The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase [Paperback]

Roger Dutcher (Author), Mike Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2005

Since 1978 the Science Fiction Poetry Association has selected the best long and short poems in science fiction,fantasy,and horror for its annual Rhysling Awards, named in honor of the blind poet of the spaceways from Robert Heinlein 's The Green Hills of Earth. Often considered the equivalent for poetry of the Nebula Awards for fiction, the winning poems appear each year in the Nebula Awards anthologies. Now for the first time the Rhysling Winners have been gathered under one cover. This collection presents more than twenty-five years of the best poetry in the field of speculative literature.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"You hold a volume of seminal poetry by a who’s who in the field . . . . If you haven’t read poetry like this before, I envy you . . . you’re choosing from the gourmet menu for your first taste."

– Robert Frazier

Product Details

• Paperback: 172 pages
• Publisher: SFPA (June 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809511622
• ISBN-13: 978-0809511624
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #900,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mike Allen works as the arts and culture columnist for the daily newspaper in Roanoke, Va., where he lives with his wife Anita, a goofy dog, and two cats with varying degrees of psychosis.

In his spare time he does a ridiculous number of things, including editing the critically-acclaimed anthology series CLOCKWORK PHOENIX and the long-running poetry journal MYTHIC DELIRIUM. His own poetry has won the Rhysling Award three times, and his fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award. His short stories have popped up in places like WEIRD TALES, INTERZONE, and the anthologies SKY WHALES AND OTHER WONDERS, CTHULHU'S REIGN and STEAM-POWERED.

He's also recorded podcasts for STARSHIPSOFA and CLARKESWORLD MAGAZINE and participated in local improv theater, where he's often asked to provide the voice of an Ominous Narrator or play the part of Satan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Exceptionally Tasty Feast for Fans of SF Poetry (or any poetry!), March 5, 2007

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Mir (North Miami Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase (Paperback)

This is what you'll find between the pages of THE ALCHEMY OF STARS: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase--


1. A foreward by Roger Dutcher, Rhysling Award winner and one of the editors of the volume
2. An introduction by Jane Yolen, much-lauded writer and poet, Rhysling Award winner in 1993, and winner of numerous other awards, including the Caldecott Medal, three Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, and more.
3. An afterword by SF writer and poet Suzette Haden Elgin, well-known for her Gentle Art of Self-Defense books, who was instrumental in founding the SFPA (Science Fiction Poetry Assoc), the organization that nominates for and awards the Rhyslings.
~and....
4. All the long form and short form poems awarded the Rhysling from 1978 through 2004.

If you're a fan of speculative literature, you really need to get this book. It's an essential one for your library. And if you've never read speculative poetry, this is an excellent place to start, because the creamiest of the cream of the crop is right there for your delectation.


You'll recognize some names right off, if you know anything about SF, because some of the best fiction writers in the genre are here, besides the already mentioned above:

Gene Wolfe
Michael Bishop
Ursula K. LeGuin
Joe Haldeman
Lucius Shepard
John M. Ford
Geoffrey A. Landis
Theodora Goss (nominated this year for a Nebula)
Susan Palwick

Gene Wolfe opens the poetic array with "The Computer Iterates the Greater Trumps", a clever use of computerese and Tarot imagery to come to a solid finale.

"Sauls Death: Two Sestinas" is absolutely brilliant and not to be missed. Joe Haldeman, whose life experience and talent have given him a voice to speak out on the subject of soldiering and warfare, gives us two sestinas linked by subject, with a killer conclusion (metaphorically and literally). The ending hinges on another theme that Haldeman has written of in the past, time-travel. It's a marvelous twosome. (Plus I love the form of the sestina, which, when done well, gives me a particular sort of thrill.)

Another winner in a similar linked form pattern--in the SAME YEAR, no less, 1984-- Helen Erlich's "Two Sonnets," offers us a call-and-reply sort of set-up. Someone from the present speaks about "Lucy," the anthropological find theorized to be our ancestor. Then, in the second sonnet, "Lucy" speaks back about how one future day, others will do to the speaker as has been done to her, wonder and study and mold and theorize. And those futuristic scientists, in turn...and the cycle goes on, the evolved study their predecessors, who become predecessors, etc. Very nicely done.

Bruce Boston, the poet with the most Rhysling Awards, has several entries here, naturally, from the short, reflective, and moody "For Spacers Snarled in the Hair of Comets" to the borderline speculative and exquisitely moving, and also short form, "My Wife Returns as She Would Have Had It," sprinkled in between by longer form poems. (In 1996, both Boston and his wife, Marge Simon, win the awards. A rather sweet detail.)

It's a bounty, indeed, in THE ALCHEMY OF STARS, and I strongly recommend you buy it, read it, relish the wonders within these speculations, savor the beauty of the language, and feel satisfied.