Nutshell: always already dashing petit bourgeois outsider seeks to break interstellar monopoly of Old Money aristocrat via innovative stellar semiotics.Text is kickass in its presentation of celestial objects and outer space, “where night means forever and morning’s a recollection” (18). Space i...
Delightful! Now for news! Gossip! Tales of travel! Romance! We will have tall tales and religious chatter, and - who knows - perhaps some deep and lasting insight into the workings of the soul. The opening quote is from a monk in an isolated monastery greeting a party of visitors from Neveryon, t...
Ace Books first published Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany in the United States in 1966, when the writer was 24 years old. By my count he had already published six previous novels. (Dare I bore readers of this review with the obvious declaration that is standard of any retrospective assessment of Del...
The second book and sixth story in the Neveryona series, and the first novel length story.It is the story of Pryn who leaves her northern smalltown life and world on the wings of a dragon. Her adventure takes her through the intricacies of Kolhari [the capital of this country] where she meets a p...
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”Was that chant prevalent in your grade school? Who said it? Who heard it? Whorepeated it? In the dialogical criticism of Longer Views, where the critiquesrespond to their own premises of exposition at the same time that they...
In a story as exciting as any science fiction adventure written, Samuel R. Delany's 1976 SF novel, originally published as Triton, takes us on a tour of a utopian society at war with . . . our own Earth! High wit in this future comedy of manners allows Delany to question gender roles and sexual e...
When I do laundry I like to bring a book small enough to fit into one of my pockets with me. This happened to be on top of a pile of mass markets I hadn't read, so it got read today. It's ok. In college I took a Sci-Fi literature class, and the teacher got really excited about what SF and Fantasy...
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues--technology, globalization, gender, sexuality,...
Wesleyan University Press has made a significant commitment to the publication of the work of Samuel R. Delany, including this recent fiction, now available in paperback. The three long stories collected in Atlantis: three tales -- "Atlantis: Model 1924," "Erik, Gwen, and D. H. Lawrence's Aesthet...
. . Trying to write it in terms of moral problems alone is more than I can possibly do. My main hope is to state the central subject and my ignorance from the start.James Agee/Letter to Father Flye Where is this country? How does one get there? If one is born lover with an innate philosophic bent...
the broadside proclaimed in askew, headline letters. Smaller letters beneath announced: “Here are Thirteen Things your government does not want you to know.” Beneath that were a list of numbered paragraphs: 1) The gravity cut that threw a blanket of...
Rahm eased along the ledge. Still numb, he had no sense of danger. His motivation was a less than passive curiosity—more the habitual actions of someone often curious in the past. A fallen branch, split along its length, lay on the rock. Morning light reflected on the clean, inner wood, still dam...
Below, the street lamp was a blurred pearl. He searched the dense and foggy distances, was lost in them. "What are you looking at?" She came up, surprising, behind. "Oh." The night was thick with burnt odors. "I don't know." She picked up the bottle...
. . Some Notes on Hart Crane He is a great average man; one who, to the best thinking, adds a proportion and equality in his faculties, so that men see in him their own dreams and glimpses made available and made to pass for what they are. A great common-sense is his warrant and qualification to ...