Tag Archives: inequality

Using form: SF sonnet: RHL, ‘On a Dead Spaceship’

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On a dead spaceship drifting round a star,
the trapped inhabitants are born and die.
The engineers’ broad privileges lie
in engine room and solar panel power.
The fruit and vegetables and protein co-ops
are run by farmers with genetics skills:
the products of their dirt and careful kills
help service trade between the several groups.
Others — musicians, architects — can skip
along the paths of interlinking webs.
Beyond these gated pods that the rich carve
for their own selves (but still within the ship),
in useless parts, are born the lackluck plebs.
Heard but ignored, they just hunt rats or starve.

*****

This sonnet was republished in Bewildering Stories in April 2024 – original publication had been in Star*Line five years previously. I find something very satisfying about using a formal sonnet structure to express science fiction and speculative fiction ideas – the ideas are by nature open-ended, unconstrained, and it feels good to tie them down as in a neat package with a bow on top. Topiary.

As for what political comments can be read into the poem, read away!

Photo: “Deepstar 2071 at Io” by FlyingSinger is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Tom Vaughan, ‘The Great and the Good’

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Why sing of the lives
of the fortunate few
whose gong-heavy entries
weigh down Who’s Who ?

They’re smug on their summits
and on Footsie Boards,
Permanent Secretaries
or rotund Law Lords;

generals, merchant bankers,
Top Brass at the Beeb,
dons, doctors, bishops. . .
You can spot the breed

by their ability
blind obedience to claim
from drudges and drivers
and shy, single, tame

PAs who sacrifice
lonely weekends
to type bland speeches
for skimpy stipends.

O don’t be deceived
by the Great and the Good –
you’re a rung on their ladder
on their fire, wood,

grain for their harvest,
a wheel on their car,
corpse on their D-Day,
night for their star.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: I’ve long been fascinated by the phrase ‘the Great and the Good’, having reached the conclusion during long years of government service that the great cannot generally also be good, given the demands of the exercise of power. But I am also intrigued by the loyalty such people can inspire, and the longing for leaders that reflects, despite the advice given by my favourite political commentator, Bob Dylan, in Subterranean Homesick Blues – ‘Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parkin’ meters’.”

‘The Great and the Good’ was first published in Snakeskin 265, October 2019.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “MPs and House of Commons officials stand in the House of Lords chamber at the opposite end to the throne, the bar, to listen to the Queen’s Speech” by UK Parliament is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Poetry Resource: “SF&F Poetry Association”; Sonnet: “On a Dead Spaceship”

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Spaceship

(“Golconda Uranium (2012)” by Alexey Kashpersky)

On a dead spaceship drifting round a star
The trapped inhabitants are born and die.
The engineers’ broad privileges lie
In engine room and solar panel power.
The fruit and vegetables and protein coops
Are run by farmers with genetics skills:
The products of their dirt and careful kills
Help service trade between the several groups.
Others – musicians, architects – can skip
Along the paths of interlinking webs.
Beyond these gated pods that the rich carve
For their own selves (but still within the ship),
In useless parts, are born the lackluck plebs.
Heard but ignored, they just hunt rats or starve.

This sonnet was published in Star*Line, the official journal of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, a quarterly edited by poet and English prof Vince Gotera. Each issue contains a vast diversity of sf&f poetry. Not much of it is formal, but that is all part of the diversity which is appropriate to its genre.

So a sonnet is fine. And this one, like so much sf, is a metaphor for Earth today: circling the Sun, carrying highly unequal societies.

Technically, it is a sonnet to be sneered at by purists: it rhymes ABBA CDDC EFGEFG, the second quartet failing to rhyme with the first, making it a flawed Petrarchan sonnet. In addition, rhyming “star” with “power” is a bit of a stretch, one syllable against two, and none of them sharing quite the same vowel… Oh well, it’s only Science Fiction…