<div>From a lineup of acclaimed literary talents, wide-ranging works centering on books and bibliophilia. Writing about writing itself and about the books that are home to the written word. A library of ideas about language and the book in all their forms, Speaking Volumes collects poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction on historic, forbidden, repurposed, mistranslated, imaginary, lost, and life-changing books&mdash;books of every ilk.</div>

Overdrive

Apple

Amazon

Google

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Speaking Volumes

<div>In this far-future classic, sexual attraction is a science, gender is a whole new construct, and information is both precious and perilous . . . With a burst of radiation to the brain, an angry young man is transformed into a dim-witted slave&mdash;suitable only for the most brutal work. But the tragedy of Rat Korga is the prologue to the story of Marq Dyeth, an &ldquo;industrial diplomat,&rdquo; who travels from world to world in this exciting, sprawling future, solving problems that come with the spread of &ldquo;General Information.&rdquo; The greatest fear in this future is Cultural Fugue, a critical mass of shared knowledge that can destroy life over the surface of an entire world in hours. In this dizzyingly original novel, information is perilous, but without it a human is only a rat in a cage. Campbell Award winner Jo Walton described this science fiction landmark as being &ldquo;like pop rocks for the brain. . . . Things sparkle and explode all over, and it&rsquo;s not entirely comfortable but it is quite wonderful.&rdquo; This classic read predicted the Internet and is packed with themes that still resonate today. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career. </div>

Buy From US

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

<div>Hugo and Nebula Award&ndash;winning author Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s epic fantasy&mdash;the first in a series&mdash;explores power, gender, and the nature of civilization. A boy of the bustling, colorful docks of port Kolhari, during a political coup, fifteen-year-old Gorgik, once his parents are killed, is taken a slave and transported to the government obsidian mines at the foot of the Faltha mountains. When, in the savagely primitive land of Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on, finally he wins his freedom, Gorgik is ready to lead a rebellion against the rulers of this barely civilized land. His is the through-story that, now in the background, now in the foreground, connects these first five stories, in Tales of Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on&mdash;and, indeed, all the eleven stories, novellas, and novels that comprise Delany&rsquo;s epic fantasy series, Return to Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on, where we can watch civilization first develop money, writing, labor, and that grounding of all civilizations since: capital itself. In these sagas of barbarism, new knowledge, and sex, you&rsquo;ll find far more than in most sword-and-sorcery. They are an epic feat of language, an ironic analysis of the foundations of civilization, and a reminder that no weapon is more powerful than a well-honed legend. This &ldquo;eminently readable and gorgeously entertaining&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World) novel reads &ldquo;as if Umberto Eco had written about Conan the Barbarian&rdquo; (USA Today). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career. </div>

Tales of Neveryon

<div>Nebula Award Finalist: Reality unravels in a Midwestern town in this sci-fi epic by the acclaimed author of Babel-17. Includes a foreword by William Gibson. A young half&ndash;Native American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellona&mdash;only something is wrong there . . . In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-sharp knives, to write, to love, to wound. So begins Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s masterwork, which in 1975 opened a new door for what science fiction could mean. A labyrinth of a novel, it raises questions about race, sexuality, identity, and art, but gives no easy answers, in a city that reshapes itself with each step you take . . . This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.</div>

Dhalgren

<div>The companion volume to the provocative Alien Sex anthology, Off Limits pushes boundaries with twenty stimulating tales of otherworldly encounters This second volume of the Alien Sex anthology series brings together authors Neil Gaiman, Robert Silverberg, Samuel R. Delany, Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth Hand, and many others to explore the mysteries of sex, alien and human alike. From an alien spy who falls in love with one of the earthlings he&rsquo;s monitoring, to a woman whose souvenir dream-catcher calls to her bedroom more than she bargained for, to a genetically engineered sex object aboard a space station, these thought-provoking tales of alien sex open up new worlds for fantastical exploration. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Ellen Datlow, including rare photos from the editor&rsquo;s personal collection.</div>

Off Limits

<div>The Hugo and Nebula Award&ndash;winning author of Tales of Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on &ldquo;continues to surprise and delight&rdquo; with this thought-provoking epic fantasy (The New York Times). One of the few in Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on who can read and write, pryn has saddled a wild dragon and taken off from a mountain ledge. Self-described as an adventurer, warrior, and thief, in her journey pryn will meet plotting merchants, sinister aristocrats, half-mad villagers, and a storyteller who claims to have invented writing itself. The land of Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on is mired in a civil war over slavery, and pryn will also find herself&mdash;for a while&mdash;fighting alongside Gorgik the Liberator, from whom she will learn the cunning she needs as she journeys further and further south in search of a sunken city; for at history&rsquo;s dawn, some dangers even dragons cannot protect you from. The second volume in Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s Return to Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on cycle, Nevery&oacute;na is the longer of its two full-length novels. (The other is The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals.) An intriguing meditation on the power of language, the rise of cities, and the dawn of myth, markets, and money, it is a truly wonder-filled adventure. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career. </div>

