New Releases by Samuel R Delany

The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. 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 "different" must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey'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 "different" try to seize history and the day.

Phallos is a 2004 novel by the acclaimed novelist and critic Samuel R. Delany. Taking the form of a gay pornographic novella, with the explicit sex omitted, Phallos is set during the reign of the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, and circles around the historical account of the murder of the emperor''s favorite, Antinous. The story moves from Syracuse to Egypt, from the Pillars of Hercules to Rome, from Athens to Byzantium, and back. Young Neoptolomus searches after the stolen phallus of the nameless god of Hermopolis, crafted of gold and encrusted with jewels, within which are reputedly the ancient secrets of science and society that will lead to power, knowledge, and wealth. Vivid and clever, the original novella has been expanded by nearly a third. Appended to the text are an afterword by Robert F. Reid-Pharr and three astute speculative essays by Steven Shaviro, Kenneth R. James, and Darieck Scott.

The dying alien from the ship that crashed onto Rhys gave Comet Jo a jewel, and begged him to take it to the heart of the Galactic Empire. And, seeing no reason to miss an adventure, Comet Jo started out for the fabled Empire Star. But his journey was to have far-reaching consequences - consequences that could disrupt all the known laws of Time and Space . . .

In Shorter Views, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Samuel R. Delany brings his remarkable intellectual powers to bear on a wide range of topics. Whether he is exploring the deeply felt issues of identity, race, and sexuality, untangling the intricacies of literary theory, or the writing process itself, Delany is one of the most lucid and insightful writers of our time. These essays cluster around topics related to queer theory on the one hand, and on the other, questions concerning the paraliterary genres: science fiction, pornography, comics, and more. Readers new to Delany''s work will find this collection of shorter pieces an especially good introduction, while those already familiar with his writing will appreciate having these essays between two covers for the first time.

"Delany has a grasp of the evolutionary nature of mythology, a subtle comic touch, and a lyric sense of the outsider making his unorthodox way in the world--or worlds--that give his work a dimension unusual..."

"Samuel R. Delany is not only one of the most profound and courageous writers at work today, he is a writer of seemingly limitless range."--Michael Cunningham A vast river of a novel alive with explicit sexuality and the the richness of life itself, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders concerns a gay, working-class, interracial relationship. In 2007, just before Eric''s seventeenth birthday, his father brings him to Diamond Harbor, a failing tourist town on the Georgia coast, to live with his mother. There Eric meets nineteen-year-old Morgan Haskell, who works with his father, Dynamite Haskell, and the two boys soon join their lives--and their bodies--together on the coast as a couple over the next seventy-five years. The author of more than forty books, Samuel R. Delany is a novelist and critic whose novel Dhalgren has sold over a million copies. He is a recipient of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a Lifetime Contribution to Gay and Lesbian Writing and the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award. He is a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Interviews with the author of Dhalgren; Babel-17; Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand; the Nevéryon cycle; and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Essential reading for the creative writer.

A father must come to terms with his son''s death in the war. In Venice an architecture student commits a crime of passion. A white southern airport loader tries to do a favor for a black northern child. The ordinary stuff of ordinary fiction--but with a difference! These tales take place twenty-five, fifty, a hundred-fifty years from now, when men and women have been given gills to labor under the sea. Huge repair stations patrol the cables carrying power to the ends of the earth. Telepathic and precocious children so passionately yearn to visit distant galaxies that they''ll kill to go. Brilliantly crafted, beautifully written, these are Samuel Delany''s award-winning stories, like no others before or since.

"If one street in America can claim to be the most infamous, it is surely Forty-second Street. Once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers, and movie houses, Forty-second Street has been overwhelmed by the quest for safety - from safe sex and safe neighborhoods to safe cities and safe relationships. Now defined by corporate theme stores and large, neon-lit cafes, Forty-second Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester County, and the New Jersey suburbs." "Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance, not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there; the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peep shows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city''s physical and psychological landscape." "Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as "family values"." --Book Jacket.

In a story as exciting as any science fiction adventure written, Samuel R. Delany'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, 20 years after it was written, still make it a coruscating portrait of "the happily reasonable man," Bron Helstrom — 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'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 — or she — seems.

Six essays from the critic and award-winning author exploring topics such as theater, LGBTQ+ scholarship, cyborgs, metaphors, and Star Wars. "Reading is a many-layered process—like writing," observes Samuel R. Delany, a Nebula and Hugo Award–winning author and a major commentator on American literature and culture. In this collection of six extended essays, Delany challenges what he calls "the hard-edged boundaries of meaning" by going beyond the customary limits of the genre in which he''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. "Over the course of his career," Kenneth James writes in his extensive introduction, "Delany has again and again thrown into question the world-models that all too many of us unknowingly live by." 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''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. "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." — The Nation "One of science fiction''s grand masters. . . . Delany''s elegant command of language and deep insight into other authors'' works are delightful to behold." — Booklist "Rare personal frankness and stunning erudition. . . . Recommended for readers who enjoy the challenge of being led into remote regions of a gifted mind." — Library Journal

In these stories, Samuel R. Delany explores the intricate interdependencies of memory, experience, and self. We begin with Atlantis: Model 1924, a short novel that tells of a young African-American's first six months in 1920s New York, and of the sharp contrast between his experiences there and his childhood and adolescence in North Carolina. In a fictive meditation on the artist's childhood, "Erik, Gwen, and D.H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling" traces the development of a formalist esthetic even as it shows the place of transgression within that very esthetic. "Citre et Trans" tells of a black American writer's sojourn in Greece in the mid-1960s.

