Page protected with pending changes

Samuel R. Delany

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Samuel R. Delany
Samuel R. Delany (headshot 2).png
BornSamuel Ray Delany Jr.
(1942-04-01) April 1, 1942 (age 79)
Harlem, New York, U.S.
Pen nameK. Leslie Steiner, S. L. Kermit
Occupation
  • Writer
  • editor
  • professor
  • literary critic
EducationDalton School; Bronx High School of Science
Alma materCity College of New York
Period1962–present[1]
GenreScience fiction, fantasy, autobiography, creative nonfiction, erotic literature, literary criticism
SubjectScience fiction, lesbian and gay studies, eroticism
Literary movementNew Wave
Notable worksNova, Babel-17, Dhalgren, Hogg, The Einstein Intersection
Notable awards
SpouseMarilyn Hacker (1961–80)
PartnerDennis Rickett (1991–present)
ChildrenIva Hacker-Delany
Website
samueldelany.com

Samuel R. Delany (/dəˈleɪni/ ( pronounced "duh" + "LAY" + "nee"); born April 1, 1942), nicknamed "Chip",[3] is an American author and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society.

His fiction includes Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966[4] and 1967[5] respectively), Nova, Dhalgren, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, , and eight books of essays. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards[6] over the course of his career, Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002.[7] From January 1975 until his retirement in May 2015,[8][9] he was a professor of English, Comparative Literature, and/or Creative Writing at SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Albany, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Temple University. In 1997 he won the Kessler Award, and in 2010 he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries.[10] The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 30th SFWA Grand Master in 2013,[11] and in 2016, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Delany received the 2021 Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award.[12]

Early life[]

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr.[a] was born on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany (1916–1995), was a clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany Sr. (1906–1960), ran the Levy & Delany Funeral Home on 7th Avenue in Harlem, from 1938 until his death in 1960. Civil rights pioneers Sadie and Bessie Delany were his aunts. He used their adventures as the basis for Elsie and Corry in Atlantis: Model 1924, the opening novella in his semi-autobiographical collection Atlantis: Three Tales. His grandfather, Henry Beard Delany (1858—1928), was born as a slave, but became the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church. Other notable family members include Harlem Renaissance poet Clarissa Scott Delany and Hubert Thomas Delany, his aunt and uncle.

The family lived in the top two floors of a three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany envied children with nicknames and took one for himself on the first day of a new summer camp, Camp Woodland, at the age of 11, by answering "Everybody calls me Chip" when asked his name.[3] Decades later, Frederik Pohl called him "a person who is never addressed by his friends as Sam, Samuel or any other variant of the name his parents gave him."[3]

Delany attended the Dalton School and from 1951 through 1956, spent summers at Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, New York,[13] followed by the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program.

At a reading at The Kitchen in June 2011

Delany has identified as gay since adolescence.[14] However, some observers have described Delany as bisexual due to his complicated 19-year marriage with poet/translator Marilyn Hacker, who was aware of Delany's orientation and has identified as a lesbian since their divorce.[15]

Upon the death of Delany's father from lung cancer in October 1960 and his marriage in August 1961, he and Hacker settled in New York's East Village neighborhood at 629 East 5th Street. Hacker's intervention (while employed as an assistant editor at Ace Books), helped Delany become a published science fiction author by the age of 20, though he actually finished writing that first novel (The Jewels of Aptor) while 19, shortly after dropping out of the City College of New York after one semester.

Career[]

He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as two prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and later in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). In 1966, with Hacker remaining in New York, Delany took a five-month trip to Europe,[16] writing The Einstein Intersection while in France, England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.[17]​ These locales found their way into several pieces of his work at that time, including the novel Nova and the short stories "Aye, and Gomorrah" and "Dog in a Fisherman's Net".

