Forgotten, a poem

Forgotten

Did I never ask to be born
or have I only forgotten things
I once dreamed in my lost darkness?
Existence yearns to exist, to be,
groping after a hidden god
where scraps of memory lie scattered
among the dying silent stars
I thought I glimpsed. They change each time
I try to gather them together,
as with each memory, do you,
shifting this way, that way, in
peripheral, inevitable,
visions. Do you remain as you were?
Do you remember what we asked,
you and I? We understand
too much and care about too little.
knowing dreams of birth and being,
of forgetting and of sleep.

Stephen Brooke ©2026

back to the more obscure stuff! 

Slaves, a poem

Slaves

We are the slaves of death;
  its shackles may not be shed.

Run, and it will still catch you;
  hide, and it will still find you.

Yet one day, it will break
  our chains, saying ‘Go.’

Stephen Brooke ©2026

in a vaguely sijo-like form 

Maturing

I wrote the four relatively short books that make up the Donzalo’s Destiny series over something like fifteen months time yet I can, rereading them, see that my style very much matured — improved, I would be inclined to say — during the course of their creation. It became something much closer to what I would call ‘my’ voice. I’m not about to go back and rewrite them or anything of that sort. They’re perfectly acceptable as-are. These were my very first fantasy novels and mark the creation of the entire Izan mythos. It has certainly grown since, and the somewhat murky magic system introduced in Donzalo has become downright scientific in its explanations.

They are also the only novels in which I have used a semi-omniscient point of view. Ultimately, it’s more a matter of multiple POVs but the narrator does occasionally intrude. Not enough to hurt anything; it’s still pretty much the way the characters see things. For the most part, I managed to avoid head-hopping, though in fiction since I have largely restricted myself to one point of view per scene — and, generally, per book.

Design and So On

From time to time, I have posted bits here (or at the Arachis Press blog) about typography, book design, and that sort of thing. It's probably not the ideal place for it but then this is supposed to be my 'everything' blog.

Well, maybe not quite everything. That's why I've fired up a dedicated blog for my design interests, The Far League Ranger. Yes, the Far League Rangers has been my catch-all name for back-up bands and studio musicians over the years but I think I can use it for this as well (and keep hold of the name for other purposes, if desired). I may drop stuff about typography and rest here occasionally but TFLR will be the main place for that now.

Bitumen

I’ve been doing some light research into the use of naturally occurring bitumen, all the way back into prehistory. It’s something of which I knew very little but could certainly be useful knowledge for my writing. A mention in a book I’m reading about the ancient Indus Valley Civilization got me interested.

It seems it was used all the back into the Paleolithic for all the sorts of things other tars might — adhesives, sealants. Hand axes have shown traces of the substance, mixed with clays or other materials, on their broad ends, supposedly to serve as a sort of pad or grip when wielding the stone tools. I had always thought they must have been uncomfortable to hold and use, and apparently our Neanderthals felt the same.

It can be mixed with oils and/or heated to make it more pliable, and spread on baskets or pottery to water-proof. It can be used, obviously, on boats of all sorts (including Native American canoes). In the Indus world, it was even used to line fairly large pools. One can imagine all sorts of uses and I intend to do just that in future fiction. I may just drop some references to it into the next Mora novel. Those Kohari must calk their sewn-together boats with something.

And, to be sure, it would have been an object of trade, a resource to be discovered, exploited, protected. The original black gold? Well, maybe not quite that valuable but a ready source would still be worth something.

Speculative Fiction

Samuel Delaney has stated that when the term ‘speculative fiction’ appeared in the Sixties, it was applied loosely to experimental fiction, often with imagery derived from science fiction and fantasy. Perhaps we’d label that ‘literary science fiction’ these days. But speculative fiction, as a name, varied some in its implications over the years (and pretty much disappeared for a while) before finding its current definition as the broad swath of genres stretching from science fiction to fantasy.

I do see it as such a spectrum. What all the genre and sub-genre within speculative fiction share is a self-standing alternate world, with its own internal rules and logic. That differentiates it from realistic fiction, which follows the rules of our own world, and the surrealistic, which bends those rules of the real world — with little regard for logic — to jar the reader’s perceptions.

‘Magic realism’ is, of course, a form of surrealism (by these definitions) rather than speculative fiction.

Rarely do I refer to any of my work as speculative fiction, though I legitimately could. It can sound pretentious, can’t it? My science fiction is readily identified as such. The fantasy — despite most having rather strict science fiction-like underlying rules — would be regarded as fantasy by most. Those terms are good enough for me.

By the way, horror is sometimes included as a sort of speculative fiction but I don’t consider it a genre at all. I would call it a theme, that can be applied to almost any genre. Monsters are everywhere!

Sundries

 

The picture is of the O.U. Sundry Store in Athens in the late Fifties, before Jim Fry (the protagonist of 'These Remembered Hills') attended Ohio University. In 1960, Campus Sundry Store opened at a new address. He would definitely know and probably shop there when he began classes in ’62. It is entirely likely to show up in a future novel.

Generations of Ohio University students shopped there, before it closed relatively recently. Anything they needed!

This is the last post I'm bringing over from the Hocking Hills blog. But I shall, of course, write more about the area here.