Samuel R. Delany Books

Delany is an science fiction author I've long wanted to read, though an early acquaintance with Dhalgren was not particularly inviting. At the suggestion of Amazon reviewer Hyperpat, I decided to try some other Delany work. And this collection of short stories is a terrific place to start. These works are high flights of imagination, but at the heart of them are characters that are beautifully drawn and complex. These stories are about people who happen to live in the future, rather than being about the future.

These fourteen stories are jewels of prosody. Delany is a true writer, not just a genre writer. The Star Pit deals with a father who has lost his son in a war and comes to terms with it by transferring affections to odd young people with psychic powers. Driftglass is the story of a failed underwater power worker and his struggle as he watches a young power worker relive his mistakes. The twist is that these people are all fitted with gills to do their work. We in Some Strange Power's Employ tracks the tale of workers for an international power conglomerate who must force modern power on a group of free anarchists. Each of these wonderful stories use the technological aspect of science fiction, not as an end in itself, nor as color, but as a central symbol for the psychological states of the characters. The large "ecologarium" (a sort of technologically advanced ant farm) in the Star Pit ends up as a symbol for the impossibility of humans to leave their own galaxy. The horrible prison of Cage of Brass mirrors the darkness of the main character's murderous psychosis.

Delany's grasp of prose is a miracle. The surreal shifts of perspective in Among the Blobs is masterly, as the narrative moves from the seedy toilets of the IRT to some universal Governmental system on a far away planet, the perspective shifts dizzily and yet it is always clear. The haunting Martian fantasy Ruins also manages to show us a character loosing his grasp on reality, without descending into the incomprehensible. And the word painting in so many of these stories is exquisite. Delany is a joy to read.

This collection of stories works both as an introduction to the writer, but also are enjoyable to those who know the writer. And if you are not a fan of science fiction, they are still highly recommended. For these stories transcend genre and touch universal human themes.

Samuel Delany is often cited by other SF authors as an inspriation or a great practitioner of the craft of writing. His novels, such as Dhalgren and Triton, are well-regarded. They are also frequently unapproachable: big, gnarly books with big, gnarly subjects. They certainly are not much like the rafts of semi-literate junk that passes for much of SF these days. But you won't sit down and toss of a Delany novel...

This book, though, is hugely approachable. As a short story collection, it covers a wide span of the author's career and gives us very classic, deep, meaningful, soulful stories. From "Star Pit" as the start to the author's afterword we get a range of great and near-great stories. If you love Delany's longer work, here is a chance to collect a beautiful volume of short fiction. If you want to get into Delany, here's your best opportunity.

Highly recommended.

Delany has always been one of SF most thoughtful writers and one of the least likely to simply settle for the genre's conventions. He's an author who deserves to be considered with some of the finest literary minds working today, with the only difference being that he chooses to work within the confines of
SF or fantasy, somehow always tweaking it until it becomes distinctly his, while remaining recognizable as SF. This is a collection of his short stories and contains most of the major ones as far as I know, certainly both Nebula award winning stories and other stuff, most of it published in the sixties and seventies. The titles alone should tell you that this isn't your typical series of SF stories, containing such evocative titles as "Driftglass" or "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" or my personal favorite, "We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move in a Rigorous Line". The stories run the gamut from well told SF tales to more experimental stuff. The best stories are the more famous ones, both "Driftglass" (about a future society where people are given gills to adapt to living under the sea) and "Time Considered . . ." (a future gangster type story) are stunningly evocative of their fictional future times, set apart by the depth of Delany's ideas and his stunning prose, his descriptions more often than not achieve a sort of magical realism and sometimes come closer to the more lyrical nature of poetry than anything else. Generally most of the stories hit their targets in a bulleyes, you have the occassional tale (like the one with "Blob" in the title) that are just a bit too much on the experimental side to have much of an impact. And yet there are others such as "Dog in a Fisherman's Net" that are basically timeless and work as pure story and take you to a place that may or may not have ever existed. Even the stories such as "The Star Pit" that seem to be just pure SF at first eventually reveal themselves to be about something more. Delany is not just interested in talking about spaceships and time travel and he merely uses SF or fantasy as a background to explore aspects of human nature that the tales lend themselves to. Just about anything the man has ever written is worth reading and I think his novels are the best place to discover and fully explore his talents, this collection is a great way to get acquainted with some of his best work (and a few of these stories do rank up with his best) and enjoy SF/fantasy with a more thoughtful bent than usual, something more than just swords and spaceships and aliens and evil gods. The writers of today aren't restricted to the cliches of their genres, even if they choose to stay within those confines. Delany shows us what it's like to have no restrictions at all.