Neveryona

<div>A quest for a priceless element&mdash;and revenge&mdash;fuels this far-future interstellar adventure that &ldquo;reads like Moby-Dick at a strobe-light show&rdquo; (Time). In 3172, the universe is divided between three political units: the stars and worlds of Draco, with Earth as its power center; the Pleiades Federation, on whose capital world, New Ark, lives the incredibly wealthy Von Ray family, descended from well-heeled merchants whose ancestors made their fortune as pirates; and the Outer Colonies, where, in their underwater mines, tiny quantities of the fabulously valuable Illyrion have been discovered. Lorq Von Ray was a playboy and young space-yacht-racing captain who, at a party at Earth&rsquo;s Paris, clashed with Draco&rsquo;s Prince Red. This sets Lorq on a demonic quest, through which he hopes to find vengeance. When a star goes nova and implodes, in the seething stellar wreckage for a few days&mdash;even hours&mdash;lie tons of Illyrion, the element that makes interstellar travel possible. To help him secure the priceless fuel, Lorq recruits a gypsy musician, a would-be novelist, and some other ragtag misfits. But an even more dangerous fuel than Illyrion is revenge . . . This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career. </div>

Nova

<div>Slavery is outlawed, Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on is free, and Gorgik the Liberator must revisit the mines for a final struggle where he himself was once a slave Alone in a deserted castle in the Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on countryside, a great warrior and a young barbarian meet at midnight to tell each other tales from their intersecting lives. But are they really alone? And, if they aren&rsquo;t, what will it mean for Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on . . . ? The three stories in this volume end Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s Return to Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on saga and cycle. But they are also its beginning&mdash;taking us back to the start of Gorgik&rsquo;s epic&mdash;although, from what we&rsquo;ve learned from the others, even that has become an entirely new story, though not a word in it has been changed . . . This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.</div>

Return to Neveryon

<div>The Nebula Award Winner: &ldquo;By looking at a typical space opera adventure from a different angle, Delany . . . give[s] us a weird, welcoming book&rdquo; (Tor.com). At twenty-six, Rydra Wong is the most popular poet in the five settled galaxies. Almost telepathically perceptive, she has written poems that capture the mood of mankind after two decades of savage war. Since the invasion, Earth has endured famine, plague, and cannibalism&mdash;but its greatest catastrophe will be Babel-17. Sabotage threatens to undermine the war effort, and the military calls in Rydra. Random attacks lay waste to warships, weapons factories, and munitions dumps, and all are tied together by strings of sound, broadcast over the radio before and after each accident. In that gibberish Rydra recognizes a coherent message, with all of the beauty, persuasive power, and order that only language possesses. To save humanity, she will master this strange tongue. But the more she learns, the more she is tempted to join the other side . . . This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.</div>

Babel-17

<div>Two novellas and a full-length novel set in the land at the limit of history: &ldquo;The tales of Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on are postmodern sword-and-sorcery&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World). In The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals, a disease has come to Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on. Men, rich and poor, have been stricken with it&mdash;but far fewer women. More and more die, and no one recovers. The illness seems to have first come from the Bridge of Lost Desire, a hangout for prostitutes male and female, but its spread through the city has been terrifying. And it will change Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on forever, both its sexual and its political landscape. Written in 1984, The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals is an astute fictionalization of New York City in the first two years of the AIDS crisis. Interwoven with the ancient story are Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s modern accounts of what went on in the meanest streets of Gotham during that time. This wholly original novel (the first novel about AIDS from a major American publisher) is presented along with two other stories about mummers, prostitutes, and street people in the fantastic land of Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on and its capital, port Kolhari&mdash;an ancient city that becomes more and more modern with each story. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career. </div>

Apple Books

Flight from Neveryon

<div>This Hugo Award&ndash;winning memoir is &ldquo;a very moving, intensely fascinating literary autobiography from an extraordinary writer&rdquo; (William Gibson, Nebula and Hugo Award&ndash;winning author of Neuromancer). With the poet Marilyn Hacker, Delany moves into a tenement on a dead-end street that the landlord reserves for interracial couples. Between playing folk music in the evenings at the same Greenwich Village coffee shop as Bob Dylan and preparing shrimp curry for W. H. Auden and Chester Khalman, who have accepted an invitation that night for dinner, Delany takes a stab at writing science fiction. This young prodigy would complete and sell five novels before he turned twenty-two! (And then have a nervous breakdown . . .) This beautifully written memoir is a testament to a neighborhood where experimentation was a way of life. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.</div>

