Samuel Delany

I have a copy of Dhalgren sitting on my bookshelf staring me down, but I have not tried it yet.

Er. Just noticed you were asking about NON-fiction. I haven't read any of that, sorry!

-F

I really want to read 1984, but I haven't seen it anywhere.

it's a beautiful book. it's like he took the ideas of the academic left (barthes/foucault and the gender studies crowd in particular), ideas we all love but constantly get to hear derided as vague or impractical, and used it as the starting point for visualizing a society in the future. and he playfully calls it "the sygn". and he posits a parallel society called "the family", vaguely egalitarian but very conservative, too. and he weaves the tension between these two societies into and around an affecting love story.

it's great, one of my favoritest books ever. it's got the mad world-building of dune, the same philosophical gravitas, but also delany's own particular ideas and stamp.

also, when I said 'Dhalgren' was his best I meant it as his best of the three works of fiction of his that i have read.

jordan- my jewels of aptor cover is one of those 'pulpy' fantasy ones. It doesn't put me off at all actually.

he does blur the lines between what you would think is fantasy and what you would recognize as sci-fi.

i guess the book is like an answer to "trouble on triton", except it posits a heterotopia that is far more advanced than "...triton"'s and one that delany is much less ambiguous.

plot-wise it's more like dhalgren in reverse: or dhalgren told from the point of view of the hippy girlfriend (what was her name?) but yeah, mentally twisted stranger comes to town and upsets everything, for sure.

Delany is a good choice for this comparison, but Gene Wolfe may be an even better one. Wolfe has mentioned his debt to and respect for Borges in interviews, has stories which are homages to him, and seems to have modeled a character after him (Ultan the Librarian).

Have you read the Neveryona books, where he mixes pomo crit and sword and sorcery?

Nonfiction: It's all good. "Times Square Red, Times Square Blue" is fantastic, his autobiographical writing is fantastic (start with "The Motion of Light in Water", a lot of his crit is keen. After you're more familiar with him, his book of letters, "1984", is quite good too, as is his memoire of living in a commune in the late 60s, "Heavenly Breakfast".

I'm almost done with Dark Reflections and I really like it. It's laid-back, unassuming, pseudo-autobiography, but really nicely written.

It is next on my funtime reading list, but that probably means I won't start it for a few weeks.

I've never read Delany, barring a couple of short stories, but I picked up a copy of "Neveryóna" at a used books sale today, thinking it was the first in the series. Should I hold out and get the first short story collection first, or is this quite alright as a starting-point? Or should all four(?) books be read in the order of release?
The titles of the chapters in this one are great! Makes it look like Montaigne of Middle-Earth. The cover art is hilarious as well, being basically the worst-of-the-worst of mid-80s fantasy paperbacks. Very shiny buttocks on the hero.
Ah: http://facstaff.uww.edu/herriotj/books/bookpics/neveryona.jpg (there's a castle-in-the-sky and dragon on the back of the cover, don't you worry)

Read the biog, really some incredible stuff in that. Great cover.

Picked up "Mad Man" last week on the cheap. Give that a go soon.

Neveryóna is book two, I believe, so you might as well read the first book first. It's a stand-alone novel, but it's nice to fit it into the context of the first book.

I recently bought Dhalgren and Stars in my pocket like grains of sand. Which one do I read first?

Dhalgren is the better and more important book, but Stars is pretty good too. I'd say read Stars as an appetizer, and if you haven't read Delany before, as an introduction to his prose style. It's too bad the sequel to Stars isn't going to happen.

im reading a book of short stories by this guy and hes hella easy to find v cheap

man when i clicked on this i was so afraid it was going to be a r.i.p. revive

btw i read 'dhalgren' first, and then 'stars...' after i was convinced and wanted more.

Just bought Dhalgren--am both looking forward to it, and intimidated by the size

Thanks to all for the quick replies! I haven't read Delany before but I think I am going to try Dhalgren first. I am pretty hyped to be honest.

I read it (Dhalgren) about 6-7 times during the 80s. I need to reread Stars and the Neveryon books next. I started rereading Nova a couple of months ago and thought it had aged very badly...gave it up after about 80 pages.

...and this thread title irritates the hell out of me. It's like a film thread called "Chuck Heston."

ok, I feel better now. May Julio Desouza forgive me.

i actually like triton and stars more than i do dhalgren, not entirely sure why

congratulations u dont like kiddie sex

wait, what happened to the thread title?

surely the lead's relationship with an autistic character in 'stars ...' is just as troubling on that level as the fifteen year old in dhalgren? or is there something i'm forgetting. i mean, none of these books is quite hogg, i mean.

yeah, i feel like the quote-unquote kiddie sex in dhalgren is totally an exploration of transgression and mental/social/literary breakdown that isn't really about what it's about.

of course, that could also be the polite lie i tell myself so that i can enjoy the rest of the book.