Weeks after returning, Delany and Hacker began to live separately; Delany played and lived communally for five months on the Lower East Side with the Heavenly Breakfast, a folk-rock band, one of whose members, Bert Lee, was later a founding member of the Central Park Sheiks (the other two members of the quartet were Susan Schweers and Steven Greenbaum (aka Wiseman)); a memoir of his experiences with the band and communal life was eventually published as Heavenly Breakfast (1979). After a very brief time together again, Hacker moved to San Francisco and then England. Delany published his first eight novels with Ace Books from 1962 to 1967, culminating in Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection which were consecutively recognized as the year's best novel by the Science Fiction Writers of America (Nebula Awards).[1][6] Calling him a genius and poet, Algis Budrys listed Delany with J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and Roger Zelazny as "an earthshaking new kind" of writer,[17] and Judith Merril labeling him "TNT (The New Thing)".[18]

Delany's first short story was published by Pohl in the February 1967 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, and he placed three more in other magazines that year.[1] Four short stories (including the critically lauded "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones") and Nova were published to wide acclaim (the latter by Doubleday, marking Delany's departure from Ace) in 1968. Another major science fiction book by Delany did not appear until Dhalgren (1975).

On New Year's Eve in 1968, Delany moved to San Francisco to join Hacker, who was already there, and again to London in the interim, before Delany returned to New York in the summer of 1971 as a resident of the Albert Hotel in Greenwich Village. In 1972, Delany directed a short film entitled The Orchid (originally titled The Science Fiction Film in the Latter Twentieth Century), produced by Barbara Wise.[19] Shot in 16mm with color and sound, the production also employed David Wise, Adolfas Mekas, and was scored by John Herbert McDowell.[20] In November 1972, Delany was a visiting writer at Wesleyan University's Center for the Humanities.[21] From December 1972 to December 1974, Delany and Hacker lived in Marylebone, London. During this period, he began working with sexual themes in earnest and wrote two pornographic works, one of which (Hogg) was unpublishable at the time due to its transgressive content. Twenty years later, it found print.

Delany wrote two issues of the comic book Wonder Woman in 1972,[22] during a controversial period in the publication's history when the lead character abandoned her superpowers and became a secret agent.[23] Delany scripted issues #202 and #203 of the series.[24] He was initially supposed to write a six-issue story arc that would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic, but the story arc was canceled after Gloria Steinem led a lobbying effort protesting the removal of Wonder Woman's powers, a change predating Delany's involvement.[25] Scholar Ann Matsuuchi concluded that Steinem's feedback was "conveniently used as an excuse" by DC management.[26]

Delany's eleventh and most popular novel, the million-plus-selling Dhalgren, was published in 1975 to both literary acclaim (from both inside and outside the science fiction community) and derision (mostly from within the community). After a lengthy exchange of letters with Leslie Fiedler, Delany returned to the United States at Fiedler's behest to teach at the University at Buffalo as Visiting Butler Professor of English for the spring 1975 semester, preceding his return to New York City that summer. Though he published two more major science fiction novels (Triton and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand) in the decade following Dhalgren, Delany began to work in fantasy and science fiction criticism for several years. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was Return to Nevèrÿon, the overall title of the four-volume series and also the title of the fourth and final book. Following the publication of Return to Nevèrÿon, Delany published one more fantasy novel. Released in 1993, They Fly at Çiron is a re-written and expanded version of an unpublished short story Delany wrote in 1962. This would be Delany's last novel in either the science fiction or fantasy genres for many years. Among the works that appeared during this time was his novel The Mad Man and a number of his essay collections.

Delany became a professor in 1988. Following visiting fellowships at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (1977), the University at Albany (1978) and Cornell University (1987), he spent 11 years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo, then, after an invited stay at Yaddo, moved to the English Department of Temple University in January 2001, where he taught until his retirement in April 2015. He served as Critical Inquiry Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago during the winter quarter of 2014.[27]

Beginning with The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977), a collection of critical essays that applied then-nascent literary theory to science fiction studies, he published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In his book of paired essays, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), Delany drew on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men in New York City.

He received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1993.