The Motion of Light in Water

<div>The narrator of Hogg is a Huck Finn&ndash;like youngster caught in society&rsquo;s most sinister seams&mdash;but unlike Huck, he passes no moral judgments on the violence he takes part in . . . Hogg is the story of a man&mdash;a depraved trucker named Franklin Hargus, whom the people he works for call Hogg&mdash;and of the nameless boy who tells the story of three days of unspeakable sexual violence and devastation, which, together, they initiate in a small seaside American city in the middle of the last century. Hogg is a towering brute who makes his living as a rapist for hire. By the end of a series of vicious attacks, kidnappings, and mass murders, the reader will wonder who is more corrupt: the man or the boy. Samuel R. Delany completed his first draft of Hogg within a day, if not within hours, of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City and revised it over the next four years, though it was not released until 1995. </div>

Hogg

<div>A philosophy student&rsquo;s research draws him into the sexual underground of 1980s and early nineties New York John Marr is surprised he doesn&rsquo;t have AIDS. He has been having near-daily sexual encounters with strange men since before the dawn of HIV, but he remains healthy. His initiation began in the bathroom of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, and since then he has found himself at home in the darkest corners of Manhattan&rsquo;s culture of anonymous gay sex. During the day, it is a different story, as Marr works on his graduate thesis&mdash;an analysis of the work of a brilliant 1970s philosopher who died mysteriously in one of the gay bars of Hell&rsquo;s Kitchen. As his research and his sex life begin to converge, Marr senses that if AIDS doesn&rsquo;t get him, something darker will. The Mad Man, which the author dubbed a &ldquo;pornotopic fantasy,&rdquo; is more than a powerful work of philosophical erotica; it is a snapshot of a vanished moment in New York City&rsquo;s gay history, when fear and lust commingled in a single powerful force. </div>

The Mad Man

<div>A four-volume &ldquo;postmodern sword-and-sorcery&rdquo; epic from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award&ndash;winning author (The Washington Post Book World). Tales of Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on: After his parents are killed during a political coup, Gorgik is taken into captivity and forced to work the government obsidian mines in Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on&rsquo;s Faltha Mountains. Years later, he is sold to serve one of the royal families, and eventually the army. When he is finally free, he leads a rebellion against Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on&rsquo;s rulers to end the tyranny of slavery. Nevery&oacute;na: Or, The Tale of Signs and Cities: One of the few in Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on who can read and write, Pryn escapes her village on the back of a dragon. On her journey across the civil war&ndash;torn land, Pryn has a fateful encounter with Gorgik the Liberator, whom she finds herself fighting beside in his war against slavery. Flight from Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on: A smuggler, witness, and worshipper of Gorgik the Liberator follows his idol&rsquo;s bloody trail on a quest to meet him. But a disease has ravaged Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on. Men, rich and poor, are dying. The illness seems to have first come from the Bridge of Lost Desire, a hangout for male and female prostitutes, and is spreading fast. With no hope of recovery or cure, it will change Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on&rsquo;s sexual and political landscape forever. Return to Nev&egrave;r&yuml;on: Slavery is outlawed and the land is finally free. At a deserted castle in the countryside, as Gorgik the Liberator regales a young barbarian about his deeds, he prepares to return to the mines where his own slavery began for one final battle.</div>

Return to Neveryon: The Complete Series

<div>Three groundbreaking novels from the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award&ndash;winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Famer and SFWA Grand Master. Babel-17: Rydra Wong is the most popular poet in the five settled galaxies, capturing the mood of mankind after two decades of war. Now, a new weapon has been unleashed against humanity. Random attacks strike without warning, tied together by broadcast strings of sound. In that gibberish, Rydra recognizes a coherent language. To save her people, she must master this strange tongue, but the more she learns, the more she is tempted to join the other side, in this Nebula Award&ndash;winning novel. Nova: The year is 3172. Two political families&mdash;the Earth-based galactic conglomerate Draco and the Pleiades Federation of the Von Ray Clan&mdash;vie for ultimate power. Both want to control the market for Illyrion, the element that makes interstellar travel possible. When a star implodes, tons of the priceless fuel is discovered floating in the wreckage. Now, in a race to claim it, Lorq Von Ray leads a crew of ragtag misfits into the heart of a dangerous nova . . . Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Subjected to the Radical Anxiety Termination procedure, Korga is transformed into a dim-witted slave. Now known as Rat, Korga serves many masters&mdash;until the Cultural Fugue, a critical mass of shared knowledge, destroys his homeworld. Marq Dyeth is an &ldquo;industrial diplomat,&rdquo; who travels between worlds solving problems that come with the spread of &ldquo;General Information.&rdquo; Brought together by the organization known as the Web, Rat and Marq find themselves manipulated by an entity determined to control the flow of information.</div>