I changed the title from "Sam Delany" to "Samuel Delany."

a regular Chip off the old block?

haw

WmC - I forgive you.

im reading a book of short stories by this guy and hes hella easy to find v cheap

Lots of Delany around but I've never seen a copy of Stars

Not having read Dhalgren, Babel-17 is the best of his I have read: so joyously full of great ideas, so much bouncy FUN

I just finished Dhalgren, so great, thanks guys. Call me a fag, but I always get a little bit sad when I finish a big novel and this was no exception. I'm thinking of reading Stars now.

call me a fag

Just finished Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Totally different pace from Dhalgren, this had me clawing for the main narrative for most of the book. As a result, I really didn't give enough attention to some of the detailed description which I feel is a really big part of this book - to realise the sensations and image of these planets, especially Velm. The relationship between Marq and Rat made me quite sick, knowing you can't help but be attracted to another being is somewhat sickening, Marq didn't complain of course, but like those couples who seem so made for eachother, as a couple they struck me as boring and corny.

the hands-as-parentheses bit is pretty central, iirc

i'm curious what the other half of it would have looked like: a tour of a planet from the other set of aliens (the Family?), plus a coda? i don't know. i don't remember a lot of the details but it's my favourite of his books. this is in part due to a bit which isn't particularly central to the thrust of the book in itself, that part in the opening section where rat (?) finds a mental implant that lets him read/experience the entire western canon in seconds; that hit me in a peculiar way, as a teen.

I was particularly taken by that opening section too, and was expecting the book to take off from there, to my surprise, it was not to be. Thanks for your thoughts.

I've bought Dhalgren, and keep picking it up, but it's so huuuuuge. Need to gather my resources.

I read Driftglass in my early teens. Didn't get everything but got a lot. Delany for me will always represent vistas opening (yet in truth I never read much past Nova). "Night and The Loves..." was exactly what I wished a short story would do. It probably still is but I don't dare reread it.

His use, over and over, of teen-prodigy characters didn't seem realistic when I was that age, and far into adulthood, having seen a certain amount, I find it a gimmick and more about Delany (or SF) than about the world.

These days, the imaginary world of Delany that fascinates me is his lost New York, as unreachable as his distant planets.

Editing issue: should be "did exactly what" and "probably still does."

I shall begin reading The Mad Man soon, I'm expecting some of Delany's 'lost New York'.

You won't be disappointed there, as I recall.

And check Heavenly Breakfast, an autobiographical novel(pub. 1979). Its title is also the name of a real-life 60s NYC psych-folk band. SD was a satellite member, sort of.

Also loads of 1960-1965 Manhattan in his memoir, The Motion of Light in Water.

I was just looking at the wiki for his next novel -- it's done, he's just having trouble finding a publisher. It was originally supposed to be published by Alyson Publications, but apparently they've gone under and he's back to shopping it around to publishers.

Unfortunately it's just a paragraph in the "This Week" section.

The “Carte Blanche” film series at moma, programmed by the prodigious science-fiction writer Samuel R. Delany, concludes this week with two personal works. He discusses his childhood in Harlem and his life as a gay man in nineteen-sixties New York in Fred Barney Taylor’s illuminating documentary “The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman,” from 2007. Delany displays his directorial art in the 1971 featurette “The Orchid,” which blends street theatre and joyful eroticism with ingenious special effects.

I like the point about wanting more radical readers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh0PF95rdvk

A terrific new profile in the NYer: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/samuel-r-delany-profile

Interesting he mentions Gay Davenport.

Heh. Guy Davenport.

Every serious writer I know admires Davenport.

this had me rolling

We exited onto a narrow street with a huge mural commemorating the struggle for L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Steam billowed from a vent in the sidewalk, dissipating, as we neared, to reveal a blanket-covered heap. People were sleeping outside all over the neighborhood, which, before its gentrification, had been a red-light district. Delany, as usual, pulled out his phone to take a picture; across the way, a group of smartly dressed young women shot him a reproachful look.

“Could you not?” one said.

Rickett crossed his arms and smiled: “He’s never seen a homeless person before.”

loved reading that piece

I used to live down the street from Delany. I saw him walking around a few times before I realized who he was.

Really enjoyed the piece. I must read something by Davenport.