In 2007, his novel Dark Reflections was a winner of the Stonewall Book Award. That same year Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, directed by Fred Barney Taylor. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. The following year, 2008, it tied for Jury Award for Best Documentary at the International Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Also in 2007, Delany was the April "calendar boy" in the "Legends of the Village" calendar put out by Village Care of New York.[28]

In 2010, Delany was one of the five judges (along with Andrei Codrescu, Sabina Murray, Joanna Scott and Carolyn See) for the National Book Awards fiction category.[29] In 2015, the Caribbean Philosophical Association named Delany the recipient of its Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award.[30] In 2013 he received the Brudner Prize from Yale University, for his contributions to gay literature. Since 2018, his archive has been housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale where it is currently being organized. Till then, his papers were housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.[31]

In 1991, Delany entered a committed, nonexclusive relationship with Dennis Rickett, previously a homeless book vendor; their courtship is chronicled in the graphic memoir Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), a collaboration with the writer and artist Mia Wolff. In 2013, his comic book writer friend and planned literary executor, Robert Morales, passed away.[32] After fourteen years, in 2015, he retired from teaching at Temple University.[33] His last Science Fiction novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders appeared from Magnus Books on this birthday in 2012.

Delany is an atheist.[34]

Themes[]

Delany at a reading in 2015.

Recurring themes in Delany's work include mythology, memory, language, sexuality, and perception. Class, position in society, and the ability to move from one social stratum to another are motifs that were touched on in his earlier work and became more significant in both his later fiction and non-fiction. Many of Delany's later (mid-1980s and beyond) works have bodies of water (mostly oceans and rivers) as a common theme, as mentioned by Delany in The Polymath. Though not a theme, coffee, more than any other beverage, is mentioned significantly and often in many of Delany's fictions.

Writing itself (both prose and poetry) is also a repeated theme: several of his characters — Geo in The Jewels of Aptor, Vol Nonik in The Fall of the Towers, Rydra Wong in Babel-17, Ni Ty Lee in Empire Star, Katin Crawford in Nova, the Kid, Ernest Newboy, and William in Dhalgren, Arnold Hawley in Dark Reflections, John Marr and Timothy Hasler in The Mad Man, and Osudh in Phallos – are writers or poets of some sort.

Delany also makes use of repeated imagery: several characters (Hogg, The Kid (or Kidd) in Dhalgren, and the sensory-syrynx player, the Mouse, in Nova; Roger in "We .. move on a rigorous line") are known for wearing only one shoe; and nail biting along with rough, calloused (and sometimes veiny) hands as characteristics are given to individuals in a number of his fictions. Names are sometimes reused: "Bellona" is the name of a city in both Dhalgren and Triton, "Denny" is a character in both Dhalgren and Hogg (which were written almost concurrently despite being published two decades apart; and there is a Danny in "We ... move on a rigorous line"), and the name "Hawk" is used for five different characters in four separate stories – Hogg, the story "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" and the novella "The Einstein Intersection", and the short story "", where a character called Pig also appears.

Jewels, reflection, and refraction – not just the imagery but reflection and refraction of text and concepts – are also strong themes and metaphors in Delany's work. Titles such as The Jewels of Aptor, , "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", Driftglass, and Dark Reflections, along with the optic chain of prisms, mirrors, and lenses worn by several characters in Dhalgren, are a few examples of this; as in "We (...) move on a rigorous line" a ring is nearly obsessively described at every twist and turn of the plot. Reflection and refraction in narrative are explored in Dhalgren and take center stage in his Return to Nevèrÿon series.

Following the 1968 publication of Nova, there was not only a large gap in Delany's published work (after releasing eight novels and a novella between 1962 and 1968, his published output virtually stopped until 1973), there was also a notable addition to the themes found in the stories published after that time. It was at this point that Delany began dealing with sexual themes to an extent rarely equaled in serious writing. Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such as Equinox (originally published as The Tides of Lust, a title that Delany does not endorse), The Mad Man, Hogg and, Phallos can be considered pornography, a label Delany himself endorses.[35]