The Novels of Samuel R. Delany Volume One

<div>One woman resists the demands of her fellow stranded survivors on an inhospitable planet in this &ldquo;elegant and electric . . . tour-de-force&rdquo; (Samuel R. Delany). In this stunning and boldly imagined novel, an explosion leaves the passengers of a starship marooned on a barren alien planet. Despite only a slim chance for survival, most of the strangers are determined to colonize their new home. But the civilization they hoped for rapidly descends into a harsh microcosm of a male-dominated society, with the females in the group relegated to the subservient position of baby-makers. One holdout wants to accept her fate realistically and prepare for death. But her desperate fellow survivors have no intention of honoring her individual right to choose. They&rsquo;re prepared to force her to submit to their plan for reproduction&mdash;which will prove to be a grave mistake . . . In Hugo and Nebula Award&ndash;winning author Joanna Russ&rsquo;s trailblazing body of work, &ldquo;her genius flows and convinces, shames and alarms&rdquo; (The Washington Post). </div>

We Who Are About To . . .

<div>From the four-time Nebula Award&ndash;winning novelist and literary critic, essential reading for the creative writer. Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delany has written a book for creative writers to place alongside E. M. Forster&rsquo;s Aspects of the Novel and Lajos Egri&rsquo;s Art of Dramatic Writing. Taking up specifics (When do flashbacks work, and when should you avoid them? How do you make characters both vivid and sympathetic?) and generalities (How are novels structured? How do writers establish serious literary reputations today?), Delany also examines the condition of the contemporary creative writer and how it differs from that of the writer in the years of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the high Modernists. Like a private writing tutorial, About Writing treats each topic with clarity and insight. Here is an indispensable companion for serious writers everywhere. &ldquo;Delany has certainly spent more time thinking about the process of generating narratives&mdash;and subsequently getting the fruits of his lucubrations down on paper?than any other writer in the genre. . . . Delany&rsquo;s latest volume in this vein (About Writing) might be his best yet... Truly, as the jacket copy boasts, this book is the next best thing to taking one of Delany&rsquo;s courses. . . . [R]eaders will find many answers here to the mysteries of getting words down on a page.&rdquo; &mdash;Paul DiFilippo, Asimov&rsquo;s Science Fiction &ldquo;Useful and thoughtful advice for aspiring (and practicing apprentice) authors. About Writing is autobiography, criticism, and a guidebook to good writing all in one.&rdquo; &mdash;Robert Elliot Fox, Professor of English, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale &ldquo;Should go on the short list of required reading for every would-be writer.&rdquo; &mdash;New York Times Book Review (on Of Doubts and Dreams in About Writing)</div>

About Writing

<div>The renowned novelist and critic&rsquo;s private journals, spanning from his years as a high school student in the Bronx to early adult life in San Francisco. For fifty years Samuel Delany has cultivated a special relationship with language in works of fiction, criticism, and memoir that have garnered critical praise and legions of fans. The present volume&mdash;the first in a series&mdash;reveals a new dimension of his genius. In Search of Silence presents over a decade&rsquo;s worth of Delany&rsquo;s private journals, commencing in 1957 when he was still a student at the Bronx High School of Science, and ending in 1969 when he was living in San Francisco and on the verge of reconceiving the novel that would become Dhalgren. In these pages, Delany muses on the writing of the stories that will establish him as a science fiction wunderkind, the early years of his marriage to the poet Marilyn Hacker, performances as a singer-songwriter during the heyday of the American folk revival, travels in Europe, experiences in a New York City commune, and much more&mdash;and crosses paths with artists working in many genres, including poets such as Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, and Marie Ponsot, and science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ. Delany scholar Kenneth R. James presents the journal entries alongside generous samplings of story outlines, poetry, fragments of novels and essays that have never seen publication, and more; James also provides biographical synopses and an extensive set of endnotes to supply contextual information and connect journal material to Delany&rsquo;s published work. &ldquo;This is a tremendously significant and vital addition to the oeuvre of Samuel Delany; it clarifies questions not only of the writer&rsquo;s process, but also his development&mdash;to see, in his juvenilia, traces that take full form in his novels&mdash;is literally breathtaking.&rdquo; &mdash;Matthew Cheney, author of Blood: Stories &ldquo;Traversing Delany&rsquo;s youth, we see a precocious mind grappling with his own talent he lives on two registers, participating in the world and also observing it, living simultaneously as a kid in NYC and, &lsquo;a writer of genius.&rsquo;&rdquo; &mdash;Robert Minto, New Republic &ldquo;Mesmerizing . . . a true portrait of an artist as a young Black man . . . already visible in these pages are the wit, sensitivity, penetration, playfulness and the incandescent intelligence that will characterize Delany and his extraordinary work.&rdquo; &mdash;Junot D&iacute;az, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</div>