I have only read a few of his books, I am most fond of Geography of the Imagination. His poems are largely great. I don’t care for his fiction but ymmv

Reflecting a bit more and it feels like there is some overselling of Delany's prose than is necessary...pretty good profile but it's sorta shameful that they only bothered when he is old and at the end.

I read Delany's autobiography. Those sections about Marilyn Hacker reading Victorian novels all day while Delany was at work were pretty funny.

I am but a poor cyborg stud

haha what

you had me at stud, lost me at cyborg

poor, yeah, i mean naturally

I pity the poor cyborg stud
Who tramples through the mud

I have seen the best orchids of my generation,
starving, hysterical under the aptorian moon
picking at their fingernails

I read it (Dhalgren) about 6-7 times during the 80s. I need to reread Stars and the Neveryon books next. I started rereading Nova a couple of months ago and thought it had aged very badly...gave it up after about 80 pages.

― Unfrozen Caveman Board-Lawyer (WmC), Thursday, October 28, 2010 6:34 PM (fifteen years ago)

Rereading Nova now for my local library SF book club, really mostly listening to the audiobook, even though the LOA physical Four Classic SF Novels volume it comes in is super nice. Managing to enjoy it for the most part, but often think of this post of yours, which I basically have agreed with in the past and maybe still do.

This is the book:
https://www.loa.org/books/616-american-science-fiction-four-classic-novels-1968-1969/

Here's an accompanying article about this particular novel:
https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1592-samuel-r-delany-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-super-nova/

Maybe it's his Man in the High Castle, popular and accessible, but missing a bit of what makes the other stuff interesting.

Had meant to post here about this one:

, I'm currently going back and forth between The Brothers Mann and Babel 17, young Delany's driving ambition proving compatible w the competitive sibs'.
---dow
...Now---coming out of convalescnce, hopefully---I'm still re-reading Babel-17(1966) very slowly---had thought of Harrison's Slow Glass, even, before your mention of him----slo-mo suits thee young SD's care with each sentence, each word, which usually pays off---emotional subtext of life during extended wartime is strong throughline, though I expect to eventually have probs with some of the good-faith space opera plot-twists again (maybe not! I'm already picking up on stuff I missed the first time) ----and to proceed, this time, through the rest of The Complete Nebula-Award-Winning Fiction of Samuel Delany (80s collection w added commentaries by the author).
--dow
From an email mention---been re-reading tome, will prob post more on Sam's own thread:

... Delany's early Babel-17(1966), concerning a mysterious, mischievous language, which has something to do with new havoc in a 20-year-old space war. (Most deeply, lastingly corrosive weapon so far: embargo, although space rays do their thing when they can). The best parts usually involve conversations and arguments about the nature of language, punctuated by havoc, incl. unexpected, unwelcome bursts of self-insight...
― dow, Monday, January 27, 2025 6:29 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's a good one. Also very accessible.

― James Carr Thief (James Redd and the Blecchs)

But, getting back to

the rest of The Complete Nebula-Award-Winning Fiction of Samuel Delany (80s collection w added commentaries by the author)

most (not quite all) of the subsequent stories seem to have much promise, but

Not to be rude, but if you don’t like the philosophical conversations or monologues or lectures in Delany, he might just not be for you? That’s exactly what I like about his work, it avoids many of the pitfalls of most scifi and fantasy, which frankly is mostly utter garbage

Wouldn't, um, Chip himself disagree with you on this last point?

Story in tBBoSF is "Aye, and Gomorrah," (also the title tale of his short story collection), which more than one person seems to think is in dialogue with Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain."

Originally appeared in Dangerous Visions.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?68754

YPBG - [Hidden text. Click to view]

Wouldn't, um, Chip himself disagree with you on this last point?

Actually, no! He hated a great majority of scifi and fantasy

Or, hates

or at least the typical plotting devices etc of the genres

....and I'm back after just spending a wasted minute or two checking on– and then immediately forgetting– the contents difference between Driftglass and Aye, and Gomorrah

Feel like you are misrepresenting his take, since his criticism usually seeks to find ways to discuss sf on its own terms rather than just consign most of it to Sturgeon's 90% Off Junkyard.

Anyway, it seems to me almost every possible position on him has been enumerated outside of and especially inside of ILX, on this very thread and related ones.

Boils down to: clearly he is some kind of beloved big-hearted genius, but because of his various stylistic tics ymmv as to which novels and stories you like or whether perhaps you mostly prefer just to stick to his criticism.

dow, I believe the concept of Slow Glass comes from Bob Shaw's "Light of Other Days," unless there is another Slow Glass, perhaps on the far side of the Jonbar Point.