Novels such as Triton and the thousand-plus pages making up his four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series explored in detail how sexuality and sexual attitudes relate to the socioeconomic underpinnings of a primitive – or, in Triton's case, futuristic – society.[36] Even in works with no science fiction or fantasy content to speak of, such as Atlantis: Three Tales, The Mad Man, and Hogg, Delany pursued these questions by creating vivid pictures of New York and other American cities, now in the Jazz Age, now in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, New York private schools in the 1950s, as well as Greece and Europe in the 1960s,[37] and – in Hogg – generalized small-town America.[38] Phallos details the quest for happiness and security by a gay man from the island of Syracuse in the second-century reign of the Emperor Hadrian.[39] Dark Reflections is a contemporary novel, dealing with themes of repression, old age, and the writer's unrewarded life.[40]

Writer and academic C. Riley Snorton has addressed Triton's thematic engagement with gender, sexual, and racial difference and how their accommodations are instrumentalized in the state and institutional maintenance of social relations.[41] Despite the novel's infinite number subject positions and identities available through technological intervention, Snorton argues that Delany's proliferation of identities "take place within the context of increasing technologically determined biocentrism, where bodies are shaped into categories-cum-cartographies of (human) life, as determined by socially agreed-upon and scientifically mapped genetic routes."[42] Triton questions social and political imperatives towards anti-normativity insofar that these projects do not challenge but actually reify the constrictive categories of the human. In his book Afro-Fabulations, Tavia Nyong'o makes a similar argument in his analysis of "The Einstein Intersection." Citing Delany as a queer theorist, Nyong'o highlights the novella's "extended study of the enduring power of norms, written during the precise moment—'the 1960s'—when antinormative, anti-systemic movements in the United States and worldwide were at their peak."[43] Like Triton, "The Einstein Intersection" features characters that exist across a range of differences across gender, sexuality, and ability. This proliferation of identities "takes place within a concerted effort to sustain a gendered social order and to deliver a stable reproductive futurity through language" in the Lo society's caging of the non-functional "kages" who are denied language and care.[44] Both Nyong'o and Snorton connect Delany's work with Sylvia Wynter's "genres of being human,"[45] underscoring Delany's sustained thematic engagement with difference, normativity, and their potential subversions or reifications, and placing him as an important interlocutor in the fields of queer theory and black studies.

The Mad Man, Phallos, and Dark Reflections are linked in minor ways. The beast mentioned at the beginning of The Mad Man graces the cover of Phallos.[46]

Delany has also published seven books of literary criticism, with an emphasis on issues in science fiction and other paraliterary genres, comparative literature, and queer studies. He has commented that he believes that to omit the sexual practices that he portrays in his writing would limit the dialogue children and adults can have about it themselves, and that this lack of knowledge can kill people.[47]

Works[]

Fiction[]

Novels[]

Name Published ISBN Notes[6]
The Jewels of Aptor 1962 Published as Ace-Double F-173 together with Second Ending by James White
Captives of the Flame 1963 Published as Ace-Double F-199 together with The Psionic Menace by John Brunner, republished as the more definitive Out of the Dead City[48]
included in omnibus edition: The Fall of the Towers
The Towers of Toron 1964 Published as Ace-Double F-261 together with The Lunar Eye by Robert Moore Williams, included in omnibus edition: The Fall of the Towers
City of a Thousand Suns 1965 Published by Ace Books as F-322, included in omnibus edition: The Fall of the Towers
The Ballad of Beta-2 1965 Published as Ace-Double M-121 together with Alpha Yes, Terra No! by Emil Petaja; Nebula Award nominee, 1965 [49]
Empire Star 1966 Published as Ace-Double M-139 together with The Tree Lord of Imeten by Tom Purdom
Babel-17 1966 Published by Ace Books as F-388, Nebula Award winner, 1966;[4]
Hugo Award nominee, 1967[5]
The Einstein Intersection 1967 Published by Ace Books as F-427, Nebula Award winner, 1967[5]
Hugo Award nominee, 1968[50]
Nova 1968 0-553-10031-9 Hugo Award nominee, 1969[51]
The Tides of Lust 1973 0-86130-016-5 Published by Lancer Books as #71344, later reprinted under Delany's preferred title Equinox (1994), 1-56333-157-8.
Dhalgren 1975 0-553-14861-3 Nebula Award nominee, 1975[52]
Locus Award nominee, 1976[53]
Triton 1976 0-553-12680-6 Republished as Trouble on Triton in 1996 by Wesleyan University Press
Nebula Award nominee, 1976[53]
Empire 1978 0-425-03900-5 With Howard Chaykin
Visual novel
Published by Byron Preiss/Berkley Windhover
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand 1984 0-553-05053-2 Locus Award nominee, 1985[54]
Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 1987[55]
They Fly at Çiron 1993 0-9633637-1-9
The Mad Man 1994 1-56333-193-4
Hogg 1995 0-932511-91-0
Phallos 2004 0-917453-41-7
Dark Reflections 2007 0-7867-1947-8 Stonewall Book Award winner, 2008
Lambda Award nominee, 2007[56]
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders 2012 978-1-59350-203-4 Chapter 90 was inadvertently left out by the publisher, and was later published in Sensitive Skin magazine[57] Since then Delany has self-published a corrected edition on Amazon with a new cover by Mia Wolff, the missing chapter, and many cosmetic corrections.
2018 978-1-62963-440-1 Novella; includes essay "Racism and Science Fiction", "'Discourse in an Older Sense': Outspoken Interview", and Bibliography
2020 979-8654278791
2021 Published by Inpatient Press

