T.D. Walker

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Articles

The Best Speculative Poetry is Intersectional

Sep 11, 2024 | magazine.interstellarflightpress.com | Conyer Clayton |T.D. Walker |Mary Lee |Brandon Shimoda |Holly Walrath

Reading from the 2024 SFPA Elgin Award NomineesThis is my sixth year reviewing books from the SFPA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association) Elgin Award for best speculative poetry book. A full list of nominated books is available on the SFPA website. This year’s award chair is Felicia Martínez, who I would like to thank for diligently tracking nominations.
The Hard Switch by Owen D. Pomery

May 24, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Mark Granger |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

Sometimes the sign of a good book is not gelling with it straight away. It’s happened to me many times, but for whatever reason I’ve pushed through that initial uncomfortable phase and realised that, no, what I’m reading is great. The Hard Switch is one of those books. I can now say Owen D. Pomery’s latest graphic novel is a fantastic emotional SF warm hug of a story, even when the horrible stuff happens. Because, spoiler alert, it bloody well does happen.
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

May 22, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Matt Holder |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

The engine that drives Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams is the philosophy of a question: what is history? Is it a series of factual events organized into a sequence after-said-fact (and what is fact? And who decides on them?) or “a litany of trackable moments, the realm of machines” (p. 3)? Is it a method of interpretation? An impulse for truth, or Truth, “‘a message from a genius, ruined by the rain’” (p. 4)? A reckoning toward justice, a curative for erasure?
SONNET FOR THE UNBELIEVER

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Paul Chuks |T.D. Walker |B. Pladek |Andy Sawyer

any god—when you pray—will tell you—the last thingthey want to do is turn their back—then they turn. you’re from a country where bombs haverevoked bodies into void, for years; your grandma diedthis way. her limbs in the south, head,north, hands, east—as if showing godhow to dismember a poem. It’s your turn now. the bombs have come in the same temper—you in your granny’s frame, near the spot sheescalated into dust. you call upon god,a bomb dies in your face.
After World by Debbie Urbanski

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Andy Sawyer |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

The genre of After World is still often referred to (see The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) as “The Last Man,” from its genesis in the early nineteenth century in various novels and poems using that title, including, of course, the famous work by Mary Shelley.
The Spindle of Necessity

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks |Andy Sawyer

Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. Samantha Finnes was a minor historical novelist, unknown outside queer circles. In the mid-50s she’d written three books set during the World Wars.
The Lunar Colony AI Begins to Build a Monument to the Programmer’s Father

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | T.D. Walker |B. Pladek |Paul Chuks |Andy Sawyer

1. You’ve seeded me with a rock your fathercaught in light angled by your mother’sanger: it’s minute, isn’t it, but there, gravitylensing some past moment, creatingillusions that things happened or that they happenedall at once—the effect is small, and you’ve asked me not todwell on unimportant details. Not a rock. Or not just. A menhir, a standing stone, raisedto align with sunrise on some ancient summer solstice. Or not just that: his image of it.
Art, Archaeology, and Artificial Intelligence Part III, The Exhibit and...

Nov 22, 2023 | magazine.interstellarflightpress.com | T.D. Walker

Interview Interstellar Flight Press: To return to the initial questions that drove the project, you mention in the conference video the current state of and potential for human/robot swarm interactions in public, such as in the workplace. Your team has taken the research from the psychology lab to the art gallery. Art makes us pay attention and makes the familiar unfamiliar. Through art, we see the world differently.
STEM, Women Scientists, and Sexism

Jul 7, 2023 | magazine.interstellarflightpress.com | T.D. Walker

Interview Interstellar Flight Press: You mention in the acknowledgments for your book, Mathematics for Ladies, that a lecture by Professor Barbara Whitten of the Colorado College physics department about Sarah Frances Whiting sparked both the poem about Whiting as well as the larger project. How did the project evolve out of that poem? And how did you choose the scientists you feature in the collection?