"Aye, and Gomorrah and Other Stories," by Samuel R. Delany, brings together 15 tales along with an afterword by the author. The copyright page gives the publication histories of the pieces in this book. The stories in this volume vary greatly in length: 2 fall into the 60-70 page range (and could, I suppose, be considered novellas), 2 fall into the less than 10 page range, and the rest are of various lengths in between; this nicely adds to the overall variety of the collection.

Most of the pieces in this book fall firmly in the science fiction genre, although I consider a couple to be fantasy. Delany's locales range from cities on Earth (Venice, New York) to worlds beyond our solar system.

Delany's stories are both triumphs of science fiction inventiveness and exquisite works of literary art--as well as being compassionate yet unflinching explorations of the human condition. His vision is richly ironic, and often tragic. His prose can be hauntingly beautiful to read--he is a particular master of visual description.

Delany's explorations of emergent subcultures and institutions in many of these tales give the book an intriguing sociological aspect. His topics include crime, punishment, sexuality, loss, suffering, culture clash, space travel, and the fabric of consciousness and reality.

The remarkable title story is a look at the emergence of a new sexual orientation and its related subculture in the context of expanding technology. "Driftglass" looks at a class of physiologically altered humans. "Omegahelm" is a shocking, fascinating story about motherhood and art. These are just a few examples of Delany's fertile mind. I consider Delany to be a unique and essential voice in the science fiction canon; this collection of his short fiction is a volume to be savored and shared.

I'm not going to reiterate the plot, you can get that from the capsule reviews above.

Mainly I just wanted to say this book contains many examples of SRD's superfine descriptive powers. Almost every sentence is a pleasure to read, and as one follows another you find yourself there, sometimes in the character's mind, sometimes in the vivid settings among the people and events that surround him.

All of SRD's books are worthwhile, but some are more work than others. This one is "easy." Fans will gulp it down and immediately start over, and even new readers will be able to tap into much of what is exciting about SRD's writing: precise observation, emotional immediacy, and a sheer joy in the use of language that makes you want to, well, run out and write a book, or a poem, or at least read another and another one and then talk about it with someone!

For triangulation purposes, my (current) top 5 SRD books are, in no particular order, Dhalgren, Trouble on Triton, Times Square Red/Blue, About Writing, and his book of letters, 1984.

If you have read and liked any of these I suspect you will enjoy this new book as well.

Enjoy!

Take a trip back through the life of a gay African American poet as he puts his life in rewind mode and examines it all.

Even as a long-time fan of Samuel Delany's work (both fiction and non-fiction), I confess to finding it sometimes hard going (I still haven't finished Dhalgren!). But Dark Reflections is his most accessible book in a long time. Even though it's written "in reverse", starting with old age and progressing to youth, there's no difficulty following the narrative, and this would be a good book to start with if you've never read anything by Delany.

But the book takes on an added dimension for those of us who are Delany junkies, since in some way it is (and is not) autobiographical. Arnold Hawley, the central character, is a black gay writer only a little older than Delany, whose books have Delanyesque titles (one of them is actually the title of a Delany book). But his life is the opposite of Delany's... his books are unread (and not even in the New York Public Library!); his sole claim to success is having won one rather questionable prize (is it a coincidence that the author's bio on the back of the book mentions Delany's prizes?); his old age is utterly lonely and his emotional life completely unfulfilled. Even though, like Delany, he married, his marriage (which culminates in the most horrifyingly vivid events that I've ever read) surely did not, let us hope, resemble that of the author!

So what's going on? Is this a "what if" account (as the Publisher's Weekly review, cited above implies)? Rather, I think the title, which is at least triply ambiguous, gives the clue. These are dark reflections (thoughts) about a life, looked at as if reflected in a dark mirror (and, of course, narrated in reflected order). It's time to go reread it and see what I missed reading it the first time.