Return to Nevèrÿon series[]

Main article: Return to Nevèrÿon (series)
Name Published ISBN Notes
Tales of Nevèrÿon 1979 0-553-12333-5 Locus Award nominee, 1980[58]
Neveryóna 1983 0-553-01434-X Novel
Flight from Nevèrÿon 1985 0-553-24856-1 Novellas
The Bridge of Lost Desire 1987 0-87795-931-5 Novellas
Revised as Return to Nevèrÿon (1994), 0-8195-6278-5

Short stories[]

Story First
Publication
Date[59]
Awards[6] Drift-
glass (1971) 		Distant Stars (1981), illustrated, 0-553-01336-X The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction (1983), 0-553-25610-6 Driftglass/
/Starshards (1993), 0-586-21422-4 		Atlantis: Three Tales (1995), 0-8195-5283-6 Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories (2003), 0-375-70671-2
"The Star Pit" Feb 1967 in Worlds of Tomorrow Hugo (nom) Yes Yes Yes
"Dog in a Fisherman's Net" May 1971 in Quark/3, Marilyn Hacker, Samuel R. Delany (ed.) Yes Yes Yes
"Corona"[60] Oct 1967 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Yes Yes Yes Yes
"Aye, and Gomorrah..." Oct 1967 in Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison (ed.) Hugo (nom), Nebula (win) Yes Yes Yes Yes
"Driftglass" Jun 1967 in If Nebula (nom) Yes Yes Yes
"We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line" May 1968 as "Lines of Power", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Hugo (nom), Nebula (nom) Yes Yes Yes Yes
"Cage of Brass" Jun 1968 in If Yes Yes Yes
"High Weir" Oct 1968 in If Yes Yes Yes
"Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" Dec 1968 in New Worlds Michael Moorcock and James Sallis (eds.) Hugo (win), Nebula (win) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
"Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo" Nov 1970 in Alchemy and Academe, Anne McCaffrey (ed.) Yes Yes Yes
"Prismatica" Oct 1977 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Hugo (nom) Yes Yes Yes
"Empire Star" 1966 as an Ace Double Yes
"Omegahelm" 1981 in Distant Stars Yes Yes Yes
"Ruins" 1981 in Distant Stars Yes Yes Yes
"Among the Blobs" 1988 in Mississippi Review 47/48 Yes Yes
"The Desert of Time" May 1992 in Omni
"Citre et Trans" 1993 in Driftglass/Starshards Yes Yes
"Erik, Gwen, and D.H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling" 1993 in Driftglass/Starshards Yes Yes
"Atlantis: Model 1924" 1995 in Atlantis: Three Tales Yes
"Tapestry" 2003 in Aye and Gomorrah Yes
"In The Valley of the Nest of Spiders" 2007 in Black Clock[61]
"The Hermit of Houston" Sep 2017 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction[62] Locus (win)[63]
"To the Fordham" 6 Dec 2019 in Boston Review[64]

