Machine Journey by Richard Doyle

Welcome to Halfman, Halfbook for my stop on the Blog Tour for Machine Journey by Richard Doyle.

About the Book

Machine Journey is a pamphlet of poems and flash fictions. Travel the road from Slough to Mars. Discover wild visions, strange tales and machine futures. Scramble your way to the prefect stroke

About the Author

Author Photo

Richard Doyle is an old-school SF fan who began writing seriously in 2001. He has a Diploma in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and collaborated on a book in 2006. He has had poems published in the UK poetry magazines Orbis and Sarasvati and is a regular member of the Bristol Stanza Poetry Group. His debut pamphlet “The death of the sentence” was published in 2020. Two of his poems appear in the Bristol Stanza pamphlet “The Weather Indoors” (2021).

My Review

This is a strange and eclectic collection of verse and prose. There are poems about being a writer and how he shuffles scenes of death and dramatic entrances. It is the first collection that I have read that had something about Slough of all places.

He moves from the Stone Age with the poem called the Stone Computer about the screen that has not displayed an image for hundreds of years to the far future and a trip to Mars.

I particularly liked the Collision With A Greenberg, kind of a green punk story about an event that took place and Encounter with an Angel where someone has an angel reach out to touch them and The Trouble With Spaceships and novel and possibly illegal ways of travelling to Mars.

I liked this short collection. Doyle has drawn on subjects that are niche and wide-ranging. They are quirky and infused with gentle humour and are a pleasure to read.

Don’t forget to visit the other blogs on the blog tour