In Search of Silence

<div>A revised and expanded edition of a classic work of criticism exploring how science fiction is not about the future but about the potential of the present. In Starboard Wine, Samuel R. Delany explores the implications of his now-famous assertion that science fiction is not about the future. Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a text&rsquo;s specific &ldquo;difference,&rdquo; we begin to see the quality of its particulars. Through riveting analyses of works by Joanna Russ, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Thomas M. Disch, Delany reveals critical strategies for reading that move beyond overwrought theorizing and formulaic thinking. Throughout, the author performs the kinds of careful inquiry and urgent speculation that he calls others to engage in. &ldquo;Samuel Delany is without doubt a fine writer and intellectual critic without equal.&rdquo; &mdash;S. Raeschild, Choice &ldquo;After all the years since it was first published, Starboard Wine remains one of the three or four most important critical statements ever made about science fiction. No one with a serious interest in the field should be ignorant of it.&rdquo; &mdash;Carl Freedman, author of Critical Theory and Science Fiction &ldquo;As a fiction writer, reviewer, critic, analyst, and theorist, Delany has done more than anyone to expand how people read, as well as write, science fiction and fantasy. His essays are a seminal achievement by one of the field&rsquo;s most innovative thinkers.&rdquo; &mdash;David N. Samuelson, professor emeritus, California State University, Long Beach</div>

Starboard Wine

<div>Essays, lectures, and interviews from the iconic, award-winning author and critic. Samuel R. Delany is an acclaimed writer of literary theory, queer literature, and fiction. His &ldquo;prismatic output is among the most significant, immense and innovative in American letters,&rdquo; wrote novelist Jordy Rosenberg in the New York Times in 2019. This anthology of essays, lectures, and interviews addresses topics such as 9/11, race, the garden of Eden, the interplay of life and writing, and notes on other writers such as Theodore Sturgeon, Hart Crane, Ursula K. Le Guin, H&ouml;lderlin, and an introduction to?and a conversation with&mdash;Octavia E. Butler. The first of two volumes, this book gathers more than thirty pieces on films, poetry, and science fiction. These sharp, focused writings by a bestselling Black and gay author are filled with keen insights and observations on culture, language, and life. &ldquo;An incredibly generous entry point to Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s pioneering insights about the intersections of genre, race, sexuality, Science Fiction and what it means to live through and amongst those categories. As he states, &ldquo;What we need is not so much radical writers as we need radical readers!&rdquo; This collection helps us satisfy that deeply necessary and timely cultural need.&rdquo; &mdash;Louis Chude-Sokei, author of Floating In A Most Peculiar Way: A Memoir &ldquo;By turns gutsy and erudite, challenging and gracious, Delany&rsquo;s Occasional Views gives illuminating glances of his mind&rsquo;s life journey. How lucky we are to have these proofs of the resonant truths he has discovered along the way!&rdquo; &mdash;Nisi Shawl, author of Everfair &ldquo;Delany has such an intoxicating, prodigious, conversational mind, and More About Writing and Other Essays is a delicious journey into his brilliance. Whether he is unveiling how he navigates the terrain of being a science fiction writer; or introspective reflections on race, class, sexuality; or trusting his listeners as he gives wide ranging, honest answers in his interviews, responding with exacting humor to his critics, remembering Clarion teaching experiences, regretting missed sexual encounters with favorite writers, creating space for the complexity of holding love and questions in the same breath&mdash;we see how thoroughly he thinks about everything, and how vibrant and multitudinous the web of connections is in his memory and imagination. Reading Delany will make you a better writer. (I was particularly enthralled to read the dialogue with, and later introduction of, Octavia E. Butler right as she&rsquo;s finishing The Parable of the Talents!).&rdquo; &mdash;Adrienne Maree Brown, co-editor of Octavia&rsquo;s Brood</div>

