DELANY LINKS

Click on the links in the bio below for excerpts.

 

 

BIOGRAPHY and BIBLIOGRAPGY

SAMUEL RAY DELANY, JR. (b. April 1, 1942, New York, N.Y., U.S.), African-American critic and science-fiction novelist whose highly imaginative works address racial and social issues, heroic quests, and the nature of language.

Delany attended the Bronx High School of Science, and in the early 1960s, City College of New York (now City University of New York). His first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, was was written when he was nineteen and published in 1962. His subsequent trilogy, The Fall of the Towers, was completed while he was still twenty-one. The Ballad of Beta-2 was published in 1965... Babel-17 (1966), which established his reputation, has an artist as the protagonist and explores the nature of language and its ability to give structure to experience. Delany won the science-fiction Nebula Award for the book, as he did for The Einstein Intersection (1967), which features another artist-outsider and addresses issues of cultural development and sexual identity, a theme more fully developed in the author's later works. Further Nebula Awards came for short fiction in both 1967 Aye, and Gomorrah… (1968) and Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones (1969). In 1970 and 1971, Delany and then wife, well-known poet Marilyn Hacker, edited a quartly, QUARK, of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction.

Dhalgren (1975), until recently, considered Delany's most controversial novel, is the story of a young bisexual man searching for identity in a large, decaying city. The main character of Triton (1976) undergoes a sex-change operation, and in this novel the author examines bias against women and homosexuals. His critical writings, such as The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (1977) and The American Shore (1978) earned him the Science Fiction Research Association's Pilgrim Award.

Delany's Neveryon series [Tales of Neveryon (1979); Neveryona; or, The Tale of Signs and Cities (1983); Flight from Neveryon (1985); and The Bridge of Lost Desire (1987)] is set in a magical past at the beginning of civilization. These tales concern power and its abuse, while taking up contemporary themes (including such topics as AIDS). His complex Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) is regarded as a stylistic breakthrough for the author.

Heavenly Breakfast () catalogues Delany's adventures in the 1960s Greenwich Village of Manhatten. In 1988, Mr. Delany published a memoir, The Motion of Light in Water. His most recent books are the novels They Fly at Ciron (1993) and The Mad Man (1994), and Silent Interviews: On Language,Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (1994), a collection of written interviews. Delany's latest book, Bread and Wine : An Erotic Tale of New York City, can be ordered at the link.

In 1988, Samuel Delany accepted a position at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he has been teaching as professor of Comparative Literature. In 1995, Delany was the University of Minnesota's Winton Scholar and Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer in the Program in Creative Writing, Department of English.

Additional Delany fiction and non-fiction:
Click on the links below for excerpts

Driftglass (1967 in Worlds of If )
We, In Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line
Corona
The Star Pit
House Alive
Dog In A Fisherman's Net
Distant Stars

Atlantis: Three Tales
The Straits of Messina
Starboard Wine
Empire Star

Equinox
Hogg
High Involvment
Some Comics
(1994)

 

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