Criticism of science fiction cannot possibly look like the criticism we are used to. It will -- perforce -- employ an aesthetic in which the elegance, rigorousness, and systematic coherence of explicit ideas is of great importance. It will therefore appear to stray into all sorts of extra-literary fields, metaphysics, politics, philosophy, physics, biology, psychology, topology, mathematics, history, and so on. The relation of foreground and background that we are used to after a century and a half of realism will not obtain. Indeed they may be reversed. Science-fiction criticism will discover themes and structures...which may seem recondite, extra-literary, or plain ridiculous. Themes we customarily regard as emotionally neutral will be charged with emotion. Traditionally human concerns will be absent; protagonists may be all but unrecognizable as such. What in other fiction would be marvelous will here be merely accurate or plain; what in other fiction would be ordinary or mundane will here be astonishing, complex, wonderful...For example, allusions to the death of God will be trivial jokes, while metaphors involving the differences between telephone switchboards and radio stations will be poignantly tragic. Stories ostensibly about persons will really be about topology. Erotics will be intercranial, mechanical (literally), and moving.
Joanna Russ, Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction
This page is devoted to information about noted science fiction author, critic, and educator Samuel Delany. The author of more than 17 books of fiction, 7 books of criticism, and several collections of short stories, Delany seeks to erase the border between high and low culture, explores the unwritten codes that surround sexuality, race, and culture, and explains what it is makes science fiction "special."
Strictly speaking, Starshards is the title of a collection of Delany's short fiction, although in a very Delany-esque twist of circumstances, Starshards was never issued as a standalone collection, being incorporated into an omnibus collection of Delany's short fiction that also included his earlier collection Driftglass. Starshards only properly exists as a fragment in the title: "Driftglass/Starshards".
Similarly, this site ought to be seen as an adjunct to other resources for Delany fans, such as Jay Schuster's much more faithfully updated site, or a resource for subscribers to delany-list, the mailing list dedicated to Chip hosted at Yahoo! Groups. At one point sometime in the last century, my intention for this site was for it to become a one-stop resource for those curious about Delany, but my attention subsequently wandered (as it almost always does) and other demands on my time asserted themselves.
Fortunately, since this site was first put up in 1994, much more information about Delany has come online, and this site's embarrassing state of perpetual incompletion is less of an aggravation to those who are curious about Delany and his work.
Delany is one of the more complex and colorful figures in the landscape of modern science fiction (and, indeed, literature). Unabashedly gay and a proponent in his literature of polyamory, sado-masochism, and many other, more exotic ways of living, he has led a flamboyantly exotic life. A well-written account of some of this is in The Motion of Light in Water: East Village Sex and Science Fiction Writing 1960-65 (be certain that you're getting and edition subsequent to the first; the original Bantam version was much expurgated). Delany holds back little in this memoir: it is an uncompromising and very entertaining description of one man's entrance into his own sexual maturity.
Delany presents a difficult case for biographers. He is very conscious of the distorting power of even well-intentioned language, and plays with this consciousness in much of his own writing. In Silent Interviews, he refines and dissects one of his own memories until he shows that it is finally close to impossible to write anything approaching the "truth" about the past. However, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (which is, by the way, the definitive handbook for all serious students of science fiction, and should be considered an essential purchase for all but the most casual readers of sf) and Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia both manage to do good jobs by primarily focusing on Delany's written output.
It is safe to say that Delany is an uncompromising intellectual with a tendency towards being recondite in his criticism: he never talks down to his audience, as much as they might appreciate a hand. He is also lavish in his efforts to educate the sf community, both in his voluminous science fiction criticism (he once produced a book-length critique of a Thomas Disch novel) and in his role as an educator (both as a professor and an instructor at the Clarion SF Writer's Workshop).
The bibliography is slowly getting there. The new version is much more complete than the old one, and I'm slowly filling in the details. Once I get the bibliography to a semi-stable and useful point, I'll start serious work on the interactive features I discuss below. I've been spending some time preparing for that, and the typing has been a bitch. However, I think everybody will be moderately impressed with the result. I'm committed to making this site as dynamic as I can.
Don't overlook the entries from the SF Encyclopedia and its
illustrated counterpart. I've spent much too much time typing
them in for you all to ignore them
. They've been immensely
useful in filling in the bibliography (which is also being helped
by the fact that I know own and have read all of Delany's fiction
save They Fly at
Çiron, which for some reason I have a hard time
mustering much enthusiasm over. Something about the theme). Clute
and company deserve far more recognition than they've gotten so
far for these monumental and entertaining works, so show them you
care and buy copies right now.
I still intend to make available a list of books that would be helpful in digging under the surface of Delany's books (the Neverÿon books in particular) to see the critical concerns that inform Delany's best work. Expect to see the names Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan. Has anybody but me noticed that this kind of information is sadly lacking on the Internet?
I'd also like to set up a page where people could discuss their reactions to some of Delany's more controversial recent works, such as Hogg and The Mad Man. Both novels are profoundly disturbing and profoundly Delany. To grapple with them is to learn much about Delany and your own assumptions about sexuality and what sexuality itself constitutes. Many people find them too intense to finish. Many find even the synopses unbearably intense ("Well, Hogg is about an eleven-year-old male prostitute who gets picked up by a trucker named Hogg who rapes women for money. They hang out with an oversexed African-American named Nigg and an oversexed Italian named Dago. Much mayhem and rape ensues, and there's lots of coprophilia and urolagia involved." Most of my friends stop me after the first sentence).
Many of the themes of domination, power, and extreme sexuality that dance around the edges of Delany's other work are put in the foreground of Hogg and The Mad Man, and, in Hogg, the result can be more overbearing than simply powerful. It is a piece of extreme literature in every sense of extremism, and it is my opinion that it will be a benchmark of sorts for many years to come. I would love to publish other people's responses to it here, but for now I'll concentrate on making my own thoughts available.
The Mad Man is a much more subtle work, seeking to subvert our preconceptions about sexuality by having a sympathetic character go through the motions for us. I came away from the book as set in my sexual ways as when I entered it, but I felt as if my horizons had been greatly expanded. The central message of the book is one of tolerance and trust, despite the titillating and lurid setup at the beginning of the book. It stands as one of the most amazing achievements in contemporary literature.
Finally, I have some ideas for making this adding to this space's interactivity. I have many ideas on how to make this work; we'll see what eventually pops up. I don't have the time to spend on Nevèrÿon that I'd like; everything has to be done piecemeal.
Contributions to this site are very welcome. There's already been some very helpful responses from a number of people, which I do appreciate. Quite a few people have made the transition from Delany as science fiction writer to Delany as social explorer, which I find heartening in a time when most social experimentation appears to be stalled. Keep the good words coming.