Boils down to: clearly he is some kind of beloved big-hearted genius, but because of his various stylistic tics ymmv as to which novels and stories you like or whether perhaps you mostly prefer just to stick to his criticism.

true!

Philosophical conversations can be a vital resource of stories---Dusty does it---but in most of Delany's Nebula-winning apprentice fiction, it's more of a derail. Fiction aside, a lot of the musings, lectures etc. just aren't that interesting in themselves.
There is, at the end of a fairly groovy, slick-sexy cultural tour, a fab reveal of a species' aspiring backstory, backdrop---the end. It's a fine idea, but even with the new power of suggestive hindsight we've been gifted, it's not that discernible as part of the preceding story; we just have to take the narrator's word that they're related, that the "reveal" is more than a ruse in and of what we've already seen is a very sales-consumption-dedicated culture (okay, that one kind of works, come to think of it).

(Sorry for "gifted," but I was being facetious.)

Back in 2015 I started reading Dhalgren. Since this is the Delany-devoted thread I'll copy here what I wrote at the time on I Love Books. I stand by it. I think I gave the book a fair reading, but won't bother defending it from anyone who wants to disagree with it:

Aimless wrote this on thread Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall 2015 ist. What Are You Reading Now? on board I Love Books on Nov 10, 2015

So, I've read about 100 pages of Dhalgren and I've seen enough of it to see what Delany finds interesting about his story and hopes to put across to the reader, me.

The overall effect Delany appears to want is a kind of texture. By this I mean he pays loving attention to the surfaces of things and describes them at length and with many convolutions. Surfaces of objects, buildings, landscapes, people, seem to occupy a good 90% of every paragraph. Actions are described in terms of surfaces, too.

The prose is furiously stylized in most of the book so far, so that all these surfaces are deliberately detached from one another and form no mental picture other than a confused jumble. Delany also seems to subscribe to the school of thought that if you pepper your prose with enough highly colored verbs, you'll impress your reader with your dynamism, even if they can't puzzle out what imagery your verbs are meant to convey, and your dynamism is in the service of little discernable activity.

By contrast, his protagonist is extremely blurry. He has almost no thoughts and his few thoughts are vague and disconnected. He is a drifter and his entire persona is so effaced and vagrant as to be nearly nonexistant. No one he meets is more than a crayon drawing of a person.

I 'get it' that this effect is what Delany was seeking. I am meant to be adrift in this book. He is dropping hints like breadcrumbs, one every half dozen pages, sprinkled in among the long disjointed descriptions of a chaotic, drifting world, that may eventually assemble themselves into some kind of a story. But story is not what interests Delany. It is the texture of this world adrift and how to write it into the reader's mind.

The one thing this book has done admirably so far has been to remind me strongly of my own drifting years, in poverty, not quite homeless, but living on the very edges of organized society, among equally poor, confused and undirected drifters, in the waning days of the hippie era, the era when this book was written. Delany nails it. This book is what that hippie-bohemian backwater twilight world felt like.

It's not enough. The texture is right, but everything else has been subsumed to the demands of that single effect. My mass market paperback copy is almost 900 pages long. In 100 pages so little has happened (other than some overwritten sex scenes, which like all sex scenes that extend beyond two paragraphs, are just head-shakingly awful) that I have no patience for assembling whatever tiny scraps of story Delany buries amid his endless textural and stylistic effects.

I wouldn't say Dhalgren is badly written. More that it is written specifically to do a couple of things very well, but unless you are the rare reader who can't get enough of this sort of highly impressionistic and paradoxically static prose, those couple of things do not justify my reading 900 pages of it.

Came back to say that the reaction of more than one person last week was "I mostly enjoyed this, but kept reading and reading and asking myself 'When are they going to get to the nova?''"

Sometimes I think people here are too invested in the idea that every book needs to be for them.

Prism, Mirror, Lens

If your mind has a mind to, maybe check one or even two of the threads about said book--both started by thomp, come back thomp:
dhalgren
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, then DUNE and now, the major novel of love and terror at the end of time: DHALGREN, by Samuel Delany, four-time Nebula award winner (ilx book club #Y8554)

I don't remember what I said about it, but I know that I enjoyed reading it in the early 80s, though wasn't surprised to further read that author and come back to it every now and then between other things, and now I wonder if it might be best read or re-read the same way, maybe at random, for a while anyway (maybe I'll try that). It's where I got off the bus (after digging Nova and Triton), missing a lot of good stuff, but now I'm starting to catch up, slowly.

author *had* come back to it

Did you finish it, Aimless?

A: those couple of things do not justify my reading 900 pages of it.

Oops, sorry I didn't finish reading your post (not because it was boring; yours never are).