ice loss from Antarctica. And the ice sheet is now losing three times as much ice,” Shepherd adds.

(13) DUSTY ROADS. The end? “Enormous Dust Storm On Mars Threatens The Opportunity Rover”.

A massive dust storm on Mars is threatening NASA’s Opportunity rover, which has been conducting research on the Red Planet for well over a decade.

Where the rover sits, the dust storm has completely blotted out the sun, depriving Opportunity of solar power and cutting off communications with Earth.

NASA scientists believe the rover has fallen asleep to wait out the storm, and that when the dust storm dies down and sunlight returns, the rover will resume activity.

“We’re concerned, but we’re hopeful that the storm will clear and the rover will begin to communicate with us,” says John Callas, the Opportunity project manager.

The rover has survived dust storms before, but it’s never lost power this thoroughly.

The dust storm on Mars grew from a small, local storm into a massive event over the course of the last two weeks. Opportunity is located near the middle of the storm, while the newer rover Curiosity — which is nuclear-powered, so not threatened by the loss of sunlight — is currently near the storm’s edge.

… There’s no expectation that the rover will be completely buried by dust, but there are risks associated with the lack of temperature control and the extended lack of power.

“The good news there is that the dust storm has warmed temperatures on Mars,” Callas says. “We’re also going into the summer season so the rover will not get as cold as it would normally.”

The rover also has small, plutonium-powered heater units on board that will help keep it from freezing, and NASA scientists believe the rover will be able to ride out the storm until the skies clear. It’s not clear how long that will take.

(14) HOMEBREW DROID. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Patrick Stefanski decided, even before Solo: A Star Wars Story hit the theaters he wanted to build an Alexa-powered version of the droid L3-37. Well, the head anyway. He combined his skills with 3-D printing, model painting, and electronics to have his robot head respond to “Ethree” as a custom wake word and reply with a sassy “What?” when summoned. Those changes required running Amazon Voice Services software—basically the thing that powers Alexa—on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer rather than using stock Amazon hardware. That change also allowed him to set the localization to the UK so “she” could speak with a British accent.

Quoting the io9 article “Talented Hacker Turns Amazon’s Alexa Into Lando’s Sass-Talking L3-37 Droid” —

One of the best parts of Solo: A Star Wars Story is Lando Calrissian’s piloting droid, L3-37, who’s been uniquely pieced together and upgraded from parts of other droids. Patrick Stefanski has essentially done the same thing to turn Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant into a desktop version of L3-37 who answers to your beck and call.

The customizability of Amazon’s Echo speakers, which feature Alexa built-in, are quite limited. So in order to make his L3-37 actually respond to the simple phrase, “Elthree,” Stefanski instead used a software version of Alexa running on a Raspberry Pi3 mini computer. It also allowed Stefanski to alter his location so that his Alexa-powered L3-37 speaks in a British accent, similar to actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s performance of the character in the movie.

The SYFY Wire article has more of an interview with Stefanski, “This dude built a fully-functional and definitively sassy 3D-printed L3-37 Alexa”, including:

“I originally wrote off the idea of doing a 3D printed L3 project when I first saw her in a teaser trailer. Here is a 6- or 7-foot walking humanoid robot with tons of articulation and a ton of personality. What could I possibly do with that? Some builder’s tried to tackle K2-SO, a very similar droid from the Rogue One movie, and ended up with a 6-foot static mannequin.

…]That’s cool and all but, me, I’m all about the motors and the electronics and the motion.

“Then as luck would have it, the first time I heard L3-37 talk (a British female voice), it happened to be on the same day I saw a random YouTube video about someone hacking together an Echo Dot and one of those old ‘Billy the Bass’ novelty fish. […] My daughter is 3, and just starting to really get comfortable with Alexa. ‘ALEXA PLAY FROZEN!!!!’ is something you’ll hear yelled in my house a lot! So, I started thinking of something fun to do with our Echo, and the idea of turning it into this new female robot from Star Wars kind of just fell into place.”

(15) GREEN HELL. Science Alert is enthralled: “Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano Is Literally Raining Gemstones Now, And We Want Some”.

If Hawaii’s K?lauea volcano were to offer an apology for its chaos and destruction, it just might come in the form of a beautiful green mineral called olivine.

Over the past months we’ve reported on devastating lava flows and bone-shattering boulders. Now it’s raining gems – a rare event that has geologists enthralled and the rest of us just plain confused.

But ULTRAGOTHA sent in the link with a demurrer: “I will note that I am not confused as to why an active volcano is producing olivine.  This one does it a lot. There is a green beach on Hawai’i.” She has in mind Papakolea Beach:

Papakolea Beach (also known as Green Sand Beach or Mahana Beach[1]) is a green sand beach located near South Point, in the Ka?? district of the island of Hawaii. One of only four green sand beaches in the world, the others being Talofofo Beach, Guam; Punta Cormorant on Floreana Island in the Galapagos Islands; and Hornindalsvatnet, Norway.[citation needed] It gets its distinctive coloring from olivine sand eroded out of the enclosing volcanic cone (tuff ring).

(16) HIGH PRICED TICKET. This weekend, “Aliencon links the worlds of space travel, UFOlogy and science fiction at the Pasadena Convention Center”. Story from the Pasadena Weekly.

Tully notes that AlienCon moved to Pasadena this year simply because of needing a bigger venue, and that there is no hidden agenda or secret information that ties Pasadena to an impending alien invasion or hidden landing sites from past eras.

“That question of whether we know things we can’t tell came up numerous times at the first AlienCon,” says Tully. “I don’t know anything, hand over heart, but I believe we have a panel that answers everything one could possibly know. They don’t get censored by the government.”

