Dhalgren (Samuel Delany, 1975)

Whatever has befallen Bellona prevents all radio and television signals, even phone messages, from entering or leaving the city—and may have created a rift in space-time itself: One night the perpetual cloud cover parts to reveal two moons in the darkness. One day a red sun swollen to hundreds of times the size it ordinarily appears rises to terrify the populace, then sets—and the same featureless cloud cover returns, with no hint that it was ever otherwise. Street signs and landmarks shift constantly, while time appears to contract and dilate. Buildings burn for days, but are never consumed, while others burn and later show no signs of damage. Gangs roam the nighttime streets, their members hidden within holographic projections of gigantic insects or mythological creatures. The few people left in Bellona struggle with survival, boredom, and each other. It is their reactions to (and dealings with) the strange happenings and isolation in the city that are the focus of the novel, rather than the happenings themselves.

The story's protagonist is a nameless drifter, nicknamed "Kid" (also referred to as "the Kid", "Kidd", and often just "kid"), who wears only one sandal, shoe, or boot. He appears to be intermittently schizophrenic: Not only does the novel end in schizoid babble (which recurs at various points in the text), he has memories of a stay in a mental hospital, and his perception of the "changes in reality" sometimes differs from that of the other characters. He also suffers from significant memory loss.

Nova (Samuel Delany, 1968)

The balance of galactic power in the 31st century revolves around Illyrion, the most precious energy source in the universe. Captain Lorq van Ray's varied and exotic crew know their mission is dangerous, but they have no idea of Lorq's secret obsession to gather Illyrion from an imploding star.

Rating: 9/10

Babel-17 (Samuel Delany, 1966)

In the far future, after human civilization has spread through the galaxy, communications begin to arrive in an apparently alien language. They appear to threaten invasion, but in order to counter the threat, the messages must first be understood. BABEL-17 is the novel which catapulted Samuel R. Delany into the front rank of sf writers.

Rating: 9/10

Samuel Delany (1942 - )

One of science fiction's most influential authors and critics, Samuel R. Delany was born and raised in Harlem, New York and educated at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science. He became famous as a youthful prodigy when he published his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor (1962), at the age of twenty. This was quickly followed by the The Fall of the Towers trilogy (1963-65), and two more novels, each published in 1966: Empire Star, and the Nebula award-winning Babel-17.

In 1967, Delany helped ring in the "New Wave of Science Fiction" with short stories emphasizing cultural speculation, the soft sciences, and mythology, as opposed to technology and the hard sciences. Written in this vein, the short story "Aye, and Gomorrah..." (1967) won a Nebula award, and the novelette "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (1969) won a Hugo award and a Nebula.

In Delany's next novel, The Einstein Intersection (1967), the human race has been replaced by a race of aliens who take on human traditions in an attempt to make coherent sense of the human artifacts among which they live; Delany’s own diaries provide part of the text. Nova, published in 1968, combines a Prometheus story and the Grail story into an ebulliently inventive space opera.

Still publishing an occasional work of fiction, including the best seller Dhalgren (1975) and the Neveryon series (begun in 1979), Delany increasingly returned to critical writing in subsequent years, which eventually led him into academia. In 1985, he received the Pilgrim Award for excellence in science fiction criticism, and he is presently a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Selected Bibliography:
The Jewels of Aptor (1962)
Empire Star (1966)
Babel-17 (1966)
The Einstein Intersection (1967)
Nova (1968)
Dhalgren (1975)
Tales of Neveryon (1979)

Courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Copyright © John Clute and Peter Nicholls 1993. 1999, published by Orbit, an imprint of the Time Warner Book Group UK.