by Samuel R. Delany
This is not a great book. There were times when I wasn't even sure it was a good book. But it's trying so many interesting things, testing the boundaries of science fiction, and perhaps, the comfort of the reader, to get at some truly fascinating things. Some of these experiments may have failed, bu...
Once upon a time (around 1986 or 1987?), I had an opportunity to meet Samuel R. Delany at an ALA or ABA Dhalgren was already atop my Favorite List; other Delanys had been dutifully accomplished or would be—the Neveryón series, The Tides of Lust, Hogg: A Novel and The Mad Man, et al. And so after my...
The prologue of this book is a third person telling of Rat Korga's life. Beginning at age 19 when he arrives as an illiterate delinquent for "Radical Anxiety Treatment", basically a sort of lobotomy that turns him into a docile zombie, with full mental capacity, but only able to do exactly as he's ...
Stars is probably Delany's clearest example of Science Fiction as political metaphor. In the far future galactic culture is split between two political factions, the Family and the Sygn. The Family holds that there is only one acceptable structure for social organizations and it must be imposed ev...
This was a favorite read of mine back in my twenties. I used it as proof that SF wasn't a literary wasteland, that innovative stuff was being done in the field and there were voices that the most exacting style-snob couldn't scruple to include in hifalutin' conversations.Boy, was I wrong.It's turgid...
This is one of my favorite of Samuel R. Delany's mighty ouevre, but it's not for everyone. You have to like science fiction and dirty queer sex, and you have to want to read in extreme detail about the social organization of other worlds.
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