The move to Pasadena has already paid off with one-day passes  for Saturday already sold out, as are the Bronze and Gold level (which includes a private event with the “Ancient Aliens” cast) passes, which cost $124 and $549, respectively. The remaining Silver level passes cost $436 and, according to the website, “passholders receive guaranteed premium seating in the Main Stage, a voucher redeemable for autographs or photographs, a tote bag with exclusive merchandise, and much more!”

The fact that AlienCon doesn’t feature any experts from Caltech or JPL raises the antenna of Dr. Michael Shermer, founder of the Altadena-based Skeptic Society, who has long debunked the prospect of alien life forms as well as the existence of God. While he was somewhat impressed that the chief astronomer of the federal government’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program and “Star Trek: Voyager’s” Picardo (who works with the Pasadena-based Planetary Society) will be panelists, he was more incredulous about the moneymaking aspects of the event.

“It’s a fun topic, like talking about God, where everyone has an opinion, but no one has any proof,” says Shermer. “But with the Gold Pass costing $550, you better be able to meet and greet an actual alien.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, ULTRAGOTHA, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Bill, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Chuck Connor, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

The Handle of a Scythe

Steve Sneyd. [Via Eight Miles Higher.]

Steve Sneyd. [Via Eight Miles Higher.]

By John Hertz: A sneyd (also snead, sned, snathe) is the handle of a scythe.  The Science Fiction Poetry Association named Steve Sneyd a 2015 Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry. Marge Simon too, but Sneyd is a fanziner.

He was poetry editor for Langley Searles’ unsurpassed Fantasy Commentator.  His own Data Dump has been published a quarter-century; I reviewed it in Chunga (“Unfolding Stars”, Chunga 14). It’s mostly about poetry, preferably strange.  For a decade he ran a series of acronyms, printing five dozen of mine, e.g.

Puncture Overlords Escape Madness (DD 74)

Pulling Oars, Entering Moonlight (DD 142)

Poplars Oaks Elms March (DD 166)

On the occasion of the Grand Master award, Andrew Darlington posted a 3,400-word piece “Steve Sneyd from Mars to Marsden” at Darlington’s Weblog Eight Miles Higher,  with photos, images of Sneyd’s various publications including Data Dump, electronic links, and things too fierce to mention; Darlington says “He’s been featured regularly, week-by-week, month-by-month, year-by-year since the 1960s in more strange, obscure, and esoteric journals than even he can possibly remember.” The piece is framed as an interview, but the poor interviewer found his subject “talks about everything…. everything — in fact, but Steve Sneyd himself.”  Earlier last year there was an interview in Amazing.

Sneyd himself elsewhere tells us

A Call to Mind is a Call to Action

greenypurple as winter bramble
deathbedded he-it-they strive
to call back to aching side
all those offshoots driven
out to farflungs of the spiral arm
lucky for their convenience
now newrooted in another clime
the message system long ago
ceased functioning and so remains
all on its ownieownieo

Science Fiction Poetry Association Elevates Two Grand Masters

The Science Fiction Poetry Association has selected its first Grand Masters in five years – Marge Simon and Steve Sneyd.

A SFPA Grand Master must be a living person “whose body of work reflects the highest artistic goals of the SFPA, who shall have been actively publishing within the target genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a period of no fewer than 20 years, and whose poetry has been noted to be exceptional in merit, scope, vision and innovation.”

SFPA’s first four Grand Masters were Jane Yolen (2010), Ray Bradbury (2008), Robert Frazier (2005) and Bruce Boston (1999).

The citation for the two new Grand Masters reads as follows —

Marge Ballif Simon freelances as a writer-poet-illustrator for genre and mainstream publications such as Nebula Awards 32, Strange Horizons, Flashquake, Flash Me Magazine, Dreams & Nightmares, The Pedestal Magazine, and Vestal Review. Marge is a former president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She edits the column “Blood and Spades: Poets of the Dark Side” for the monthly newsletter of the Horror Writers Association Marge has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Rhysling Award, the Dwarf Stars Award, and the Strange Horizons Readers Award for her poetry. She has also illustrated five Bram Stoker Award collections. In addition to her solo work, Marge has published collaboratively with many other authors. margesimon.com

Steve Sneyd may be unfamiliar to many; he lives completely off the grid in Yorkshire, England, with no internet presence. His output of poetry has slowed in recent years. Notwithstanding, he should be better known as an important speculative poet and stalwart proponent, chronicler and historian of SF poetry. Steve has been publishing SF poetry since the late 1970s (at least). His poetry has been nominated multiple times for Rhysling Awards, beginning in 1992. His poetry has appeared in Star*Line and Dreams & Nightmares as recently as 2011), The Magazine of Speculative Poetry and Hadrosaur Tales, as well as many SF and poetry journals, fanzines, and small-press anthologies. His collections include Gestaltmacher, Gestaltmacher, Make Me a Gestalt: Ninety-Nine Poems from the Nineties (The Four Quarters, 2000) and Mistaking the Nature of the Posthuman (Hilltop Press, 2008). His handwritten (!) SF poetry newsletter, DataDump, in print since 1992, recently celebrated its 200th issue. In it are reviews, news and historical studies of SF poetry. He gives the annual DataDump Award for best SF poem in a British publication. Sneyd has published SF poetry from U.S. and British fanzines and small press, grouped by era (starting with the 1750s!), as well as themed anthologies. He has written countless essays and forewords, most recently an overview of SF poetry, “Wormholeing into Elsewhere,” in Where Rockets Burn Through, ed. Russell Jones (See the review on Amazing Stories for a brief example of his poetry). The ISFDB site and the SF Encyclopedia have (albeit incomplete) lists of his published poetry as well as more biographical information. An interview with Steve Sneyd on AmazingStoriesMag.com includes links to his poetry online.

[Via Ansible.]