Delany, Samuel. "Dark Reflections", Carroll & Graf. 2007.

Beautifully Crafted

Amos Lassen and Literary Pride

Due out on May 15 is an exceptional novel by Samuel Delany ("Dhalgren", "The Mad Man") which is sure to be a ht. It is so beautifully written and crafted that I had to sit up and take notice several times. "Dark Reflections" is the story of Arnold Hawley, a gay African-American New Yorker who is a poet. The book looks at Hawley's life in reverse. It is divided into three parts, "The Prize", "Vashti in the Dark" and "The Book of Pictures". The sheer honesty of the book is what makes it so special.
Book One begins when Hawley is fifty and he wins the Alfred Proctor Award for his sixth book of poetry. He has now risen to the height of his profession and has achieved a degree of literary success, Exactly eighteen years afterwards, Hawley published a new book which because of its lack of success causes him to be lonely and afraid to get any older. He breaks down when his aunt dies and he feels he cannot go to the funeral. Part One really deals with his fears, his mental condition, and his loneliness.
Part Two goes back to 1974 and Hawley's unhappy marriage to Judy Haindel. It seems that his wife has problems which bring about emotional and physical catastrophic consequences. It is in this section that Hawley writes his third book.
In "The Book of Pictures", Part Three of the novel we return to Brown And Hawley's college days and his first sexual experience with a male.
The three parts taken together give a beautiful look at the life of a successful gay African-American in a way that I do not think it has been portrayed before. We look at social attitudes, loneliness and a sense of triumph. The book also has something to say about Delany himself. Interestingly enough the name of Hawley's prize winning book of poems is the same as the author's most famous novel. Delaney, himself, wrote poetry until he gave it up for the financial rewards of writing science fiction and memoirs. Hawley and Delany are both African American gay men and I can only question that if "Dark Reflections" is a fictionalized look at the author's own life. Many different questions can be asked if this supposition is correct but the one thing above all else is deal with questions of loneliness and despair as one ages. The book is beautifully written and the story is complex. It is powerful in the way it deals with the issues it confronts and we can all be so much better off because of that. The honesty and truthfulness of the book makes this a sad story and is in opposition to what Delany usually gives us--fantasy. But it is the out and on the button honesty of the book that makes it so rewarding.

This multiplex, mind-scrambling narrative is (along with EINSTEIN INTERSECTION) Delany's best novel. Only about 100 pages, filled with dazzling, vivid images & fun characters -- it's fresh, funny, complicated & FAST -- a "space opera" of epic proportions ... in a tight space. U'll have a great time. Some of Delany's philosophical Deep Thots come across 2, but U won't mind. U'll B 2 busy having a great time. 2 bad this guy went on 2 write DAHLGREN, TRITON, etc....

A friend recommended this book to me saying, "As soon as you finish it, you'll want to read it again immediately." He wasn't kidding.

Samuel Delany's book "Empire Star" is basically a novella (about 100 pages). It recounts the life of a young man who is born and raised on a backward planet where thought rarely rises beyond the immediate "now". Nicknamed "Comet Jo" for his curious need to look up at the stars, the young man is given an important message to deliver to the Empire Star... unfortunately, he doesn't know what the message is. Neither does his eight-legged cat. Their adventure, and the reader's, is to unravel the mystery.

The novella is quite straightforward at first, but the reader will discover that everything that has occurred takes on additional meaning by the end of the book. The best way to describe the book is to say that it is the literary equivalent of an M.C. Escher print.

As one friend to another I, too, must recommend that you set aside some time to read the book and then immediately re-read it.

This is one of my all-time favorite science fiction novels. It contains the great concept listed in the title of this review (read the book to understand more!), and demonstrates multiplexity in the way it wraps around and around itself. A wonderful book, and a shame it's not still widely available. Whenever I find a used copy, I buy it, so I can give it away.

This is a delightful book, easy reading but full of content for all level readers. The characters are likable and there are several interesting concepts that are woven into the story line. The reader needs to keep his thinking cap on to catch the intricities of the storyline. I have reread this book several times and it continues to be a favorite. I will not discuss the storyline in this review as I do not want to pre-color the first time readers perception of the book. I prefer to let the author present his own story. I will tell the reader that this is the story of an unsophisticated young man who in the process of growing up leaves the safe enviroment of his backwater planet and is flung into the hustle and bustle of a vast galactic empire where the meaning of the term key players takes on a whole different meaning.

