Delany - The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village

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

If, then, the following narrative does not appear sufficiently interesting to engage general attention, let my motive be some excuse for its publication. I am not so foolishly vain as to expect from it either immortality or literary reputation. If it affords any satisfaction to my numerous friends, at whose request it has been written, or in the smallest degree promotes the interests of humanity, the ends for which it was undertaken will be fully attained, and every wish of my heart gratified. Let it therefore be remembered that, in wishing to avoid censure, I do not aspire to praise.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself

MY FATHER HAD BEEN sick almost a year. Already hed had one lung removed. But after a time homewhich he spent mostly in bed, listening to programs of eclectic classical music (Penderecki, Kodalys Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello) on WBAI-FM, all of which were new to him and pleased him greatly, or sitting up in his robe and pajamas working on a few ordered and geometric paintings of cityscapes in which there were no people (hed always wanted to paint)he began to grow weaker. Soon he was in pain. Toward the end of September an ambulance was sent for to take him to the hospital. But the attendants who arrived to strap him into their stretcher, there in the apartment hall in his dark robe and pale pajamas, were too rough, yanking down the straps and buckles over his thin legs that, by now, could not fully straighten. After asking them twice to loosen them, he began to shout: Stop it! Youre hurting me! Stop! Lips tight, my mother stood, flustered, embarrassed, and worried at once, perfectly still.

My father bellowed at the two white-jacketed young men, one black, one white, Get out!

An hour later, my grown cousin (called Brother) and I helped him down the hall, into the elevator, out to the car, and drove him over to the hospital. Each bump in the rutted Harlem streets made him gasp or moan. The day was shot through with his fear and exhaustion. The pain made him cry when, in his awkward white smock, he had to stretch out on the black, cold X-ray table. I held his hand. (Im going to fall. Im falling ! Hold me. Im falling. No youre not, Dad. Ive got you. Youre okay. Im falling ! Tears rolled down his bony cheeks. Its too cold.) He had difficulty urinating into the enameled bedpan as I sat with him in his hospital room, and he made little whisperings to imitate the fall of water to induce his own to fall.

For most of my life, if it came up, I would tell you: My father died of lung cancer in 1958 when I was seventeen.

Behind that sentence is my memory of a conversation with my older cousin Barbara, who was staying with us. She was a doctor. I said: I guess its going to take an awful long time for him to get well.

Carefully, Barbara put her teacup down on the glass-topped table with the woven wicker beneath. Hes not going to get well, she said. Then, very carefully, she said: Hes going to die.