Samuel R. Delany - Nova

PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF SAMUEL R. DELANY

I consider Delany not only one of the most important SF writers of the present generation, but a fascinating writer in general who has invented a new style. Umberto Eco

Samuel R. Delany is the most interesting author of science fiction writing in English today. The New York Times Book Review

Dhalgren

Dhalgrens the secret masterpiece, the city-book-labyrinth that has swallowed astonished readers alive for almost thirty years. Its beauty and force still seem to be growing. Jonathan Lethem

A brilliant tour de force. The News & Observer (Raleigh)

A Joyceian tour de force of a novel, Dhalgren stake[s] a better claim than anything else published in this country in the last quarter-century (excepting only Gasss Omensetters Luck and Nabokovs Pale Fire) to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature. Libertarian Review

The Nevron Series

Cultural criticism at its most imaginative and entertaining best. Quarterly Black Review of Books on Neveryna

The tales of Nevron are postmodern sword-and-sorcery Delany subverts the formulaic elements of sword-and-sorcery and around their empty husks constructs self-conscious metafictions about social and sexual behavior, the play of language and power, andabove allthe possibilities and limitations of narrative. Immensely sophisticated as literature eminently readable and gorgeously entertaining. The Washington Post Book World

This is fantasy that challenges the intellect semiotic sword and sorcery, a very high level of literary gamesmanship. Its as if Umberto Eco had written about Conan the Barbarian. USA Today

The Nevron series is a major and unclassifiable achievement in contemporary American literature. Fredric R. Jameson

Instead of dishing out the usual, tired mix of improbable magic and bloody mayhem, Delany weaves an intricate meditation on the nature of freedom and slavery, on the beguiling differences between love and lust the prose has been so polished by wit and intellect that it fairly gleams. San Francisco Chronicle on Return to Nevron

One of the most sustained meditations we have on the complex intersections of sexuality, race, and subjectivity in contemporary cultures. Constance Penley

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Delanys first true masterpiece. The Washington Post

What makes Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand especially challengingand satisfyingis that the complex society in which the characters move is one which contains more than 6,000 inhabited worlds and a marvelously rich blend of cultures. The inhabitants of these worldsboth human and alienrelate to one another in ways that, however bizarre they may seem at first, are eventually seen to turn on such recognizable emotional fulcrums as love, loss and longing. The New York Times Book Review

Delanys forte has always been the creation of complex, bizarre, yet highly believable future societies; this book may top anything hes done in that line. Newsday

Nova

As of this book, [Samuel R. Delany] is the best science-fiction writer in the world. Galaxy Science Fiction

A fast-action far-flung interstellar adventure; [an] archetypal mystical/mythical allegory [a] modern myth told in the SF idiom and lots more. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

[Nova] reads like Moby-Dick at a strobe-light show! Time

The Motion of Light in Water

A very moving, intensely fascinating literary biography from an extraordinary writer. Thoroughly admirable candor and luminous stylistic precision; the artist as a young man and a memorable picture of an age. William Gibson

Absolutely central to any consideration of black manhood Delanys vision of the necessity for total social and political transformation is revolutionary. Hazel Carby

The prose of The Motion of Light in Water often has the shimmering beauty of the title itself This book is invaluable gay history. Inches

To

Bernard and Iva Kay

HEY, MOUSE! PLAY US something, one of the mechanics called from the bar.

Didnt get signed on no ship yet? chided the other. Your spinal socketll rust up. Come on, give us a number.

The Mouse stopped running his finger around the rim of his glass. Wanting to say no he began a yes. Then he frowned.

The mechanics frowned too.

He was an old man.

He was a strong man.

As the Mouse pulled his hand to the edge of the table, the derelict lurched forward. Hip banged the counter. Long toes struck a chair leg: the chair danced on the flags.

Old. Strong. The third thing the Mouse saw: Blind.

He swayed before the Mouses table. His hand swung up; yellow nails hit the Mouses cheek. (Spiders feet?) You, boy

The Mouse stared at the pearls behind rough, blinking lids.

You, boy. Do you know what it was like?

Must be blind, the Mouse thought. Moves like blind. Head sits forward so on his neck. And his eyes

The codger flapped out his hand, caught a chair, and yanked it to him. It rasped as he fell on the seat. Do you know what it looked like, felt like, smelt likedo you?

The Mouse shook his head: the fingers tapped his jaw.

We were moving out, boy, with the three hundred suns of the Pleiades glittering like a puddle of jeweled milk on our left, and all blackness wrapped around our right. The ship was me; I was the ship. With these sockets he tapped the inset in his wrist against the table: click I was plugged into my vane-projector. Then the stubble on his face rose and fell with the words centered on the dark, a light! It reached out, grabbed our eyes as we lay in the projection chambers and wouldnt let them go. It was like the universe was torn and all day raging through. I wouldnt go off sensory input. I wouldnt look away. All the colors you could think of were there, blotting the night. And finally the shock waves: the walls sang! Magnetic inductance oscillated over our ship, nearly rattled us apart. But then it was too late. I was blind. He sat back in his chair. Im blind, boy. But with a funny kind of blindness: I can see you. Im deaf. But if you talked to me, I could understand most of what you said. Olfactory nerves mostly shorted out at the brain end. Same with the taste buds over my tongue. His hand went flat on the Mouses cheek. I cant feel the texture of your face. Most of the tactile nerve endings were killed too. Are you smoothor are you bristly and gristly as I am? He laughed on yellow teeth in red, red gums. Old Dan is blind in a funny way. His hand slipped down the Mouses vest, catching the laces. A funny way, yes. Most people go blind in blackness. I have a fire in my eyes. I have that whole collapsing sun in my head, my visual tectum shorted wide open, jumping, leaping, sparking. Its as though the light lashed the rods and cones of my retina to constant stimulation, balled up a rainbow and stuffed each socket full. Thats what Im seeing now. Then you, outlined here, highlighted there, a solarized ghost across hell from me. Who are you?