Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
This is depressing:
The only complication involved a pension that Delany thought he’d earned from the university; it didn’t exist.
Makes me wonder about his other business relationships and if there was a mismatch between what he expected vs. what was delivered. The fine print of employment and publishing contracts is often very restrictive and/or requires additional steps to unlock certain rights or benefits.
For anyone who hasn't read Delany, Nova is a solid starting point. Forget the "space opera" label, it's just a great story with interesting characters and vision of humanity's far future.
> It may seem paradoxical from my statement that generally speaking I think sexual relations between children and adults are likely to go wrong and that most of them are likely to be, start off as, or quickly become, abusive, that I also support a group like NAMBLA—which I do. But that’s because I feel one of the largest factors in the abuse is fostered by the secrecy itself and lack of social policing of the relationships.
Jewel Hinged Jaw is literary criticism and advice for writers https://www.amazon.com/Jewel-Hinged-Jaw-Language-Science-Fic...
His three most pure "science fiction" novels are Babel-17, Trouble on Triton (originally published as Triton), and Nova. They are all very imaginative but grounded in scientific extrapolation.
His Neveryona series of stories and books are set in a medieval frame but are really about modern life. I found them interesting and thought-provoking.
He wrote a short autobiographical piece about some time he spent in a commune called "Heavenly Breakfast" that I found insightful.
He has a number of very good shorts science fiction stories from the 60's and 70's that are very good as well. Two in particular I enjoyed:
"Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"
"We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line"
are collected in "Driftglass"
He has a few other memoirs too, that are really insightful looks into ways of living I would not ordinarily have a view on.
My introduction to Delany was randomly stumbling on the first Neveryon book in the stacks of a university library, being intrigued by the (wholly untrue) intro about Linear B translations of ancient stories, and then getting completely sucked in by the storytelling. The world needs more pan-sexual barbarians, IMO.
The Neveryon story about the invention of writing and its complex set of unintended consequences was perhaps my favorite in the series. ("The Tale of Old Venn" in Tales of Neveryon.)
"My life here more and more resembles a book whose opening chapters, whose title even, suggest mysteries to be resolved only at closing. But as one reads along, one becomes more and more suspicious that the author has lost the thread of his argument, or more upsetting, have so changed by the book's end that the answers to initial questions will have become trivial."
It continues in this multi-stream format until page 869 and then ends ten pages later on 879 with sentence fragment "Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills I have come to" At which point you remember it began with a sentence fragment "to wound the autumnal city." and realize that the book has wrapped on itself and will not reach a conclusion.
I am used to academic texts with footnotes and some how-to books with sidebars that provide details and examples from the primary flow, but this becomes a scrapbook that juxtaposes incongruous blocks of text. Sometimes I could tease out the connection but not always.
If your argument is that Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake are more complex then I agree. But I found Dhalgren much harder to follow or understand than the French existentialist novels (e.g. "The Flanders Road", "The Marquise went out at 5" or "Jealousy") that were stream of consciousness but maintained a consistent perspective
I think that was Delaney's intention. The narrative, and the city aren't really open to analysis. Bellona is a hazy, druggy, liminal space and its incoherence and narrative instability is part of what makes it so beautiful.
When you are ready for Dhalgren, it will find you.
Since I loved the other three, I pretty much had to give it a shot. I still think about it regularly even though I can't really recall any particular storyline or plot. I've always thought it would make for a great procedurally generated game world for some reason.
“I read the NAMBLA [Bulletin] fairly regularly and I think it is one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I’ve ever found. I think before you start judging what NAMBLA is about, expose yourself to it and see what it is really about. What the issues they are really talking about, and deal with what’s really there rather than this demonized notion of guys running about trying to screw little boys. I would have been so much happier as an adolescent if NAMBLA had been around when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.” — Samuel R. Delany, June 25, 1994.
A lot of sci-fi authors have 'weird sex' stories. Not only was it the sixties, they are sci-fi authors in the sixties, writing about alien sex and all kinds of out of the box thinking.
I could just as easily say, don't vote Republican, they have a large percentage of sex abusers in office. Or, don't be Catholic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Man/Boy_Love_As...
Allen Ginsberg was a member as well.
Reading this article, it makes me recall all the pop songs from the 80s which had lyrics like "...she's only seventeen!" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeen_(Winger_song)). I don't think Winger was a member of NAMBLA.
To read and enjoy a book by him necessarily means I'm "supporting" everything he has ever supported, including in the past?
Why would it work that way?
(This is not meant to say anything either way on whether Delany "supports the sexual abuse of children". I suppose that's another transitive property of support... if I 'support' Delany who 'supports' NAMBLA which 'supports'... )
He has not changed that opinion, nor is he ever going to. And yes, if you support his work then I'm going to look at you funny, just like if you had a painting by a certain German politician on your wall - and that goes double when you try to dissemble what his beliefs actually are.
