Conversations With Samuel R Delany

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

Frederick Weston and Samuel R. Delany come together for a wide-ranging dialogue, reflecting on their overlapping histories in Times Square, the deep impact of AIDS on their creative practices, and the ever-changing intersections of race, sex, language, and art.With additional contributions by Bruce Benderson, Svetlana Kitto, and Tavia Nyong'o.

Collected interviews featuring the Nebula Award–winning author and his thoughts on topics like literary criticism, comic books, race, and sexuality. For nearly three decades, Samuel R. Delany’s science fiction has transported millions of readers to the fringes of time, technology, and outer space. Now Delany surveys the realms of his own experience as a writer, critic, theorist, and gay Black man in this collection of written interviews, a type of guided essay. Because the written interview avoids the “mutual presence positioned at the semantic core” of traditional interview, Delany explains, “a kind of cut remains between the participants—a fissure in which the truths there may be more malleable, less rigid.” Within that fissure Delany pursues the breadth and depth of his ideas on language and theory, the politics of literary composition, the experience of marginality, and the philosophical, commercial, and personal contexts of writing today. Gathered from sources as diverse as Diacritics and The Comics Journal, these interviews reveal the broad range of Delany’s thought and interests. “Delany has a unique place in late twentieth century letters. A lifelong inhabitant of the margins, both social and literary, he has used his marginalized status as a lens to focus his astute observations of American literature and society. From these interviews his voice emerges, provocative, precise, and engaging.” —Kathleen Spencer, University of Nebraska “Samuel R. Delany never shies away from contestable positions or provocative opinions. In his fiction, Delany can write like quicksilver, and in lectures or panel discussions, he is easily SF’s most articulate spokesperson in academia. . . . There is much here that is not covered in Delany’s critical or autobiographical writings, and much that anyone seriously interested in SF—or many of Delany’s other favorite topics—ought to consider.” —Locus “Delany is fascinating whether discussing SF, comics, or his experiences as a Black American, and this collection . . . is as entertaining as it is informative.” —Science Fiction Chronicle “Yevgeny Zamyatin? Stanislaw Lem? Forget it! Delany is both, with a lot of Borges and Bruno Schultz thrown in.” —Village Voice

This Stonewall Book Award-winning novel traces the life and unrealized dreams of a homosexual African-American poet. Beautifully written in reverse chronological order, the story offers moving meditations on loneliness and sexual repression.

Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Samuel R. Delany’s epic fantasy—the first in a series—explores power, gender, and the nature of civilization. A boy of the bustling, colorful docks of port Kolhari, during a political coup, fifteen-year-old Gorgik, once his parents are killed, is taken a slave and transported to the government obsidian mines at the foot of the Faltha mountains. When, in the savagely primitive land of Nevèrÿon, finally he wins his freedom, Gorgik is ready to lead a rebellion against the rulers of this barely civilized land. His is the through-story that, now in the background, now in the foreground, connects these first five stories, in Tales of Nevèrÿon—and, indeed, all the eleven stories, novellas, and novels that comprise Delany’s epic fantasy series, Return to Nevèrÿon, where we can watch civilization first develop money, writing, labor, and that grounding of all civilizations since: capital itself. In these sagas of barbarism, new knowledge, and sex, you’ll find far more than in most sword-and-sorcery. They are an epic feat of language, an ironic analysis of the foundations of civilization, and a reminder that no weapon is more powerful than a well-honed legend. This “eminently readable and gorgeously entertaining” (The Washington Post Book World) novel reads “as if Umberto Eco had written about Conan the Barbarian” (USA Today). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.

From the four-time Nebula Award–winning novelist and literary critic, essential reading for the creative writer. Award-winning novelist Samuel R. Delany has written a book for creative writers to place alongside E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Lajos Egri’s Art of Dramatic Writing. Taking up specifics (When do flashbacks work, and when should you avoid them? How do you make characters both vivid and sympathetic?) and generalities (How are novels structured? How do writers establish serious literary reputations today?), Delany also examines the condition of the contemporary creative writer and how it differs from that of the writer in the years of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the high Modernists. Like a private writing tutorial, About Writing treats each topic with clarity and insight. Here is an indispensable companion for serious writers everywhere. “Delany has certainly spent more time thinking about the process of generating narratives—and subsequently getting the fruits of his lucubrations down on paper?than any other writer in the genre. . . . Delany’s latest volume in this vein (About Writing) might be his best yet... Truly, as the jacket copy boasts, this book is the next best thing to taking one of Delany’s courses. . . . [R]eaders will find many answers here to the mysteries of getting words down on a page.” —Paul DiFilippo, Asimov’s Science Fiction “Useful and thoughtful advice for aspiring (and practicing apprentice) authors. About Writing is autobiography, criticism, and a guidebook to good writing all in one.” —Robert Elliot Fox, Professor of English, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale “Should go on the short list of required reading for every would-be writer.” —New York Times Book Review (on Of Doubts and Dreams in About Writing)

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