Ah, the 70's. The Nebula Awards collections found in the library. The piles of books from the Science Fiction Book Club that my parent's would buy me. Writers like Robert Silverberg writing about sex and drugs. New authors such as Gene Wolfe and Samuel R. Delany.
I first encountered Delany as an author of short stories. Tales such as Aye, and Gomorrah..., Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones and Driftglass appeared in a few collections that I read (such as the Nebula Awards collections).
During high school I encountered Delany as a novelist, in two books (Nova and Dhalgren). Nova was a space opera, a wonderfully baroque space opera. Dhalgren was...well...even now it's hard to explain. It was certainly the novel that moved Delany from the likes of Ace Books (where his first book, The Jewels of Aptor, was published) into even more prominence than the winning of the Nebula for various works, e.g., Babel-17, Aye, and Gomorrah..., Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones) seemed to have done. I even had a chance to meet Delany briefly at a convention in New York City; he was very nice, much less snobbish than some of the other authors at that convention.
(I plan to re-read Nova, Dhalgren and other works in 2005, so maybe I'll have something more detailed to say.)
In 2004, I read two novels, two collections of short works, two short novels and a long autobiographical work by Delany. The autobiographical work came close to being considered one of the best books I read in 2004 (there was a lot of tough competition for that slot!). Here are my reviews of the short story collections.
Aye, and Gomorrah and Other Stories (Vintage Books, 2003):
Counts as 16 entries in the 2004 Short Story Project.
The Star Pit; Corona; Aye, and Gomorrah...; Driftglass; We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line; Cage of Brass; High Weir; Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones; Omegahelm; Among the Blobs; Tapestry; Prismatica; Ruins; Dog in a Fisherman's Net; Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo; Afterword: Of Doubts and Dreams.
Distant Stars (iBooks, 2004):
Counts as 2 entries in the 2004 Short Story Project.
Of Doubts and Dreams: An Introduction by Samuel R. Delany; Prismatica (illustrated by John Pierard); Corona (illustrated by John Collier); Empire Star (illustrated by John Jude Palencar); Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones (illustrated by Jeanette Adams, special effects by Digital Effects, computer program by David Cox); Omegahelm (illustrated by John Coffey); Ruins (illustrated by John Pound); We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line (illustrated by Michael Sorkin).
Because there was so much overlap between these two collections, I'll consider them together. Of the two collections, I'd recommend starting with Distant Stars, due to the illustrations. In fact, if Distant Stars had contained The Star Pit and Babel-17, you would have had just about the perfect Delany collection (you can get Babel-17 and Empire Star in one volume from Vintage).
The Star Pit and Empire Star are among Delany's best short works, and along with Babel-17 and Nova rate among his best space opera. In fact, with all the bro-ha-hah over the past few years on the New Space Opera, it seems to be overlooked that Delany was reinventing space opera well before the likes of Ken MacLeod, Charles Stross or Alastair Reynolds came along (don't get me wrong, I like all three...well, two out of the three!).
(I'll note right here that I only review a handful of the stories that I read. I'll eventually add more reviews.)
Prismatica (1977, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction): This story is mentioned as one of the early tales Delany was working on in the text of Motion of Light. The main character (Amos) is hired by The Grey Man (his skin is grey, his clothing is grey; his ship is grey, his crew is colorless by application of dust and dirt; colors give him a headache) to find a mirror that is broken into three parts. However, on the Grey Man's ship, he finds that the Grey Man has imprisoned Jack (Vance?), the "Prince of the Far Rainbow", the original quester for the broken mirror and original owner of the ship. Jack's love is trapped in the pieces of the mirror. Amos and Jack use their wits (not their fists) to get around the Grey Man and get the mirror pieces back.
I mention Jack Vance, as this story reminded me strongly of the style of Jack Vance, especially in the tales of The Dying Earth. I'm also reminded of Fritz Leiber's tales, but Delany does not get as darkly humorous as Leiber did in his tales of Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser. The artwork reminds me strongly of the style of Arthur Rackham, see especially this image and this image.
I loved this part:
That knocking came again.
"Only that isn't above us," said Jack. "It's below."
They looked at the floor. Then Jack got down on his hands and knees and looked under the cot. "There's a trapdoor there," he whispered to Amos, "and somebody's knocking."
"A trapdoor in the bottom of a ship?" asked Amos.
"We won't question it," said Jack; "we'll just open it."
Ruins (1968, Algol; 1981, Distant Stars): Jack Vance homage, similar in feel to the above story. Delany mentions a story in the introduction that he first started writing in 1963, revised multiple times, over the course of 17 years. He mentions that it was originally published in a fanzine. It is a short work, but it packs a terrific (surprise, so I won't talke about it) punch in the end.
In some weird form of symmetrical writing, the foreword/introduction to Distant Stars is also the afterword in Aye... Talk about economy/recycling!
There are some comments from that piece that I wanted to quote. Delany gives three rules for writing, that he often uses in writing workshops:
Derived from Theodore Sturgeon: "To write an immediate and vivid scene...visualize everything about it as thoroughly as you can, from the tarnish on the doorknob plate to the trowel marks on the ceiling's unpainted plaster. Then do not describe it. Rather, mention only those aspects of it that impinge on your character's consciousness as she or he, in whatever emotional state she or he is in, moves through it. The scene the reader envisions...will not be the same as yours—but it will be as important, vivid, detailed, and coherent for the reader as yours was for you.
Derived from Thomas Disch: When a story runs down the only thing you can really do is to ask of your story what's really going on in it. What are the character's real motiviations, feelings, fears, or desires? Right at the point you stopped, you must go down to another level in the tale. You must dig into the character's psychology deeply enough (and thus build up your vision of the story's complexity enough) to reinterest yourself. If you can't then the story must be abandoned.
From Samuel R. Delany: At some point, when the story is still only an idea, an image, or a subject, ask yourself what is the most cliched, the most traditional, the most usual way to handle the particular material. Ask yourself what are the traps that, time and again, other writers have fallen into when handling the same material, which have made their work trite, ugly or dull. Can you think of any way to avoid precisely these traps? How do you want your work to differ from the usual? How is your work going to deal with this material in a way no one has ever dealt with it before? Locating a precise writerly problem to avoid (or solve) or situating a particular writerly approach that will set your work apart can often provide the excitement to write it.
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