Samuel R. Delany | |
|---|---|
 Samuel R. Delany in 2022 | |
| Born | Samuel Ray Delany Jr. (1942-04-01)April 1, 1942 (age 83) Harlem, New York City, U.S. |
| Pen name | K. Leslie Steiner, S. L. Kermit |
| Occupation |
|
| Education | City College of New York |
| Period | 1962–present[1] |
| Genre | Science fiction, fantasy, autobiography,creative nonfiction,erotic literature,literary criticism |
| Subject | Science fiction,lesbian and gay studies,eroticism |
| Literary movement | New Wave,Afrofuturism |
| Notable works | Babel-17,Hogg,The Einstein Intersection,Nova,Dhalgren,The Motion of Light in Water,Dark Reflections |
| Notable awards | |
| Spouse | |
| Partner | Dennis Rickett (1991–present) |
| Children | Iva Hacker-Delany |
| Website | |
| samueldelany | |
Samuel R. "Chip"Delany (/dəˈleɪni/,də-LAY-nee; born April 1, 1942) is an American writer andliterary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays on science fiction, literature,sexuality, and society.
His fiction includesBabel-17,The Einstein Intersection (winners of theNebula Award for 1966 and 1967, respectively);Hogg,Nova,Dhalgren, theReturn to Nevèrÿon series, andThrough the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His nonfiction includesTimes Square Red, Times Square Blue,About Writing, and eight books of essays. He has won four Nebula awards and twoHugo Awards, and he was inducted into theScience Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002.
From January 1975 to May 2015,[5][6] he was a professor of English, Comparative Literature, and/or Creative Writing atSUNY Buffalo,SUNY Albany, theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst, andTemple University.
In 1997, he won theKessler Award; further, in 2010, he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academicEaton Science Fiction Conference atUCR Libraries.[7] TheScience Fiction Writers of America named him its 30thSFWA Grand Master in 2013,[8] and in 2016, he was inducted into theNew York State Writers Hall of Fame. Delany received the 2021Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award.
Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. was born on April 1, 1942,[9] and raised inHarlem.[10] His mother, Margaret Carey (Boyd) Delany (1916–1995), was a clerk in theNew 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. The family lived in the top two floors of a three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings.[citation needed]
Delany was born into an accomplished and ambitious family of theAfrican-American upper class. His grandfather,Henry Beard Delany (1858—1928), was born into slavery, but after emancipation became educated, a priest and the first black bishop of theEpiscopal Church.[11] Civil rights pioneersSadie andBessie Delany were among his paternal aunts.[10] (He drew from their lives as the basis for characters Elsie and Corry in "Atlantis: Model 1924", the opening novella in his semi-autobiographical collectionAtlantis: Three Tales.) Other notable family members include his aunt,Harlem Renaissance poetClarissa Scott Delany, and his uncle, judgeHubert Thomas Delany.[12]
Delany attended the privateDalton School and, from 1951 through 1956, spent summers at Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, New York.[13] He studied at the merit-basedBronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attendCamp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany's first published short story, "Salt", appeared inDynamo, Bronx Science's literary magazine, in 1960.[14]
Delany's father died from lung cancer in October 1960. The following year, in August 1961, Delany married poet/translatorMarilyn Hacker, and the couple settled in New York'sEast Village neighborhood at 629 East 5th Street. Hacker was working as an assistant editor atAce Books, and her intervention helped Delany become a published science fiction author by the age of 20.[15] He had finished writing that first novel (The Jewels of Aptor, published in 1962)[10] while 19, shortly after dropping out of theCity College of New York after one semester.
His next work was the trilogyThe Fall of the Towers, followed byThe Ballad of Beta-2 andBabel-17; he described his writing in this period, and his marriage to Hacker, in his memoirThe Motion of Light in Water. In 1966, while Hacker remained in New York, Delany took a five-month trip to France, England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.[16] During this period, he wroteThe Einstein Intersection.[17] He drew on these locales in several works, includingNova and the short stories "Aye, and Gomorrah" and "Dog in a Fisherman's Net". These works received critical praise:Algis Budrys called Delany a genius and poet and listed him withJ. G. Ballard,Brian W. Aldiss, andRoger Zelazny as "an earthshaking new kind" of writer,[17] while Judith Merril labeled him "TNT (The New Thing)".[18]Babel-17 andThe Einstein Intersection won theNebula Award for Best Novel in 1966 and 1967, respectively.[19][20]
"The Star-Pit", Delany's first professional short story, was published byFrederick Pohl in the February 1967 issue ofWorlds of Tomorrow, and he placed three more in other magazines that year.[1] In 1968, he published four more short stories (including "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", winner of theHugo Award for Best Short Story in 1970)[21] andNova. This was published byDoubleday, marking Delany's departure from Ace; it was his last science fiction novel untilDhalgren in 1975.
