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Nova
Nova
Nova
Ebook326 pages6 hours

Nova

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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A quest for a priceless element—and revenge—fuels this far-future interstellar adventure that “reads like Moby-Dick at a strobe-light show” (Time).
  In 3172, the universe is divided between three political units: the stars and worlds of Draco, with Earth as its power center; the Pleiades Federation, on whose capital world, New Ark, lives the incredibly wealthy Von Ray family, descended from well-heeled merchants whose ancestors made their fortune as pirates; and the Outer Colonies, where, in their underwater mines, tiny quantities of the fabulously valuable Illyrion have been discovered. Lorq Von Ray was a playboy and young space-yacht-racing captain who, at a party at Earth’s Paris, clashed with Draco’s Prince Red. This sets Lorq on a demonic quest, through which he hopes to find vengeance.
When a star goes nova and implodes, in the seething stellar wreckage for a few days—even hours—lie tons of Illyrion, the element that makes interstellar travel possible. To help him secure the priceless fuel, Lorq recruits a gypsy musician, a would-be novelist, and some other ragtag misfits. But an even more dangerous fuel than Illyrion is revenge . . .
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.  
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 7, 2014
ISBN9781480461703
Nova
Author

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany published his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, at the age of twenty. Throughout his storied career, he has received four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, and in 2008 his novel Dark Reflections won the Stonewall Book Award. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002, named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2014, and in 2016 was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Delany’s works also extend into memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. After many years as a professor of English and creative writing and director of the graduate creative writing program at Temple University, he retired from teaching in 2015. He lives in Philadelphia with his partner, Dennis Rickett.  

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Reviews for Nova

Rating: 3.6329923063938616 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

391 ratings17 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Would have been better as a short story; the flashbacks were weak; the plot didn't really tie together in the end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not my favorite style of SF. Some parts are really well written.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Interesting storyline, but I never quite got captured by it. I felt that the story was broken down in disconnected fragments. It might have had to do with me never getting enough time reading. Each time I took it up again I had to go back to see what was going on.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What marks Delany as a cut above is that he doesn't go for the most obvious approach to a subject- though the first few chapters suggest it, this isn't a science-fiction take on Moby-Dick. Sure, that quintessential American classic is one point of reference for the nature of Captain Lorq Von Ray and his quest, and there are intentional parallels to that story, but Von Ray is more than just Ahab in a spaceship. Nor is this purely a science-fiction grail quest. Delany draws from these sources of inspiration and makes the story his own.

    Nova gives us some interesting and developed characters: think how rare a character like Katin is, a protagonist that isn't liked very much by most of his crew-mates, but who isn't a martyr or unjustly persecuted or bullied, he's just a guy the rest of the crew find annoying. There may be a few more characters than necessary, however, as Lynceos, Idas, Sebastian, and Tyy weren't very developed. Prince may have been a one-note purely evil antagonist, but his sister Ruby was more developed and dynamic, and their relationship with each other was interesting as well. Despite the cast of characters being small, this didn't cause the universe of Nova to feel artificially small, in fact the universe was impressively developed considering how short the book is.

    In a few hundred pages Delany gives us a world of different political factions, economic systems, rival families, and (more importantly for me) a host of interesting settings. From Istanbul of Earth to the City of Perpetual Night, from the largest museum in the universe to Hell^3, the quest of this story spans the universe, each location being memorable and interesting. It's reminiscent of globe-trotting adventure movies like Indiana Jones, exotic locale followed by exotic locale, but while reading the book it never felt like Delany was throwing in new settings just to entertain (not that I'd complain if that were his motivation). Instead the settings gave context to, and magnified the action of, the story.

