What do you think?
Rate this book
Cold Tomorrows
A book of fantasy and horror poetry.
36 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1998
About the author
Bruce Boston
356 books118 followersI've published more than sixty books and chapbooks, including the novels Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection Masque of Dreams. My work ranges from broad humor to literary surrealism, with many stops along the way for science fiction, fantasy, and horror. My novel The Guardener's Tale (Sam's Dot, 2007) was a Bram Stoker Award Finailist and a Prometheus Award Nominee. My stories and poems have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase, and received a number of awards, most notably, a Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov's Readers' Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. For more information, please visit my website at http://www.bruceboston.com/
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 23, 2026
From comedy to the dark and gritty, from surrealism to the real, moving in and out of the speculative, but never in want of beauty.
Cold Tomorrows is akin to Specula and Sensuous Debris in purpose. Three years had passed since the latter was released and again it was time to round up the disparate poetry which didn't fit neatly into any other collection. These kinds of collections are usually not as popular as those centred around a theme, but they have their own outlaw advantage in operating beyond any system. Libertines sheds yoke and bridle as they please. Their only dogma is imagination, and their rigour is enthusiasm alone. This is a collection of the rare and singular, but inspired, poetry.
The process of imagination, be it mused or autogenous, was a concept which the poet never let go of entirely. He wrote poems on the curiousness of it, on its challenges, and the sheer exhilaration that it brings. The human ability to create is magical, and these poems are in themselves absolute proof of this.
he spent far too much time
nailing the speculative muse
and getting nailed in return
he built a house with these nails
full of light and truth and bluster
full of mahogany and polished rosewood
a table laid with fish and fruit and fowl
deserted mornings locked in her embrace
jack rabbit afternoons
in the high canyons of his mind
armadillos in his tea
peacocks screeching
beyond the shuttered windows
in evening's golden tide (p. 12)
If surreality, be it some or all, best portrays human creativity, then evidently, because the surreal exists solely as a product of our fanciful manipulation of the real, it must be true that it's by the force of our creativity that we best can approach our creativity. By magic is magic best described.
This quote is taken from 'Scenario for a Muse Cycle So Far Off Broadway There Are Tide Pools in the Wings', one of two poems that are companion pieces to previous ones found in Sensuous Debris (all four eventually made their way into Dark Roads) – in this case to 'The Tiger Does Not Know.' The other is 'The Last Existentialist Continues His Descent into the Maelstrom of the Twenty-First Century...Contemplating the Death of Shadows...Suffering a Hostile Glance as He Moves Along the Quay,' which is the companion to the less extravagantly named 'The Last Existentialist.'
a shady sort of chap
shady stance shady walk
a posture drawn in upon itself
no doubt something
shady in his self
once you get to know him (p. 23)
Even if it is coincidental, Cold Tomorrows is not entirely depraved of commonalities that span several poems. This street grit is one of them – or better yet, this feeling of living in a world with unevenly divided privileges. A batch of others contain tales of eschatological sci-fi, including 'A Woman Cast in Stone' – wherein a lady exchanges her body ad nauseam in a bid against time, and, in the mind of this reviewer, a piece that belongs alongside 'Pavane for a Cyber Princess.' A trio of comedic poems deal with otherworldly phenomena – extinct animals, aliens, the colours of a foreign planet – which the populace at large struggles or refuses to come to terms with. A couple of surreal ones refuse this reviewer to come to terms with them, and at least has that in common.
Cold Tomorrows is a short collection, but it took this reviewer months to feel finished with it. Many of the poems require the reader to take their time with them, and all of them inspire the reader to dwell on them. Not always because of a profound nature, but always in part because of the sheer beauty of them. Some took a long time to get right, to give them the beauty they have. One even took over two decades from conception to finish. Cold Tomorrows may be short, but every word spans dimensions.
Cold Tomorrows is akin to Specula and Sensuous Debris in purpose. Three years had passed since the latter was released and again it was time to round up the disparate poetry which didn't fit neatly into any other collection. These kinds of collections are usually not as popular as those centred around a theme, but they have their own outlaw advantage in operating beyond any system. Libertines sheds yoke and bridle as they please. Their only dogma is imagination, and their rigour is enthusiasm alone. This is a collection of the rare and singular, but inspired, poetry.
The process of imagination, be it mused or autogenous, was a concept which the poet never let go of entirely. He wrote poems on the curiousness of it, on its challenges, and the sheer exhilaration that it brings. The human ability to create is magical, and these poems are in themselves absolute proof of this.
he spent far too much time
nailing the speculative muse
and getting nailed in return
he built a house with these nails
full of light and truth and bluster
full of mahogany and polished rosewood
a table laid with fish and fruit and fowl
deserted mornings locked in her embrace
jack rabbit afternoons
in the high canyons of his mind
armadillos in his tea
peacocks screeching
beyond the shuttered windows
in evening's golden tide (p. 12)
If surreality, be it some or all, best portrays human creativity, then evidently, because the surreal exists solely as a product of our fanciful manipulation of the real, it must be true that it's by the force of our creativity that we best can approach our creativity. By magic is magic best described.
This quote is taken from 'Scenario for a Muse Cycle So Far Off Broadway There Are Tide Pools in the Wings', one of two poems that are companion pieces to previous ones found in Sensuous Debris (all four eventually made their way into Dark Roads) – in this case to 'The Tiger Does Not Know.' The other is 'The Last Existentialist Continues His Descent into the Maelstrom of the Twenty-First Century...Contemplating the Death of Shadows...Suffering a Hostile Glance as He Moves Along the Quay,' which is the companion to the less extravagantly named 'The Last Existentialist.'
a shady sort of chap
shady stance shady walk
a posture drawn in upon itself
no doubt something
shady in his self
once you get to know him (p. 23)
Even if it is coincidental, Cold Tomorrows is not entirely depraved of commonalities that span several poems. This street grit is one of them – or better yet, this feeling of living in a world with unevenly divided privileges. A batch of others contain tales of eschatological sci-fi, including 'A Woman Cast in Stone' – wherein a lady exchanges her body ad nauseam in a bid against time, and, in the mind of this reviewer, a piece that belongs alongside 'Pavane for a Cyber Princess.' A trio of comedic poems deal with otherworldly phenomena – extinct animals, aliens, the colours of a foreign planet – which the populace at large struggles or refuses to come to terms with. A couple of surreal ones refuse this reviewer to come to terms with them, and at least has that in common.
Cold Tomorrows is a short collection, but it took this reviewer months to feel finished with it. Many of the poems require the reader to take their time with them, and all of them inspire the reader to dwell on them. Not always because of a profound nature, but always in part because of the sheer beauty of them. Some took a long time to get right, to give them the beauty they have. One even took over two decades from conception to finish. Cold Tomorrows may be short, but every word spans dimensions.
Displaying 1 of 1 review