Weeks after Delany's return, he and Hacker began to live separately. Delany played and lived communally for five months on theLower East Side with the Heavenly Breakfast, afolk-rock band whose other members were Susan Schweers, Steven Greenbaum (aka Wiseman), and Bert Lee (later a founding member of theCentral Park Sheiks). Delany wrote a memoir of his experiences with the band and communal life, which was eventually published asHeavenly Breakfast (1979). After he and Hacker briefly came together again, she moved to San Francisco. On New Year's Eve in 1968, Delany joined her; they then moved to London. In the summer of 1971 Delany returned to New York, where he lived at the Albert Hotel inGreenwich Village.
In 1972, Delany directed a short film entitledThe Orchid (originally titledThe Science Fiction Film in the Latter Twentieth Century), produced by Barbara Wise.[22] Shot in16 mm with color and sound, the production also employed David Wise,Adolfas Mekas, and was scored by John Herbert McDowell.[23] That November, Delany was a visiting writer atWesleyan University's Center for the Humanities.[24]
That year, Delany wrote two issues of the comic bookWonder Woman,[25] during a controversial period when the lead character abandoned her superpowers and became a secret agent.[26] Delany scripted issues No. 202 and No. 203 of the series.[27] 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 afterGloria Steinem led a lobbying effort protesting the removal of Wonder Woman's powers, a change predating Delany's involvement.[28] Scholar Ann Matsuuchi concluded that Steinem's feedback was "conveniently used as an excuse" by DC management.[29]
From December 1972 to December 1974, Delany and Hacker lived inMarylebone, London. During this period, Delany began working with sexual themes in earnest and wrote two pornographic works,Equinox (originally published asThe Tides of Lust), andHogg, which was unpublishable at the time due to its transgressive content; it did not find print until 1995.
Delany's eleventh novel,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). It sold more than one million copies. After a lengthy exchange of letters withLeslie Fiedler, Delany returned to the United States at Fiedler's behest to teach at theUniversity at Buffalo as Visiting Butler Professor of English for the spring 1975 semester. That summer he returned to New York City.
Though he published two more major science fiction novels (Triton andStars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand) in the decade followingDhalgren, Delany began to work in fantasy and science fiction criticism. Beginning withThe Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977), a collection of critical essays that applied then-nascentliterary theory to science fiction studies, he published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. He was also a visiting fellow at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1977 and theUniversity at Albany in 1978. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s wasReturn to Nevèrÿon, a four-volume series ofsword and sorcery tales.
In 1987, Delany was a visiting fellow atCornell University. The next year, he became a professor of comparative literature at theUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. He held this post for 11 years, before spending a year and a half as an English professor at theUniversity at Buffalo.
Delany's works in the 1990s includedThey Fly at Çiron, a re-written and expanded version of an unpublished short story he had written in 1962, and his last novel in either the science fiction or fantasy genres for many years. He also published his novelThe Mad Man and several essay collections, includingTimes Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), a pair of essays in which Delany drew on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelopTimes Square and the public sex lives of working-class men in New York City. Delany received theBill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement fromPublishing Triangle in 1993; he has described this as the award of which he is proudest.[30]
After an invited stay at the artist's communityYaddo, he moved to the English Department ofTemple University in January 2001, where he taught until his retirement in April 2015. In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film,The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, directed byFred Barney Taylor. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007Tribeca Film Festival, and in 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.[31] In 2008, his novelDark Reflections was a winner of theStonewall Book Award.[32]
In 2010, Delany was one of five judges (along withAndrei Codrescu,Sabina Murray,Joanna Scott andCarolyn See) for theNational Book Awards fiction category.[33]
His science fiction novelThrough the Valley of the Nest of Spiders was published by Magnus Books on his birthday in 2012. In 2013 he received theBrudner Prize from Yale University, for his contributions to gay literature. The same year, his comic book writer friend and planned literary executor,Robert Morales, died.[34] He served asCritical Inquiry Visiting Professor at theUniversity of Chicago during the winter quarter of 2014.[35] In 2015, the year Delany retired from teaching at Temple University,[36] theCaribbean Philosophical Association awarded him its Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award.[37]
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 theHoward Gotlieb Archival Research Center.[38]
As a child, Delany envied children with nicknames. He 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.[39] 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."[9]
Delany's name is one of the most misspelled in science fiction, having been misspelled on over 60 occasions in reviews.[40] His publisherDoubleday misspelled his name on the title page ofDriftglass, as did the organizers ofBalticon in 1982 where Delany was guest of honor.