As the author of, The Second Virgin Birth, I have to say that Hopkinson book is very believable, with well developed-characters with amazing dialogue that surrounds several action-packed stories that will keep you guessing the entire time. It's an easy read, and extremely well written.

The stories are short but packed with depth and information. Fantastic writing from authors who should be paid attention to. A must buy for anyone interested in postcolonial writing, science fiction, race, and gender among others.

Speculative fiction, at least that popular in the West, usually projects Western and White attitudes into the future or supernatural situations. This important book, which gets its title from a quote by Harriet Tubman, collects stories on such matters from people of color who have been informed by the colonial experience in their homelands. These submissions often utilize non-Western storytelling techniques featuring unexpected moral constructions and non-linear plotlines. Thus, several of these stories seem to have abrupt and inconclusive endings, but that's if you perceive them in a standard linear fashion. Meanwhile, a common motif in this collection is science fiction treatments of White/European colonialism through the eyes of aliens who are being colonized by humans. That's a great twist on a trusty sci-fi device, but many of these writers apparently came up with the concept before constructing their plots, leading to some stories that are very contrived and preachy (the most heavy-handed example is by Carole McDonnell).

But on the other hand, the stories here are almost uniformly haunting and incredibly thought-provoking for informed readers of any culture. Karin Lowachee and devorah major really make the aforementioned humans-colonizing-aliens motif work in exciting ways. Tobias S. Buckell offers an intriguing space war with a Mesoamerican twist, and Opal Palmer Adisa brings redemption in an alternative history of slavery. Wayde Compton creates a marvelously updated version of a piece of old African folklore, to illustrate post-human discrimination, while Larissa Lai finds the inherent humanity and prejudice of supposedly inhuman robots. The most moving tale here is by Celu Amberstone, in which humans who have been forcibly relocated by aliens to a new planet try to connect with this strange new Earth in a Native American fashion. As with any collection of stories by different authors, some submissions here work better than others, with preachiness being a common drawback. But overall, this is an especially stirring collection of tales that tackle shopworn sci-fi and fantasy concepts from fresh non-Western viewpoints, offering the reader new ways of looking at the past, present, and future of the real world. [~doomsdayer520~]

Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan have joined forces to produce a powerful and insightful anthology of Science Fiction literature from a broad spectrum of experience and (counter) experience. Please note, Amazon doesn't credit Boston-based professor Mehan (who teaches at Emerson College) with having much to do with this book, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out he had just as much say in assembling the contents as did his co-editor, Nalo Hopkinson, the famous novelist of Canada whom many credit as being the "next Octavia Butler." Together they make an imposing duo and they are wise indeed both in what they decided to do for and the people to whom they appealed for new work. The result is smashing and one of the very best books of 2004.

Wayde Compton's "fairy tale" is almost too beautiful to describe. A "growing ball of light as bright as a sky full of half moons" appears to our hero and tells him that his name is Mr. Polaris. By the way, the hero is called Lacuna and thus describes the position of writers of color, often, marginalized within the already marginalized community of science fiction. That is, it's a world filled with its own rules and domains, yet those in charge of the dominant culture regard it with skepticism and even violence, based on the fear of losing their own Antaean strength--the exploring strength of the colonizer.

The blind Victorian writer Celu Amberstone contributes a diaristic and chilling account of a mother-daughter relationship gone tragically wrong. In this brief and pointillistic tale, the daughter is called "Sleek" and she is almost like the spirit of the mother before society's pressures (and the pressures of colonization) took the free will out of her. The months and the days are each given beautiful and poetic names. The penultimate entry will bring tears to your eyes--even if you are a rock.

I wish I had time to list all the stories and what makes them good. Before I sign off I could add that, although Compton and Amberstone are both Canadian, the anthology has many writers from other parts of North America too, including the USA, as well as from other parts of the world. This world--our world. The editors have skillfully suggested to their readers the ways in which all science fiction embodies aspects both of colonizing and post colonialist teleology. It's an eye opener. Hooray for Arsenal Pulp for bringing us the news in this handsome and durabe volume.