Comics/Graphic Novels[]

Wonder Woman, 1972;

Empire, art by Howard V. Chaykin, 1978;

“Seven Moons’ Light Casts Complex Shadows” in Epic Illustrated #2, art by Howard Chaykin, pages 67–74, June 1980;[65]

Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York, art by Mia Wolff, introduction by Alan Moore, 1999

Anthologies[]

  • Quark/1 (1970, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)
  • Quark/2 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)
  • Quark/3 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)
  • Quark/4 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)
  • Nebula Winners 13 (1980, science fiction)

Nonfiction[]

Critical works[]

  • : Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1977; Wesleyan University Press revised edition 2009, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney[66])
  • : Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1978; Wesleyan University Press 2014, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney[67])
  • : More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1984; Wesleyan University Press, 2012, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney[68])
  • Wagner/Artaud: A Play of 19th and 20th Century Critical Fictions (Ansatz Press, 1988) 0-945195-01-X
  • The Straits of Messina (1989), 0-934933-04-9
  • Silent Interviews (1995), 0-8195-6280-7
  • Longer Views (1996) with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 0-8195-6293-9
  • Shorter Views (1999), 0-8195-6369-2
  • (2005), 0-8195-6716-7
  • (2009), edited by Carl Freedman, University of Mississippi Press.
  • "Racism and Science Fiction" (1998), New York Review of Science Fiction, Issue 120.
  • DUETS: Frederick Weston & Samuel R. Delany in Conversation (Visual AIDS, 2021) 978-1-7326415-3-2

Memoirs and letters[]

  • Heavenly Breakfast (1979), a memoir of a New York City commune during the so-called Summer of Love, 0-553-12796-9
  • The Motion of Light in Water (1988), a memoir of his experiences as a young gay science fiction writer; winner of the Hugo Award, 0-87795-947-1
  • Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (NYU Press, 1999; 2019, 20th anniversary edition with foreword by Robert Reid-Pharr), a discussion of changes in social and sexual interaction in New York's Times Square, 0-8147-1919-8; 978-1-4798-2777-0
  • Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), an autobiographical comic drawn by Mia Wolff with an introduction by Alan Moore, 1-890451-02-9
  • (2000) with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 0-9665998-1-0
  • (2017), edited and with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 978-0-8195-7089-5. 2018 Locus Award Finalist (non-fiction) [69]
  • (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), with foreword by Nalo Hopkinson, 9780819578204

Introductions[]

  • The Adventures of Alyx, by Joanna Russ
  • We Who Are About To..., by Joanna Russ
  • Black Gay Man by Robert Reid-Pharr
  • Burning Sky, Selected Stories, by Rachel Pollack
  • Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1 by Herukhuti
  • The Cosmic Rape, by Theodore Sturgeon
  • Glory Road, by Robert A. Heinlein
  • Microcosmic God, by Theodore Sturgeon
  • The Magic: (October 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny, selected and introduced by Samuel R. Delany
  • Masters of the Pit, by Michael Moorcock
  • Nebula Winners 13, edited by Samuel R. Delany
  • A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, by Baird Searles, Martin Last, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin; foreword by Samuel R. Delany
  • The Sandman: A Game of You, by Neil Gaiman
  • Shade: An Anthology of Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent, edited by Charles Rowell and Bruce Morrow

See also[]

  • LGBT themes in speculative fiction

Explanatory notes[]

  1. ^ Delany's name is one of the most misspelled in science fiction, with over 60 different spellings in reviews. Bravard and Peplow (1984), pp. 69–75. His publisher Doubleday even misspelled his name on the title page of his book Driftglass, as did the organizers of Balticon in 1982 where Delany was guest of honor.

