Scifaiku
SciFaiku is a form of science fiction poetry first announced by Tom Brinck with his treatise on the subject, The SciFaiku Manifesto. Brinck has been referred to as the "Father of SciFaiku." SciFaiku is inspired by Japanese haiku, but explores science, science fiction, and other speculative fiction themes, such as fantasy and horror. They are based on the principles and form of haiku but can deviate from its structure.
Scifaiku follow three major principles - minimalism, immediacy and human insight:
- Scifaiku follows the haiku model, including its spirit of minimalism. While traditional Japanese haiku usually has 3 phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on, haiku in English usually has seventeen syllables. Scifaiku is even more flexible and may be shorter or longer, although most often still written, as English language haiku, in three lines.
- Immediacy is the use of direct sensory perceptions to give a sense of being in the moment. Concrete, rather than abstract terms are used. Metaphor and allegory are rarely explicit though sometimes implied.
- Human insight comes from the idea that the purpose of much science fiction is to understand ourselves better through exploring possible futures or speculative realities.
Science fiction haiku
Before there was scifaiku on the Internet, there was science fiction haiku. Probably the earliest publication of science fiction haiku was Karen Anderson's "Six Haiku". Below is number four of her six SF haiku.Terry Pratchett included the following SF haiku as a chapter epigram in his early non-Discworld novel, The Dark Side of the Sun.
It wasn't until 1979 that science fiction haiku were regularly published, with Robert Frazier's "Haiku for the L5" and "Haiku for the Space Shuttle" starting the trend. In 1994, Michael Bishop's story "Cri di Coeur" featured a haiku contest held on an interstellar ship, with the topic of haiku about astrophysics, subject to the constraint that the poems must each feature a season..
The most extensive use of haiku in science fiction is in David Brin's Uplift Universe, where the uplifted dolphins speak a haiku-like language called Trinary. He has characters quoting haiku by Kobayashi Issa and Yosa Buson, and has them spontaneously writing their own haiku. Outside of his Uplift Universe, Brin has haiku as chapter epigrams in his novel The Postman.
One of the main characters in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, Bobby Shaftoe, is a haiku-writing U.S. Marine Raider during World War II. The book's prologue starts with one of his very rough haiku :
Zoe's boyfriend, in John Scalzi's 2008 novel Zoe's Tale, sends a haiku to her PDA.
Two of the more famous science fiction authors who have also written science fiction haiku are Joe Haldeman and Thomas M. Disch. The author Paul O. Williams, who has written a series of science fiction books as well as books of regular haiku and senryū, has combined both interests with some published science fiction haiku.
Scifaiku mailing lists
There have been three different Internet scifaiku mailing lists in succession. These mailing lists have been the primary base for the writing and sharing of scifaiku on the internet.The original sciFaiku mailing list was a Univ. of Michigan-based listserv. The first post on the list was on 23 July 1996.
Later on there was a mailing list organized through scifaiku.com. After problems with that mailing list server, the scifaiku list moved to Yahoo! Groups on 17 March 2001. As of 22 July 2006 there have been over 13,000 posts just on the scifaiku mailing list at Yahoo! Groups. From the home page:
This group is for the writing and sharing of science fiction haiku. We also occasionally write similar genres, such as fantasy haiku and horror haiku. The members also write SF poems using other short poetry forms, such as waka, senryū, sijo, kanshi, etc.
Group members have also created a few of their own poetry forms, such as the contrail and the Fibonacci-No-Haiku, written SF poetry based on other short poetry forms such as the cinquain, and experimented with a number of collaborative poetry forms such as science fiction renga and stellarenga.