Most Popular Books by Samuel R. Delany

This Stonewall Book Award-winning novel traces the life and unrealized dreams of a gay African American poet. A meditation on isolation and sexual repression, it also explores the frustrations intrinsic to artistic life.

Written by black, gay science-fiction writer, professor, and theorist Samuel R. Delany, and drawn by artist/martial arts instructor Mia Wolff, Bread & Wine is a graphic autobiography that flashes back to the unlikely story of how Delany befriend ed Dennis, and how they became an enduring couple―Delany, a professor at Philadelphia’s Temple University, Dennis, an intelligent man living on the streets. For casual readers and fans, Bread & Wine is a moving, sexually charged love story, with visuals informed by Wolff’s professional physical pursuits. Her black-and-white, pen-and-ink work not only expressionistically represents the characters’ “body language” and the bustling New York setting, but is also filled with impish art references and visual puns. The scholarly potential for the book, based on the poem “Bread and Wine” by the German lyric poet Friedrich Holderlin, not only encompasses queer, African-American, and graphic novel studies, but also exploration in the literary and paraliterary academic fields. This edition includes an introduction by Watchmen writer Alan Moore, commentary by the book’s protagonists, Delany and Dennis, and a new interview with Delany and Wolff.

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–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 & 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''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''s daily life, including visitors to his upper-west-side apartment, his travels for work and pleasure, lectures attended, movies viewed, and exhibits seen. " 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." —L.H. Stallings, author of Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures " 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." —Nisi Shawl, author of the Nebula Award Finalist novel Everfair, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award–winning story collection Filter House

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 source by flying through the very heart of an imploding star.

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.

DIVDIVSlavery is outlawed, Nevèrÿon is free, and Gorgik the Liberator must revisit the mines for a final struggle where he himself was once a slave/divDIV Alone in a deserted castle in the Nevèrÿon 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’t, what will it mean for Nevèrÿon . . . ?/divDIV The three stories in this volume end Samuel R. Delany’s Return to Nevèrÿon saga and cycle. But they are also its beginning—taking us back to the start of Gorgik’s epic—although, from what we’ve learned from the others, even that has become an entirely new story, though not a word in it has been changed . . ./divDIV This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career./divDIV/div/div

Like his legendary Hogg, The Mad Man, and the million-seller Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany’s major new novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders—explicit, poetic, philosophical, and, yes, shocking—propels readers into a gay sexual culture unknown to most urban gay men and women, a network of rural gay relations—with the twist that this one is supported by the homophile Kyle Foundation, started in the early 1980s by a black multi-millionaire, Robert Kyle III, to improve the lives of black gay men. In 2007, days before his seventeenth birthday, Eric Jeffers’ stepfather brings him to live with his mother, who works as a waitress in the foundering tourist town of Diamond Harbor on the Georgia coast. In the local truck stop restroom, on his first day, Eric meets nineteen-year-old Morgan Haskell, as well as half a dozen other gay men who live and work in the area. The boys become a couple, and for the next twenty years labor as garbage men along the coast, sharing their lives and their lovers, learning to negotiate a committed open relationship. For a decade they manage a rural movie theater that shows pornographic films and encourages gay activity among the audience. Finally, they become handymen for a burgeoning lesbian art colony on nearby Gillead Island, as America moves twenty years, forty years, sixty years into a future fascinating, glorious, and—sometimes—terrifying.

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.

Science fiction-roman.

Captives of the FlameBy Samuel R. Delany

A theorist and cultural critic on race, sexuality, science fiction, and the art of writing.

A four-volume "postmodern sword-and-sorcery" epic from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author (The Washington Post Book World). Tales of Nevèrÿon: After his parents are killed during a political coup, Gorgik is taken into captivity and forced to work the government obsidian mines in Nevèrÿon''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 Nevèrÿon''s rulers to end the tyranny of slavery. Neveryóna: Or, The Tale of Signs and Cities: One of the few in Nevèrÿon who can read and write, Pryn escapes her village on the back of a dragon. On her journey across the civil war–torn land, Pryn has a fateful encounter with Gorgik the Liberator, whom she finds herself fighting beside in his war against slavery. Flight from Nevèrÿon: A smuggler, witness, and worshipper of Gorgik the Liberator follows his idol''s bloody trail on a quest to meet him. But a disease has ravaged Nevèrÿon. 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 Nevèrÿon''s sexual and political landscape forever. Return to Nevèrÿon: 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.

"Through 57 letters and documents from the year 1984, Samuel R. Delany offers portraits of millionaire parties, avant-garde artists, porno-house denizens, modern-day gurus, tax auditors, and the early years of AIDS in New York City."--P.[4] of cover.

"Originally published as by Edward P. Bradbury [in 1965 with the title Barbarians of Mars]."

A collection of classic fiction, a short novel, and a fascinating essay, with over sixty pages of illustrations. Includes: Omegahelm-On a lonely planet, the dictator of half a universe reveals her dark secret. Set in the universe of Delany''s novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand; Empire Star-The adventures of Comet Jo as he travels through time and space with his cybernetic companion Lump; Prismatica-An enchanting fantasy about a prince, a grey man and his black trunk, and a beautiful lady from a rainbow world; plus the Nebula and Hugo Award-winning novella Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones, and more.