Occasional Views

<div>In this novel by a Nebula Award&ndash;winning author, a man looks for love in a society where you can be anyone you want, on a moon at war with Earth. In a story as exciting as any science fiction adventure written, Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s 1976 SF novel, originally published as Triton, takes us on a tour of a utopian society at war with . . . our own Earth! High wit in this future comedy of manners allows Delany to question gender roles and sexual expectations at a level that, twenty years after it was written, still make it a coruscating portrait of &ldquo;the happily reasonable man,&rdquo; Bron Helstrom&mdash;an immigrant to the embattled world of Triton, whose troubles become more and more complex, till there is nothing left for him to do but become a woman. Against a background of high adventure, this minuet of a novel dances from the farthest limits of the solar system to Earth&rsquo;s own Outer Mongolia. Alternately funny and moving, it is a wide-ranging tale in which character after character turns out not to be what he&mdash;or she&mdash;seems. &ldquo;Delany&rsquo;s most controlled, and therefore his most successful, experiment to date. . . . Triton is a novel of manners&ndash;&ndash;those of a rich and complex society in which the avowed highest good is the free expression of each individual&rsquo;s personality.&rdquo; &mdash;Gerald Jonas, New York Times Book Review &ldquo;Delany has been the cutting edge of the SF revolution for more than ten years. . . . [He] may turn out to be as important a writer as Pynchon.&rdquo; &mdash;Mother Jones &ldquo;This is classic Delany that maintains a cutting edge of sheer platinum. Delany sets his interrogation of the myth and politics of a central culture within an infinitely richer galaxy of interwoven margins. The dazzle always illuminates: the novel offers vision-altering thrills on the order of paradigm shifts or sex at its most rapturously cataclysmic.&rdquo; &mdash;Earl Jackson, Jr., author of Fantastic Living: The Speculative Autobiographies of Samuel R. Delany &ldquo;An excellent novel. The author has created an innovative and fascinating culture.&rdquo; &mdash;Orca</div>

Trouble on Triton

<div>From the four-time Nebula Award&ndash;winning author, a keystone text in literary theory and science fiction analyzing a 1972 work of dystopian fiction. The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch&mdash;&ldquo;Angouleme&rdquo; was first published in 1978 to the intense interest of science fiction readers and the growing community of SF scholars. Recalling Nabokov&rsquo;s commentary on Pushkin&rsquo;s Eugene Onegin, Roland Barthes&rsquo;s commentary on Balzac&rsquo;s Sarazine, and Grabinier&rsquo;s reading of The Heart of Hamlet, this book-length essay helped prove the genre worthy of serious investigation. The American Shore is the third in a series of influential critical works by Samuel R. Delany, beginning with The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine, first published in the late seventies and reissued over the last five years by Wesleyan University Press, which helped win Delany a Pilgrim Award for Science Fiction Scholarship from the Science Fiction Research Association of America. This edition includes the author&rsquo;s corrected text as well as a new introduction by Delany scholar Matthew Cheney. &ldquo;The American Shore is an important offering in the history of science fiction criticism, rich with Delany&rsquo;s poetic skills and insight as a tremendous, formidable reader. It is a one of a kind book, really, and very clearly attempts a genre of its own.&rdquo; &mdash;Louis Chude-Sokei, University of Washington &ldquo;Delany&rsquo;s dive over and between the lines of &ldquo;Angouleme&rdquo; stands as a model of thought about all the signs and languages that produce and obscure our lives. No great text ever ends if there are still readers to read it and reread it, to diffuse it and re-fuse it, reveling in the possibilities of polysemy and dissemination.&rdquo; &mdash;Matthew Cheney, from the introduction</div>

The American Shore

<div>From the four-time Nebula Award&ndash;winning author, an indispensable work of science fiction criticism, revised and expanded. Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw appeared originally in 1977, and is now long out of print and hard to find. The impact of its demonstration that science fiction was a special language, rather than just gadgets and green-skinned aliens, began reverberations still felt in science fiction criticism. This edition includes two new essays, one written at the time and one written about those times, as well as an introduction by writer and teacher Matthew Cheney, placing Delany&rsquo;s work in historical context. Close textual analyses of Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ read as brilliantly today as when they first appeared. Essays such as &ldquo;About 5,750 Words&rdquo; and &ldquo;To Read The Dispossessed&rdquo; first made the book a classic; they assure it will remain one. &ldquo;Delany&rsquo;s first work of non-fiction, The Jewel Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction, remains a benchmark of sf criticism thirty-three years after its initial publication in 1977. . . . Extensively revised and reissued in 2009, JHJ has become even stronger, containing twelve essays in ten chapters and two appendixes.&rdquo; &mdash;Isiah Lavender, Science Fiction Studies &ldquo;I re-read The Jewel-Hinged Jaw every year as a source of guidance, as a measure of what all criticism and literature should aspire to be, and as a challenge for those of us who want to write.&rdquo; &mdash;Junot D&iacute;az, Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao &ldquo;What a joy it is to have The Jewel-Hinged Jaw back in print! These essays glitter with insights into writing, reading, society, and the multiple relationships of the three.&rdquo; &mdash;Reginald Shepherd, author of Orpheus in the Bronx</div>

