In New Anthology, Sci-Fi & War Poets Explore Human, AI, Robot Relations

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In an exciting new 190-page anthology, 66 emerging and established voices from the science-fiction-poetry and war-poetry communities have joined forces to deliver visions and explorations regarding 
how humans, Artificial Intelligence, and robots may learn to live, work, grow, and fight. 

“Every day, our news feeds are crowded with dystopian reports of flame-throwing robots, killer drones, and cyber implants,” writes anthology editor Randy Brown. “Against this virtual crush of ash and black, we wonder: If futurists and fictionalists, warriors and wargamers can deploy their respective toolkits to probe potential threats and opportunities, why not poets?”
 
The anthology GIANT ROBOT POEMS: On Mecha-Human Science, Culture & War collects 92 poems involving concepts, narratives, and cautionary tales of “human-electro-mechanical-cyber interaction, connection, and competition.”

To motivate other writers, veterans, and readers, the anthology includes a special section of 7 discussion-starters and prompts, for use in writing workshops, book clubs, and other gatherings.
 
Randy “Sherpa” Brown embedded with his former Iowa Army National Guard unit as a civilian journalist in Afghanistan, May-June 2011. He subsequently authored the award-winning poetry collection Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire (2015), as well as a hybrid memoir-monograph, Twelve O’Clock Haiku: Lessons Learned from Old War Movies & New Poems (2022).
 
His previous on-cover book credits include co-editing the anthologies Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War (2019) and Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories about Military Gear (2023). Brown is a three-time poetry finalist in the annual Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards, administered by the Chicago-based literary magazine Line of Advance.
 
Starting July 2, 2024:
GIANT ROBOT POEMS: On Mecha-Human Science, Culture & War (190 pages, Middle West Press LLC) is available in a $19.99 trade paperback edition through Amazon and other booksellers, as well as a $9.99 Kindle e-book edition exclusively via Amazon. 
Middle West Press LLC (www.middlewestpress.com) is a Johnston, Iowa-based editor and publisher of non-fiction, journalism, and poetry. As an independent micro-press, we publish one to four titles annually. Our projects are often inspired by the people, places, and history of the American Midwest.

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