Chaykin and Delany are individually within the first rank of storytellers, visual and verbal respectively. This joint effort combines the best of both artists.

It's a swashbuckling story of the classic sort. A powerful device has been hidden, in pieces, across the width of the rapacious empire. Qrelon, whose planet was destroyed to feed the empire's greed, leads a small band of rebels. She and they risk everything to collect the pieces of that device. Once complete, it will be the one force that can destroy the planet-sized computer that drives the empire. Wryn, a student of archaeology, is thrust into the conflict in a very personal way: an imperial commander selects him, at random, as the one to execute the rebel leader. At the risk of his own life, he lets her escape. Then, the chase is on.

OK, the story is a lot like a lot of others. Christmas trees, the trunk, branches, and needles, are a lot like each other, too. In both cases, uniqueness and special meaning come details that furnish it, not from the main structure of it. Delany's narrative details distinguish Empire, and Chaykin's iconic imagery brings it to life. The art is a bit rough and sketchy at times, but that's a matter of style rather than ineptitude. His figures are bold and posed, without seeming static. Somehow, he manages to make every panel look like the most important one in the story. Once you've developed an eye for his style, you'll see how the younger generation of comic artists have learned from him.

It's a great story in a great presentation. The 70s printing from the Byron Preiss branch of Berkeley Publishing is hard to find now. It's long overdue for a reprint - stories inevitably pick up traces of the time in which they're written, but this one is still strong and fresh.

//wiredweird

Back when Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal Magazine)was first appearing in the US, Sam Delaney and Howard Chaykin teamed up to give us this unique blend of textual and visual storytelling.

This is a smart, fast-paced piece of space opera with plenty of substance and originality.

I'm not a big fan of Chaykin's style (I like more detail in the hardware designs...) but this book is full of interesting imagery and clever layout.

Worth hunting down, if you've any interest in Delaney, Chaykin, or Space Opera.

I read this for my college English course. At first it was a bit daunting, but since I had to stick with it for the class I pressed on. Suddenly all the words just started to flow and it quickly became an involving tale. I love the book so much that I've given it as a gift to more than a few of my friends.

This volume is by far the best one so far. The first book ("Tales of Neveryon") was a bunch of neat stories with ulterior meanings that were sometimes obvious and sometimes no so obvious, and the second novel was good but meandered a bit more than it needed to. Here, however, it all comes together. Delany seems far more focused here than in the other volumes. In the earlier stories Delany seemed more experimental than anything else, cloaking a variety of topics in the sword and sorcery genre just to see if he could, in this volume he's decided to explore subjects that mean a lot more personally to him, and this causes an incredible jump in quality (which was high to begin with). The three stories are uniformly excellent here, and all are vastly different. Delany seems to be trying to look into the nature of reality and myth here, trying to figure out the difference between what is "real" and what people perceive and how it might get like that. This is more intellectual stuff than fantasy is normally used to, and far from the typical "good vs evil" simplicities that usually inhabit the fantasy genre. The reason Delany can pull this off is because the fantasy here feels "real" when he focuses on minor events and characters who are really just regular people it gives the story added weight. His Neveryon comes across as a real place with an active and complex culture, from the admirable to the hedonistic. He's probably also the first to inject homosexuality into fantasy, in all its forms, which is something that has always been noticably absent from fantasy over the years (not that it needs to be there, but it's about the only major genre to not even acknowledge it . . . except for the usual fey, pale, lisping princes and the like . . .) and is very prominent in this volume, moreso than the others, which it was acknowledged but not really addressed. The last story especially "The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals" is really an amazing story, nominally about the emergence of an AIDS like illness into Neveryon while also an account of Delany's experiences in NY in the early eighties when AIDS was first becoming more prevalent. He captures both times well and the story jumps back and forth from his recollections to Neveryon to his thoughts on writing the book and eventually does a lot to blur the line between our world and Neveryon. It alone is worth the purchase of the volume. Overall these stories are some of his best post-"Dhalgren" work and for anyone who thinks that fantasy can be more relevant than beating up trolls, they owe it to themselves to track down this series.

This work was first published by the title mentioned in the review title, in 1987 (November) by St. Martins Press/New York. I have verified this by viewing the content page of "Return to Neveryon". While this is perhaps an unimportant detail, the search was sparked by the review below, and of course, my desire to find any other Samuel R. Delany (SRD) books about Neveryon (disappointed).

