Disch's short story “Angouleme” the semi-autobiographical novel Heavenly Breakfast and the Hugo-winning autobiography The Motion of Light in Water.
#THE STAR PIT DELANY SERIES#
His nonfiction books include The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, a series of critical essays about science fiction The American Shore, a book-length analysis of Thomas M. With his wife Marilyn Hatcher he edited a series of ground-breaking anthologies Quark. Unfortunately, it was intended to be the first of a diptych, but the second novel The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities was never published, apparently a victim of Delany’s loss of interest in writing science fiction.īesides being perhaps the most serious writer of science fiction ever, Delany has also been an important editor and critic of the genre. The series included three collections Tales of Neveryon, Flight From Neveryon, The Bridge of Lost Desire, and the novel Neveryóna.ĭelany returned to science fiction in 1984 with Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which was as much a quantum leap beyond most 1980s science fiction as Nova was in 1968. He created a fantasy world Neverÿon which he placed under the same careful scrutiny he had previously turned on space operas. Much more traditionally structured was Triton, which returned to many of Delany’s concerns of the 1960s.įollowing Triton, Delany turned his attention to heroic fantasy. Hailed by many for its study of characters, images and relationships, others panned its long, convoluted plot structure that ends by completing a circle back to its opening scene.
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Over 800 pages long, it was an explicit analysis of an imaginary city on the verge of collapse. He re-emerged with the controversial novel Dhalgren. “Time Considered As A Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” won both Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novelette in spite of being published in the rather obscure British science fiction prozine New Worlds.ĭelany was mostly silent for six years following the publication of Nova. “We, In Some Strange Power's Employ, Move On a Rigorous Line” (under the considerably simpler title “Lines of Power”) was both a Hugo and Nebula nominee for Best Novella. “Aye and Gomorrah” won a Nebula Award as Best Short Story. In 1967 Delany published his first piece of short science fiction “The Star Pit.” As complex and thought-provoking as his novels, it was the first of a series of major short works over the next three years. It was heavily-influenced by Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, but it extends the earlier novel's pyrotechnics even further. Like most of Delany’s early sf, it unabashedly accepted the form of a space opera yet was still intended to be a serious work of fiction. Although it did not win any major awards, it is a superb accomplishment, and generally considered one of the best science fiction novels ever written. It is basically the Orpheus legend retold by aliens who have taken human form in an attempt to understand extinct humanity. Next came The Einstein Intersection, a second Nebula winner as Best Novel.
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It is also one of the first major science fiction novels with a female protagonist. A space opera in form, its major concern is with the role of language in shaping reality. First was Babel-17, which won a Nebula Award for Best Novel, immediately raising Delany from obscurity to the ranks of major science fiction writers. Most important for the development of future science fiction were the last three novels Delany published in the decade.
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They included the acclaimed trilogy The Fall of the Towers–consisting of Captives of the Flame, The Towers of Toron, and City of a Thousand Suns–and the short novels The Ballad of Beta-2 and Empire Star. Most of the novels were published before Delany tried any short fiction. During that period he published eight novels and a collection of short fiction.
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Heinlein, and was a leading influence on both 1980s Cyberpunk and 1990s New Space Opera.ĭelany was a prolific writer for a half-dozen years in the mid-to-late 1960s following the publication of his first novel The Jewels of Aptor. And with good reason since Delany has done more to expand the borders of science fiction than any writer since Robert A. What can you say about a teenager who writes a dozen unpublished novels before finally selling one at age nineteen? Or about a critic who writes a book-length analysis of a 7,800 word science fiction short story? Both of these are the same person, Samuel Ray Delany, one of the most critically-acclaimed writers in science fiction history.