Dead Planet XLVI

Dead Planet XLVI

“Much of the prose
in Dune started out
as haiku and then
was given minimal
additional word-
padding to make
it conform to
normal English
sentence structure.”
—Frank Herbert,
The Road to Dune

watching gulf news—
thinking about giedi prime
baron harkonnen

“One element of the construction of this book
...it’s all the way through there…”

scifiku poets—
know the giedi prime secret
the spice of dune

“that I wrote certain parts
of it in haiku and other poetical forms…”

those pulp sci-fi dayz—
back when i was a young Slan
telepathic kid

“and then expanded them to prose
to create a pace.”

Null-a can be taught—
at least that’s what van vogt said
do i still think so?

“I often use a Jungian mandala

in squaring off characters against each other,

assigning a dominant psychological role to each.”

herbert uses haiku—
like quick scifiku snapshots
then fleshes out the plots

“The implications of color, position,

word root and prosodic suggestion…”

delany and disch—
streamlining their prose ad lib
impromptu scifiku

“—all are taken into account when a scene

has to have a maximum impact.”

hugo nebula—
squeezed into ace paperback
pulp fiction haiku

“And what scene doesn’t if a book—
…is tightly written?”