However, the book is a satisfying conclusion to the four published texts in the series, perhaps beginning with "Triton", mentioned briefly in one of the appendices as having a significant role in the development of what Delany (in the guise of an alter-ego K. Leslie Steiner) calles "The Modular Calculus", a philosophical attempt to construct a measure of the degree of approach of a "model of reality" (that is, a book or series of books) to the "reality" itself. Thus, one may infer that the entire Neveryon series and the book Triton, (only mentioned in passing in the appendix to the third book of the series "Flight from Neveryon") is part of a philosophical musing by the author on the nature of society, civilization and the development and nature of the self, as demonstrated by various inhabitants of the "model" or fictional world he has created. Despite these deeper philosophical conjectures, the book is a fascinating romp through what is perhaps, and perhaps not, an alternate world. Enjoy!

Delany finishes his series of Neveryon novels but focusing on the character who not only kicked off the series but has provided most of the impetus for the events in the novels, either as a main character, through cameo roles, or through an offscreen yet tangible presence. Delany's stories in this volume are less self-consciously experimental (at least in structure) than the last volume and thus come across as more conventional. They really aren't, most of them explore topics in semniotics, a subject I really don't have that great a knowledge of and as usual probably missed most of the bigger points he's trying to make. But the stories make for interesting reads on their own. The first story (which is the longest) has Gorgik, at the end of his career, tell a story about himself to a barbarian boy who could care less. This one is probably the least exciting since it's basically all monologue, but it's still entertaining and delves a bit more into the nature of perception versus reality (at least that's how I read it). The second story is a lot of fun and barely even involves Gorgik, instead telling the tale of a petty criminal, moving back and forth along his life, creating a very complex charactization, and highlighting more aspects of Delany's very intricately created culture. The last story ends the series on a high note and is a slightly rewritten version of the first story from the first volume, showing Gorgik's formative years. It's not too different from the original (if at all) I thought some sections were tweaked slightly and some parts were expanded upon more, but overall it was great the first time and it's just as good the second time. One thing that's neat about the stories is how they inform each other, there aren't explicit connections between them but the connections are there (plus the chronology goes backward, adding another level of meaning) especially between the second and last stories (the one you'd least think would be connected) and it shows a level of thought and plotting and an attention to structure that you don't normally see in fantasy. All in all, a nice cap to a fun series, one of the best pure sword and sorcery series to come along in a while. What they lacked in blood and guts they made up in imagination and pure thought and for that reason they'll stand head and shoulders over other fantasy books that seek to continue the status quo and tell the same old stories.

It's amazing that people can judge a book by reading excerpts on the net. Critical Theory and Science Fiction is not an easy read but CT never was or will be. You don't have to agree with the Marxist theories of Bloch and Adorno, Carl Freedman uses to make his various points, to appreciate his insights and the challenges he throws at the reader. That is what academics are supposed to do and not to wallow in old cliche's and easy answers. The "excursuses" (his term) into classic SF novels such as Stanislaw Lem's SOLARIS, Ursula Le Guin's THE DISPOSSESSED, Joanna Russ' THE TWO OF THEM, Samuel Delany's STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SANDS and the greatest SF writer, Philip K Dick's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE are lessons every SF reader and writer should make their own. At least Freedman is raising the level of SF discourse beyond Star Trek Convensions or Star Wars hype.

From the cover: From Ganymede to Gomorrah, a bizarre breed of planet-hopping humans sell their sexless, neutered bodies. . . so that others may explore the outer limits of sexual perversion. Far beneath the surface of the planet earth, a doomed architect lives out the rest of his years in a hideous life-sustaining coffin. . .in a world where not dying is the ultimate form of punishment. And in a remove outpost near Canada, a lone cluster of Hell's Angels prepared for the final battle with a society which demands that all men share in the good life. . .whether they want to or not. This is the universe of Samuel Delany. Ten tales of speculative fiction.

Pryn, our heroine, hijacks a dragon to flee her mountain village. Her journey takes her to the port city of Kolhari and into issues involving personal loyalty, freedom, heroism, and slavery.

An intellectual adventure! Highly Recommended. One of his best works yet!