I hypothesize that the negative response of a surprising number of readers is due to tripping some kind of pro-LGBTQ+ support mental programming rather than their taking a principled stand in favor of advocating the rape of little boys. Nevertheless whether it’s a principled stand or a knee jerk reaction, anyone who experiences a negative emotional response to opposing child rape, same sex or otherwise, has a serious problem and should get help.
I find that overall hard to fully condemn the person for, vs to separate out those views from his work, as I've never seen anything about him personally acting that way himself with any boys. (Though you say there's more to be found,so... what is it?) I'm no doctor, but the "standard" media-presented look at a situation like that would probably be something like manifestations of trauma from those encounters at young ages combined with the other traumas of growing up gay in America at the time, which I largely file in the "bad but understandable and not actively harming others" bucket.
I remember the second, third, fourth, and fifth times too.
On to the sixth!
The hazy liminal atmosphere and writing was impressive and moving. The people were generally shallow or neutral, but the main character was very difficult to appreciate and was borderline repulsive (not the sex, but the person and sometimes the vivid descriptions of his putrescence).
I was interrupted about 50 pages from the end (of like 800 total), and never bothered to finish it.
...
Any recommendations on another book from Delany?
I thought Babel-17 was more approachable, shorter and smaller in scope.
Babel-17 and Nova are probably both good places for him to start. They are both pretty interesting stories.
The sex in Tales of Neveryon is basically off-screen, with heavy allusions.
I’d strongly recommend you look into Lois McMaster Bujold’s work. Her books have some complex themes and he’s likely to enjoy them a lot more.
A few random thoughts.
Wow, I didn't know Nova is about to be an Amazon series scripted by Gaiman. That's very impressive. I listened to it as an audiobook 8 years ago and really liked it. I hope they wouldn't ruin it completely, but I feel the novel has enough good parts that even a maimed and partial interpretation would be good.
I'm not yet finished with Dhalgren, but I'm very near the end. Reading the last part has been a slog. I'm very impressed with the language and the descriptions and the philosophy and the self-referential nature of the book, and the Delany keeps me reading even when the plot is quite thin and nothing really interesting happens. But on the whole the actual reading experience is boring, especially towards the end.
It kind of reminds me of someone who has just veered/discovered a lifestyle which they previously thought was extreme (and/or outside societal norms, or rather the societal norms they were raised with), was shocked, culturally and personally, and wants to share his shock with the rest of the world, maybe as a sort of a coping mechanism. Like some born-again religious tend to be very extreme and devout and proselytize religion. So does Delany, or at least his authorial voice, tend to go on and on about gay sex, homoeroticism, sexual fantasies and deviancies, abnormal behavior, etc. Also, self-referential plots, unreliable narrators. This gets tiring after a while.
Dhalgren's language has a strange effect on my mind. After a session of reading parts of it, my brain stays for a while in this strange inner loop where everything I see is described in the same floral, poetic language as the book, where little details in the world around me are important. It goes away after I talk for a while with people or answer emails, as if my mind is reset back to "normal" discourse.
I read Triton back when I was 20. I feel it had a huge influence on me, but I can't point out exactly how. Like if I'd never read it, would my life be different somehow? I don't know. I did pick my username in my very first post to an online message board, back in the mid-90's, from Triton. So there's that.
I think it's a shame that Delany hasn't written more science fiction, or fantasy, although after reading this article I understand why.
I personally find some of his views and writing to be repulsive. It should be fairly obvious which ones. I would never read Hogg or anything in that vain. Although personally I didn't find Dhalgren repulsive fwiw. I think. I'm still glad his works were written and are available. I think that as a society we need them, even if they are repulsive for me personally. And him, of course.
"Black Harlem speech and white Park Avenue speech are very different things" – from the article. Yes, that's very present in Dhalgren. The language veers between highly literate, erudite English, and street-level language. And even inside those two there are different variations of regional accents, cultural accents...
This is something that also speaks to me, personally. When I was growing up, I read a lot, and had a stutter. One of the reasons for it (in addition to some social anxiety) was the cognitive dissonance between my friends' and family spoken language, and the vocabulary and idioms of the written word. At times about every second sentence I wanted to utter would be censored immediately by a part of my brain, as being inappropriate and too literary for the person I was talking to.
Later in life, I met enough people from different walks of life, listened to them, and I was able to imitate them and their speech enough to be able to move back and forth rather effortlessly between different styles of speech.
Strangely enough, I see a similar pattern in my younger son. He has just started reading a lot of books, after some years of refusing to read much, and his spoken language has suddenly ballooned, has become a lot more erudite and refined. He doesn't seem to have the same problem as me though, he is still able to use the same language level near his friends. None of them read much, if at all.
There's nothing else like it.