Delany has identified as gay since adolescence.[41] However, some observers have described him as bisexual due to his complicated 19-year marriage with poet/translatorMarilyn Hacker, who was aware of Delany's orientation and has identified as a lesbian since their divorce.[42]
Delany and Hacker had one child in 1974, Iva Hacker-Delany, now a physician.[43][44]
In 1991, Delany entered a committed,nonexclusive relationship with Dennis Rickett, previously a homeless book vendor. Their courtship is chronicled in the graphic memoirBread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), a collaboration with the writer and artistMia Wolff.
Delany is a supporter ofNAMBLA.[46]
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.[47] Titles such asThe Jewels of Aptor,The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones",Driftglass, andDark Reflections, along with the optic chain of prisms, mirrors, and lenses worn by several characters inDhalgren, 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 inDhalgren and take center stage in his Return to Nevèrÿon series.
Following the 1968 publication ofNova, 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 extensively withsexual themes.Dhalgren andStars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such asEquinox (originally published asThe Tides of Lust, a title that Delany does not endorse),The Mad Man,Hogg andPhallos can be considered pornography, a label Delany himself uses.[48]
Novels such asTriton 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, inTriton's case, futuristic – society.[49]Even in works with no science fiction or fantasy content to speak of, such asAtlantis: Three Tales,The Mad Man, andHogg, Delany pursued these questions by creating vivid pictures of New York and other American cities, now in theJazz Age, now in the first decade of theAIDS epidemic, New Yorkprivate schools in the 1950s, as well as Greece and Europe in the 1960s,[50] and – inHogg – generalized small-town America.[51]Phallos details the quest for happiness and security by a gay man from the island ofSyracuse in the second-century reign of the EmperorHadrian.[52]Dark Reflections is a contemporary novel, dealing with themes of repression, old age, and the writer's unrewarded life.[53]
Writer and academicC. Riley Snorton has addressedTriton's thematic engagement with gender, sexual, and racial difference and how their accommodations are instrumentalized in the state and institutional maintenance of social relations.[54] Despite the novel's infinite number of subject positions and identities available through technological intervention, Snorton argues that Delany's proliferation of identities "take place within the context of increasing technologically determinedbiocentrism, where bodies are shaped into categories-cum-cartographies of (human) life, as determined by socially agreed-upon and scientifically mapped genetic routes."[55]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 bookAfro-Fabulations,Tavia Nyong'o makes a similar argument in his analysis ofThe Einstein Intersection. Citing Delany as aQueer 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."[56] LikeTriton,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 agendered 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.[57] Both Nyong'o and Snorton connect Delany's work withSylvia Wynter's "genres of being human",[58] 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 andBlack studies.
