Small Waiting Objects

by T.D. Walker

In the near future, kitchen appliances question, console, and bewilder their owners. Extraterrestrials leave behind sub-dermal implants and complicated daughters. A second moon settles into orbit around Earth, a moon which challenges those beneath it to see it, to name it, to explore it. And crew members aboard starships turn to fine and pulp art as consolation. The lyric poems in Small Waiting Objects reach back to feminist utopias and onward toward possible futures in which we find ourselves resisting the technologies—and their human implications—that we most desire.

Genres: Poetry, Science Fiction

102 pages, Paperback

First published May 9, 2019

About the author

T.D. Walker is the author of Small Waiting Objects (CW Books 2019). Her science fiction poems and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, The Future Fire, Web Conjunctions, The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Recompose, Abyss & Apex, Kaleidotrope, and elsewhere.

After completing graduate work in English Literature, Walker began her career as a software developer. She draws on both her grounding in literary studies and her experience as a computer programmer in writing poetry and fiction.

Reviews

[Octavia Cade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't add this at time of reading, which was a while back, but I've just been going through it again so here we are. This is only a very short review, as a much longer version is coming up soon on Strange Horizons, but I was delighted. This is so delicate, and so subtle, and the themes repeat in new and interesting ways throughout the collection. There's Herland and Mars colonies and the introduction of the alien, but mostly there's a sense of expectation, of instability and ephemera. It's very, very effective. Anyway: favourite poems in here include "When the First Ship Left", "Reasons for Leaving", "The Tea Kettle Awaits the New Widow's Return", and "Alima Among the Trees".