Web design by: The Design Perch
As the title suggests, Petting the Time Shark is a collection of poems that explore the dangerous slippages of time, beckoning futures and painful past. In the great tradition of Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin, Mike Allen shows us how science fiction poetry can do what all first-rate poetry does — rouse the imagination to venture into darkness and the unknown, there to discover old truths and new delights. Whether assembling Zembla or facing the ghosts of loss, this book is "supernova hot, Big Bang bright."
— R.H.W. Dillard, winner of the O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize
For Allen, a scratch on a window, a sudden shadow ... is much more terrifying and effective than throwing wide the closet door and dragging out the monster within. His skill with this technique can be observed in the poem “No One," from his first chapbook Petting the Time Shark, which chronicles what most people have surely feared when home alone on a dark and stormy night.
— The Pedestal Magazine
Rhysling Award winner Mike Allen brings us an outstanding collection of his poetry in his new forty-eight page chapbook Petting the Time Shark.... Mike Allen's poetry is sometimes amusing, often disturbing, but never disappointing. Certain passages get under your skin and call you back to read them again and again, each time to find new insights, hidden meanings whispered in allegorical phrase.
— Strange Horizons
Allen's style ... can present a night sky as dotted thread lines stitching constellations together and discuss with straightest face ectoplasmic appliances, erasure plagues, and lovers duking it out with wormholes and nanobots ... A package worth its price.
— Tom Easton, Analog Science Fiction and Fact
The sheer variety of contexts and approaches will insure an emotional and intellectual roller-coaster ride for the lucky reader.
— Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's Science Fiction
Allen displays enough range and gusto to please any reader...At a cover price of $5.00 this collection is a steal. I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of Mike Allen's spirited and smoothly imagined Petting the Time Shark.
— SF Reader
If you have had no interest in speculative poetry to this point, Mike Allen may change your opinion.
— SF Site
Contents
Petting the Time Shark
Ogren Crossing
Dreamshore
The Old Man in the Mirror
The Thing in the Gutter
A Curtain of Stars
A Million Layers Removed
No One
Apotheosis
Ectoppliances
Plague
Assembling Zembla
Funeral Pie
Once Awakened
The Unseelie Tree
A Ghost Story
Death of the Father
Bloodspell: A Sestina (with Anita Allen)
Angel and Ogre
Saturn Devours His Children
The End of the Affair
Inverted Universe (with Ian Watson)
Bizarremost Bazaar
Metarebellion
guerrillavid inc.
On Discovery of a Habitable World
Waiting for the Tow
Seventh Coming (with Ian Watson)
And All Dust Part of the Dreamer (with Charles M. Saplak)
Cover and llustrations by Tim Mullins. Edited by Anita Allen.
— R.H.W. Dillard, winner of the O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize
For Allen, a scratch on a window, a sudden shadow ... is much more terrifying and effective than throwing wide the closet door and dragging out the monster within. His skill with this technique can be observed in the poem “No One," from his first chapbook Petting the Time Shark, which chronicles what most people have surely feared when home alone on a dark and stormy night.
— The Pedestal Magazine
Rhysling Award winner Mike Allen brings us an outstanding collection of his poetry in his new forty-eight page chapbook Petting the Time Shark.... Mike Allen's poetry is sometimes amusing, often disturbing, but never disappointing. Certain passages get under your skin and call you back to read them again and again, each time to find new insights, hidden meanings whispered in allegorical phrase.
— Strange Horizons
Allen's style ... can present a night sky as dotted thread lines stitching constellations together and discuss with straightest face ectoplasmic appliances, erasure plagues, and lovers duking it out with wormholes and nanobots ... A package worth its price.
— Tom Easton, Analog Science Fiction and Fact
The sheer variety of contexts and approaches will insure an emotional and intellectual roller-coaster ride for the lucky reader.
— Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's Science Fiction
Allen displays enough range and gusto to please any reader...At a cover price of $5.00 this collection is a steal. I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of Mike Allen's spirited and smoothly imagined Petting the Time Shark.
— SF Reader
If you have had no interest in speculative poetry to this point, Mike Allen may change your opinion.
— SF Site
Contents
Cover and llustrations by Tim Mullins. Edited by Anita Allen.
(Additonal shipping charge begins at $1.50)