The Mad Man,Phallos, andDark Reflections are linked in minor ways. The beast mentioned at the beginning ofThe Mad Man graces the cover ofPhallos.[59]
| Name | Published | ISBN | Notes[70] |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Jewels of Aptor | 1962 | Published asAce-Double F-173 together withSecond Ending byJames White | |
| Captives of the Flame | 1963 | Published asAce-Double F-199 together withThe Psionic Menace byJohn Brunner, republished as the more definitiveOut of the Dead City[71] included in omnibus edition:The Fall of the Towers | |
| The Towers of Toron | 1964 | Published asAce-Double F-261 together withThe Lunar Eye byRobert Moore Williams, included in omnibus edition:The Fall of the Towers | |
| City of a Thousand Suns | 1965 | Published byAce Books as F-322, included in omnibus edition:The Fall of the Towers | |
| The Ballad of Beta-2 | 1965 | Published asAce-Double M-121 together withAlpha Yes, Terra No! byEmil Petaja;Nebula Award nominee, 1965[72] | |
| Empire Star | 1966 | Published asAce-Double M-139 together withThe Tree Lord of Imeten byTom Purdom | |
| Babel-17 | 1966 | Published byAce Books as F-388,Nebula Awardwinner, 1966;[73] Hugo Award nominee, 1967[74] | |
| The Einstein Intersection | 1967 | Published by Ace Books as F-427, Nebula Awardwinner, 1967[74] Hugo Award nominee, 1968[75] | |
| Nova | 1968 | 0-553-10031-9 | Hugo Award nominee, 1969[76] |
| The Tides of Lust | 1973 | 0-86130-016-5 | Published byLancer Books as #71344, later reprinted under Delany's preferred titleEquinox (1994),1-56333-157-8. |
| Dhalgren | 1975 | 0-553-14861-3 | Nebula Award nominee, 1975[77] Locus Award nominee, 1976[78] |
| Triton | 1976 | 0-553-12680-6 | Republished asTrouble on Triton in 1996 byWesleyan University Press Nebula Award nominee, 1976[78] |
| Empire | 1978 | 0-425-03900-5 | WithHoward Chaykin Graphic novel Published byByron Preiss/Berkley Windhover |
| Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand | 1984 | 0-553-05053-2 | Locus Award nominee, 1985[79] Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 1987[80] |
| 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 Awardwinner, 2008 Lambda Award nominee, 2007[81] |
| 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 inSensitive Skin magazine[82] 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. |
| The Atheist in the Attic | 2018 | 978-1-62963-440-1 | Novella; includes essay "Racism and Science Fiction", "'Discourse in an Older Sense': Outspoken Interview", and Bibliography |
| Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideas | 2020 | 979-8654278791 | |
| Big Joe | 2021 | Illustrated byDrake Carr and Sabrina Bockler. Published by Inpatient Press Lambda Literary Award winner, LGBTQ Erotica, 2022[83] | |
| This Short Day of Frost and Sun | 2022— | Serially published inThe Georgia Review from Summer 2022[84] |
| Name | Published | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tales of Nevèrÿon | 1979 | 0-553-12333-5 | Locus Award nominee, 1980;[85] National Book Award for Science Fiction finalist, 1980[86] |
| 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 asReturn to Nevèrÿon (1994),0-8195-6278-5 |
| Story | First Publication Date[87] | Awards[70] | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Salt" | 1960 inDynamo[14] | |||||||
| "The Star Pit" | Feb 1967 inWorlds of Tomorrow | Hugo (nom) | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| "Dog in a Fisherman's Net" | May 1971 inQuark/3,Marilyn Hacker, Samuel R. Delany (ed.) | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| "Corona"[88] | Oct 1967 inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| "Aye, and Gomorrah..." | Oct 1967 inDangerous Visions,Harlan Ellison (ed.) | Hugo (nom),Nebula (win) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| "Driftglass" | Jun 1967 inIf | 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 inIf | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| "High Weir" | Oct 1968 inIf | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" | Dec 1968 inNew WorldsMichael Moorcock andJames Sallis (eds.) | Hugo (win),Nebula (win) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| "Tapestry" | Apr 1970 inNew American Review 9 (under the title "The Unicorn Tapestry") | Yes | ||||||
| "Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo" | Nov 1970 inAlchemy and Academe,Anne McCaffrey (ed.) | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| "Prismatica" | Oct 1977 inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction | Hugo (nom) | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| "Empire Star" | 1966 as an Ace Double | Yes | ||||||
| "Omegahelm" | 1981 inDistant Stars | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| "Ruins" | 1981 inDistant Stars | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| "Among the Blobs" | 1988 inMississippi Review 47/48 | Yes | Yes | |||||
| "The Desert of Time" | May 1992 inOmni | |||||||
| "Citre et Trans" | 1993 inDriftglass/Starshards | Yes | Yes | |||||
| "Erik, Gwen, and D.H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling"[89] | 1993 inDriftglass/Starshards | Yes | Yes | |||||
| "Atlantis: Model 1924" | 1995 inAtlantis: Three Tales | Yes | ||||||
| "The Spendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities" | 1996 inReview of Contemporary Fiction; repr.2021 inOut of the Ruins ed. by Preston Grassmann | |||||||
| "In The Valley of the Nest of Spiders" | 2007 inBlack Clock[90] | |||||||
| "The Hermit of Houston" | Sep 2017 inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction[91] | Locus (win)[92] | ||||||
| "To the Fordham" | Dec 6, 2019 inBoston Review[93] | |||||||
| "The Wyrm" | January 10, 2022, inThe Baffler[94] | |||||||
| "First Trip to Brewster" | Nov 2022 inAstra Magazine[95] |
delany starboard wine.