The Jewel-Hinged Jaw

<div>A dragon herder embarks on a quest to bring his beloved back from the dead in this Nebula Award&ndash;winning science fiction adventure. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are &ldquo;different&rdquo; must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey&rsquo;s mythic quest for his lost love, Friza. In luminous and hallucinated language, it explores what new myths might emerge from the detritus of the human world as those who are &ldquo;different&rdquo; try to seize history and the day. Featuring a foreword by Neil Gaiman. &ldquo;When Delany describes to us what he has seen, what he can compute, adduce, intuit or smell in the underbrush, our reaction is to sit bolt upright and cry out, &ldquo;Of course, I have that very wound myself!&rdquo; The ability to produce this reaction in people is one of the commonly accepted and apparently valid appurtenances of genius. . . . I look forward to the explosion reading this will create within you.&rdquo; &mdash;A. J. Budrys, Galaxy Magazine</div>

The Einstein Intersection

<div>Entertaining and informative letters written from 1984 to 1991 by the award-winning author and critic. Five substantial letters written from 1989 to 1991 bring readers into conversation with Hugo and Nebula Award&ndash;winning author Samuel Delany. With engaging prose, Delany shares details about his work, his relationships, and the thoughts he had while living in Amherst and teaching as a professor at the UMASS campus just outside of town, in contrast to the more chaotic life of New York City. Along with commentary on his own work and the work of other writers, he ponders the state of America, discusses friends who are facing AIDS and other ailments, and comments on the politics of working in academia. Two of the letters, which tell the story of his meeting his life partner Dennis, became the basis of his 1995 graphic novel, Bread &amp; Wine. Another letter describes the funeral of his uncle Hubert T. Delany, former judge and well-known civil rights activist, and leads to reflections on his family&rsquo;s life in 1950s Harlem. Another details a visit from science fiction writer and critic Judith Merril, and in another he gives a portrait of his one-time student Octavia E. Butler, who by then has become his colleague. In addition, an appendix shares ten letters Delany sent to his daughter while she attended summer camp between 1984 and 1988. These letters describe Delany&rsquo;s daily life, including visitors to his upper-west-side apartment, his travels for work and pleasure, lectures attended, movies viewed, and exhibits seen. &ldquo;Letters from Amherst is significant and important. Delany provides unseen glimpses into his important familial lineages, personal friendship and partnership, his assessment of universities and their politics, and just a general joy in anything that has to do with intellectual culture.&rdquo; &mdash;L.H. Stallings, author of Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures &ldquo;Letters from Amherst gives readers insight into the personal and professional life and aesthetic assessments of the author, Samuel R. Delany, one of the most important literary figures of our time.&rdquo; &mdash;Nisi Shawl, author of the Nebula Award Finalist novel Everfair, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award&ndash;winning story collection Filter House</div>

Letters from Amherst

<div>Six essays from the critic and award-winning author exploring topics such as theater, LGBTQ+ scholarship, cyborgs, metaphors, and Star Wars. &ldquo;Reading is a many-layered process&mdash;like writing,&rdquo; observes Samuel R. Delany, a Nebula and Hugo Award&ndash;winning author and a major commentator on American literature and culture. In this collection of six extended essays, Delany challenges what he calls &ldquo;the hard-edged boundaries of meaning&rdquo; by going beyond the customary limits of the genre in which he&rsquo;s writing. By radically reworking the essay form, Delany can explore and express the many layers of his thinking about the nature of art, the workings of language, and the injustices and ironies of social, political, and sexual marginalization. Thus, Delany connects, in sometimes unexpected ways, topics as diverse as the origins of modern theater, the context of lesbian and gay scholarship, the theories of cyborgs, how metaphors mean, and the narrative structures in the Star Wars trilogy. &ldquo;Over the course of his career,&rdquo; Kenneth James writes in his extensive introduction, &ldquo;Delany has again and again thrown into question the world-models that all too many of us unknowingly live by.&rdquo; Indeed, Delany challenges an impressive list of world-models here, including High and Low Art, sanity and madness, mathematical logic and the mechanics of mythmaking, the distribution of wealth in our society, and the limitations of our sexual vocabulary. Also included are two essays that illustrate Delany&rsquo;s unique chrestomathic technique, the grouping of textual fragments whose associative interrelationships a reader must actively trace to read them as a resonant argument. Whether writing about Wagner or Hart Crane, Foucault or Robert Mapplethorpe, Delany combines a fierce and often piercing vision with a powerful honesty that beckons us to share in the perspective of these Longer Views. &ldquo;An intellectually adventurous book. . . . Every page of every essay here rewards a second reading, and a third. Delany has a fearsomely stocked intellect, and a wider range of experience than most writers can even imagine. . . . He is brilliant, driven, prolific.&rdquo; &mdash;The Nation &ldquo;One of science fiction&rsquo;s grand masters. . . . Delany&rsquo;s elegant command of language and deep insight into other authors&rsquo; works are delightful to behold.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist &ldquo;Rare personal frankness and stunning erudition. . . . Recommended for readers who enjoy the challenge of being led into remote regions of a gifted mind.&rdquo; &mdash;Library Journal</div>