References[]

Citations[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c Samuel R. Delany at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved April 13, 2013. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
  2. ^ "Inkpot Award". Comic-Con International: San Diego. December 6, 2012.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c Pohl, Frederik (November 20, 2010). "Chip Delany". The Way The Future Blogs. Retrieved November 20, 2010.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b "1966 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c "1967 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "Delany, Samuel" Archived October 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. The Locus Index to SF Awards: Index of Literary Nominees. Locus Publications. Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  7. ^ "Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame". Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. Retrieved March 22, 2013. This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004.
  8. ^ "Retirement party announcement". Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved August 20, 2015.
  9. ^ Samuel Delany – a,b,c: three short novels
  10. ^ "The Eaton Awards". Eaton Science Fiction Conference. University of California, Riverside (ucr.edu). Retrieved April 6, 2013.
  11. ^ "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master". Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  12. ^ "Introducing Our Class of 2021". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. April 5, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  13. ^ Delany, The Motion of Light in Water, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, p. 42.
  14. ^ Delany, Samuel R. "Coming/Out". In Shorter Views (Wesleyan University Press, 1999).
  15. ^ Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath. Contemporary African American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook; Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999; pp. 115–116.
  16. ^ Samuel Delany – The Motion of Light in Water.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b Budrys, Algis (October 1967). "Galaxy Bookshelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 188–194.
  18. ^ Judith, Merril (November 1967). "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. p. 29.
  19. ^ Weedman, Jane B. Samuel R. Delany. Mercer Island, Wash: Starmont House, 1982. Print. p. 33.
  20. ^ Maxin, Tyler (18 May 2019). "Three Films by Samuel R. Delaney [sic]". Screen Slate.
  21. ^ "Samuel R. Delany by K. Leslie Steiner". www.pseudopodium.org.
  22. ^ "GCD :: Issue :: Wonder Woman #202". www.comics.org.
  23. ^ Delany, Samuel R. "Dhalgren". Retrieved March 19, 2011.
  24. ^ "Wonder Woman, series 1, issues #199–#264, March 1972 – February 1980". www.wonderland-site.com. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
  25. ^ Desta, Yohana (10 October 2017). "How Gloria Steinem Saved Wonder Woman". Vanity Fair.
  26. ^ Matsuuchi, Ann (2012). "Wonder Woman Wears Pants: Wonder Woman, Feminism and the 1972 'Women's Lib' Issue" (PDF). Colloquy (24).
  27. ^ Samuel Delany will teach a seminar... – Critical Inquiry. Facebook. Retrieved May 25, 2014.
  28. ^ "A legendary night for Village Care". www.thevillager.com. November 22–28, 2006. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
  29. ^ "2010 National Book Awards web page". www.nationalbook.org. November 17, 2010. Archived from the original on July 22, 2017. Retrieved January 5, 2011.
  30. ^ "Nicholas Guillen Award". www.caribbeanphilosophicalassociation.org.
  31. ^ "The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center web page listing collections for Samuel R. Delany". Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. Archived from the original on April 27, 2011. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
  32. ^ Delany, Samuel R. as interviewed by Junot Diaz (9 May 2017). "Radicalism Begins in the Body". Boston Review.
  33. ^ "College of Liberal Arts – Archive". Retrieved August 19, 2015.
  34. ^ "Though I'm an atheist, I think Santa is a generous, large-hearted image that has lost a lot of its religious baggage. Besides, respecting other folks' religions is a good quality – at least in terms of their good intentions. It's among the primary American values; it's what our country was founded on. " – (December 8, 2009) "Bad Santa", Philadelphia City Paper.
  35. ^ Samuel Delany – Shorter Views – Chapter 13: "Pornography and Censorship"
  36. ^ Fox, Robert Elliot. "The Politics of Desire in Delany's Triton and Tides of Lust." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 141, Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Accessed 12 July 2018. Originally published in Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany, edited by James Sallis, University Press of Mississippi, 1996, pp. 43-61.