"First written thirty-five years ago and completed days before the Stonewall riots in New York, Hogg is one of America's most famous " unpublishable" novels. It recounts three horrifically violent days in 1969 in the life of truck driver and rapist-for-hire, Franklin Hargus. Narrated by his young accomplice, the novel portrays a descent into unimaginable depravity. What transforms this nightmare into literature is Delany's refusal, faced with our moral anxieties, to mutilate his appalling creation. Hogg's monsters wear our faces, possessing the human complexities of intense loyalty perverse admiration, and an integrity so pure that pity becomes betrayal."--BOOK JACKET.

First foray into pornography by a writer of science fiction. A philosophy students becomes interested in a dead philosopher who was a pervert. In time he begins imitating the man and in the process reaches the depths of perversion. By the author of They Fly at Ciron.

When a peaceful nation of well-organized peasants is overrun by the army of an expanding industrialized neighbour, the people of Çiron must forge a pact with the strange and fearsome race of flying humans dwelling high above in the mountains.

The last volume of the eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to Nevèrÿon''s chronicle a long-ago land on civilization''s brink, perhaps in Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean. Taken slave in childhood, Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister of state, finally abolishing slavery. Ironically, however, he is sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude. Does this contaminate his mission - or intensify it? Presumably elaborated from an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in translators'' and commentators'' introductions and appendices, forming a richly comic frame.

This title explores the implications of Samuel Delaney''s 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.

A novel of myth and literacy, Nevèrÿona tells how young Pryn, who can write in this largely pre-literate land, flees her mountain village on a dragon''s back for Neveryon''s capital port, Kolhari, to aid Gorgik''s rebelllion. Now on the Bridge of Lost Desire, now in Madam Keyne''s emotionally embattled gardens, now at an empty, moonlit mansion in Nevèrÿon - Kolhari''s old artistocractic neighbourhood - and finally through a journey into the dangerous south, Pryn finds more answers - and questions - about Nevèrÿon''s power structure.

An indispensable work of science fiction criticism revised and expanded Samuel R. Delany''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''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 "About 5,750 Words" and "To Read The Dispossessed" first made the book a classic; they assure it will remain one.

The gripping conclusion to the action-packed, ruthless, and romantic fantasy duology that began with HEIR, from the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author Sabaa Tahir. A falling empire. An ancient evil. A lost homeland. A lie that could destroy the world. In the crumbling Martial Empire, crown prince Quil Farrar and his aunt, Empress Helene, are losing a war against the vicious Kegari horde. Quil’s armies dwindle, his faith falters, and the woman he loves vanished months ago, leaving him brokenhearted. Torn between his duty to his people and his desire to discover Sirsha’s fate, Quil embarks on a dangerous quest for aid—from the most treacherous of allies. Sirsha Westering finds herself tethered to Div, an ancient evil unleashed by a terrible tragedy. Div delights in tormenting Sirsha, hungering for her magical heart. Even as Sirsha struggles for control of her own fate, she is desperate to shield Quil from Div’s destructive power. But Div won’t release Sirsha without a fight. To earn her freedom, Sirsha must uncover Div’s past—and face horrors in her own. Cero bet-Dafra, former right hand of the Kegari leader, Aiz, now finds himself pitted against her. As Aiz slips further into violence and delusion, Cero must discover if his people have any hope of a future or if they’re condemned to an unending cycle of violence. His journey will force him to confront hidden truths, ancient secrets, and a lie that could destroy the world. In Empire, #1 New York Times bestselling author Sabaa Tahir returns to the expansive world of fury and vengeance of Heir, weaving a story of legacy and rebellion, loyalty and freedom, and what it means to confront the monsters that lurk within us all.

These are at least some of the ways you can read NOVA: as a fast-action farflung interstellar adventure; as archetypal mystical/mythical allegory (in which the Tarot and the Grail both figure prominently); as modern myth told in the S-F idiom... the reader observes, recollects, or participates in a range of personal experience including violent pain and disfigurement, sensory deprivation and overload, man-machine communion, the drug experience, the creative experience - and inter-personal relationships which include incest and assassination, father-son, leader-follower, human-pet, and lots more! The balance of galactic power in the 31st century revolves around Illyrion, the most precious energy source in the universe. The varied and exotic crew who sign up with Captain Lorq van Ray know their mission is dangerous, and they soon learn that they are involved in a deadly race with the charismatic but vicious leader of an opposing space federation. But they have no idea of Lorq's secret obsession: to gather Illyrion at the source by flying through the very heart of an imploding star.

During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as a weapon. Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought. This is discovered by the starship captain Rydra Wong. She is recruited to discover how the enemy are infiltrating and sabotaging strategic sites.