Longer Views

<div>From the Hugo and Nebula&ndash;winning author, three literary tales trace the intricate interdependencies of memory, experience, and the self. Wesleyan University Press has made a significant commitment to the publication of the work of Samuel R. Delany, including this recent fiction, now available in paperback. The three long stories collected in Atlantis: three tales&mdash;&rdquo;Atlantis: Model 1924,&rdquo; &ldquo;Erik, Gwen, and D. H. Lawrences Aesthetic of Unrectified Feeling,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Citre et Trans&rdquo; &mdash;explore problems of memory, history, and transgression. Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and Guest of Honor at the 1995 World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Delany was won a broad audience among fans of postmodern fiction with his theoretically sophisticated science fiction and fantasy. The stories of Atlantis: Three Tales are not science fiction, yet Locus, the trade publication of the science fiction field, notes that the title story &ldquo;has an odd, unsettling power not usually associated with mainstream fiction.&rdquo; A writer whose audience extends across and beyond science fiction, black, gay, postmodern, and academic constituencies, Delany is finally beginning to achieve the broader recognition he deserves. &ldquo;Delany, who&rsquo;s best known for his science fiction . . . takes a variety of literary turns in these three novellas that chronicle the experience of the African American writer in the 20th century. . . . Balanced and full of intricate layers of prose, these novellas present a potpourri of literary references, detailed flashbacks and experimental page layouts. Delany seamlessly meshes graceful prose, cultural and philosophical depth and a knowledge of different forms and voices into a truly heady, literate blend.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly &ldquo;Delany sketches sympathetic portraits of young black men aswim in the dense, sweet hives of American cities.&rdquo; &mdash;New York Times Book Review</div>

Atlantis

<div>Collected interviews featuring the Nebula Award&ndash;winning author and his thoughts on topics like literary criticism, comic books, race, and sexuality. For nearly three decades, Samuel R. Delany&rsquo;s science fiction has transported millions of readers to the fringes of time, technology, and outer space. Now Delany surveys the realms of his own experience as a writer, critic, theorist, and gay Black man in this collection of written interviews, a type of guided essay. Because the written interview avoids the &ldquo;mutual presence positioned at the semantic core&rdquo; of traditional interview, Delany explains, &ldquo;a kind of cut remains between the participants&mdash;a fissure in which the truths there may be more malleable, less rigid.&rdquo; Within that fissure Delany pursues the breadth and depth of his ideas on language and theory, the politics of literary composition, the experience of marginality, and the philosophical, commercial, and personal contexts of writing today. Gathered from sources as diverse as Diacritics and The Comics Journal, these interviews reveal the broad range of Delany&rsquo;s thought and interests. &ldquo;Delany has a unique place in late twentieth century letters. A lifelong inhabitant of the margins, both social and literary, he has used his marginalized status as a lens to focus his astute observations of American literature and society. From these interviews his voice emerges, provocative, precise, and engaging.&rdquo; &mdash;Kathleen Spencer, University of Nebraska &ldquo;Samuel R. Delany never shies away from contestable positions or provocative opinions. In his fiction, Delany can write like quicksilver, and in lectures or panel discussions, he is easily SF&rsquo;s most articulate spokesperson in academia. . . . There is much here that is not covered in Delany&rsquo;s critical or autobiographical writings, and much that anyone seriously interested in SF&mdash;or many of Delany&rsquo;s other favorite topics&mdash;ought to consider.&rdquo; &mdash;Locus &ldquo;Delany is fascinating whether discussing SF, comics, or his experiences as a Black American, and this collection . . . is as entertaining as it is informative.&rdquo; &mdash;Science Fiction Chronicle &ldquo;Yevgeny Zamyatin? Stanislaw Lem? Forget it! Delany is both, with a lot of Borges and Bruno Schultz thrown in.&rdquo; &mdash;Village Voice</div>

Samuel R. Delany
Follow this author

Books By Samuel R. Delany (25 Books)