  37. ^ Little Jr., Arthur L. "Delany, Samuel R. (1942– )." African American Writers, edited by Valerie Smith, 2nd ed., vol. 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001, pp. 149-165. Gale Virtual Reference Library, Accessed 12 July 2018.
  38. ^ Hemmingson, Michael. "In the scorpion garden: 'Hogg.'." The Review of Contemporary Fiction, vol. 16, no. 3, 1996, p. 125+. Literature Resource Center, Accessed 12 July 2018.
  39. ^ Linds, Justin (10 October 2013). "'Phallos' by Samuel R. Delany". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  40. ^ Cheney, Matthew. "On Samuel R. Delany’s ‘Dark Reflections.'" Los Angeles Review of Books. 09 October 2016.
  41. ^ Snorton, C. Riley (Summer 2014). ""An Ambiguous Heterotopia": On the Past of Black Studies' Future". The Black Scholar. 44 (2): 29–36. doi:10.1080/00064246.2014.11413685. JSTOR 10.5816/blackscholar.44.2.0029. S2CID 141748700.
  42. ^ Snorton, C. Riley (Summer 2014). ""An Ambiguous Heterotopia": On the Past of Black Studies' Future". The Black Scholar. 44 (2): 33. doi:10.1080/00064246.2014.11413685. JSTOR 10.5816/blackscholar.44.2.0029. S2CID 141748700.
  43. ^ Nyong'o, Tavia (2019). Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. New York: NYU Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-1-4798-8844-3.
  44. ^ Nyong'o, Tavia (2019). Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. New York: NYU Press. pp. 163–64. ISBN 978-1-4798-8844-3.
  45. ^ Nyong'o, Tavia (2019). Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. New York: NYU Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-1-4798-8844-3.
  46. ^ Scott, Darieck (13 September 2012). "Delany's Divinities". American Literary History. 24 (4): 702–722. doi:10.1093/alh/ajs045. S2CID 145175953.
  47. ^ Samuel R Delany and Mia Wolff discuss Bread and Wine at the Strand. YouTube (June 18, 2012). Retrieved May 25, 2014.
  48. ^ The Fall of the Towers mass market paperback, introduction.
  49. ^ "1965 Nebula Awards". Retrieved August 22, 2018. /
  50. ^ "1968 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  51. ^ "1969 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  52. ^ "1975 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  53. ^ Jump up to: a b "1976 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  54. ^ "1985 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  55. ^ "1987 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  56. ^ Cerna, Antonio Gonzales. "Previous Lammy Award Winners: 20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards". Lambda Literary. Archived from the original on May 4, 2007. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
  57. ^ Delany, Samuel R. (December 2012). "Chapter 90 – Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders". Sensitive Skin.
  58. ^ "1980 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  59. ^ "Samuel R. Delany – Summary Bibliography". Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
  60. ^ Delany, Samuel (1995). Rabkin, Eric S. (ed.). Stories: An Anthology and an Introduction. Harper Collins College Publishers. pp. 342–355. ISBN 0060453273. OCLC 750610737. Includes study and writing questions for teaching the story "Corona" in undergraduate college writing courses.
  61. ^ "In The Valley of the Nest of Spiders". Black Clock #7. Spring–Summer 2007.
  62. ^ Van Gelder, Gordon. "Sep–Oct 2017 issue – F&SF Forum". www.sfsite.com. Retrieved August 16, 2017.
  63. ^ "Announcing the 2018 Locus Awards Winners". Tor.com. 23 June 2018.
  64. ^ Delany, Samuel R. (6 December 2019). "To the Fordham". Boston Review. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  65. ^ "Samuel R. Delany collection | Manuscript and Archival Collection Finding Aids". library.udel.edu.
  66. ^ Delany, Samuel (2009). The Jewel-Hinged Jaw. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819572462. Retrieved August 20, 2015.
  67. ^ Delany, Samuel (2014). The American Shore. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819574206. Retrieved August 20, 2015.
  68. ^ Delany, Samuel (2012). Starboard Wine. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819572943. Retrieved August 20, 2015. delany starboard wine.
  69. ^ locusmag (30 April 2018). "2018 Locus Awards Finalists". locusmag.com.

General sources[]

  • Barbour, Douglas (1979). Worlds Out of Words: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany. Frome, Somerset, UK: Bran's Head Books Ltd. ISBN 978-0-905220-13-0.
  • Bravard, Robert S.; Peplow, Michael W. (1984). "Through a glass darkly: Bibliographing Samuel R. Delany". Black American Literature Forum. 18 (2): 69–75. doi:10.2307/2904129. JSTOR 2904129.

External links[]

By Delany[]

Retrieved from ""