    I'm making this book sound like a pulp sci-fi adventure or space opera, and in many ways it truly is primarily an adventure novel, but what pulls it out of the category of pulp is that Delany can really write, and that Delany uses the story to speak to what it means to belong, the process of writing a novel, and what it means to live more generally. Nova has something to say about the human condition, something that us fans of the genre would like to think many works of science-fiction achieve, but that in reality few do. It's far from a perfect book, but it's a good one, and it makes me want to read more Delany in the future. That being said, I already dropped Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand for really not being my cup of tea, so I certainly don't expect to enjoy all of Delany's works. Likewise, even if you liked this book, don't assume Delany's other books will be at all similar to this one, or that you'll enjoy them. But really, I guess there's no way to know until you try plunging in just like a nova, har har bad reference/joke thing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Captain Lorq von Ray is an Ahab style character, obsessed with obtaining a massive amount of Illyrion, a rare element that is most needed for space travel. To this end, he assembles a crew of misfits and they all go up against a rival corporation headed by Prince and Ruby Red. The most exciting element of this book for me was the flashback that revealed how Captain von Ray came to be who he is, but the rest was rather dull for me. A lot of it championed isn't-this-neat science and intellectual ramblings rather than character development or fun adventure. I did kind of like how it ended, which was an isn't-it-neat ending. But over all this wasn't a favorite for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another intriguing classic SF work from Delany, notable for its fascination with language, the sense of rich cultural diversities and possibilities it presents us with, a lingering sense of the fantastic at play (particularly in the use of the Tarot), and how the obsessions of the characters pulse through the narrative. The ending may be a little too abrupt, the prose occasionally overly-rich, and the characters less psychologically complex than those in the author's "Babel-17", but it still made for an interesting and enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Plotwise this is standard Sci-Fi adventure, easily translated as a Boys Own 19th Century sea yarn: an obsessed captain after hidden treasure in deadly rivalry with a just as obsessed villian. But the above average writing talent of the author and the exotic but real characters and settings carry it beyond the ordinarily space operatic. Although not a SF Masterwork it certainly is a minor classic of the genre.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Nova is the first Delany book I ever read, and remains my favorite work by him. It is a space opera written in an era when space operas had become unfashionable complete with space pirates, interstellar corporations, larger than life heroes and villains, and all the other trappings one normally associates with writers like Doc Smith.But Nova turns out to be much more than that. Written just before a five year dry spell that ended when Delany produced Dahlgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Nova bridges the gap between the popular author Delany was, and the experimental author he would become. The story touches on the overt sexual themes of the later works with an implied aura of incest between the villain Prince Red and his sister Ruby with overtones of sexual and mental abuse thrown in. The book is one of the first science fiction works to feature an explicitly non-Caucasian protagonist (in the form of Lorq von Ray, of Norwegian and Senegalese descent, although Podkayne of Mars featured a biracial central character six years earlier), and a multiracial supporting cast. Through the book, Delany touches on issues such as worker alienation, cultural rootlessness and resulting stagnation, and followed Herbert's exploration in Dune of the politically corrupting influence of a single resource economy.And yet the book hearkens back to the works of the golden age, in a manner that is almost certainly intended. The inventor of the "plug" system for controlling machinery is named Ashton Clark, similar to the name of author Clark Ashton Smith. The Foundation series is referenced with a throwaway line about Trantor, Dune is referenced with an assassination attempt using a poisoned tooth, and so on. While moving into an experimental area, Delany seems to be announcing his connection to the works that have gone before, perhaps an effort to declare his writing to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary.Between the examinations of the effects of making an interstellar community a collection of rootless itinerant laborers anchored by a racist and elitist Earth and a piratical Pleiadies, there is a wild story here, as Prince Red and Lorq von Ray race to be the first to recover the heavy metal Illyrion from a nova and as a result gain an unassailable competitive advantage in terraforming planets and powering spacecraft. Also woven into the story is the artistic dichotomy between the spontaneous gypsy Mouse (using what is probably one of the coolest instruments, and ultimately weapons, in science fiction), and the stodgy introspective Katin, who does little more than perpetually take notes in preparation for his planned novel. But the conflict between Lorq and Red is the primary story here, and it powers through the pages until its bitter conclusion.Hearkening back to the golden age of science fiction, and heavily influencing what would become cyberpunk (Gibson consciously imitated some elements of Nova in Neuromancer) and pretty much everything else that came after it, this is simply one of the best books in the genre.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Challenge #6 of Book Riot's 2019 Read Harder Challenge is "A book by an AOC set in or about space." Over the years, I have read, and loved, many books by Samuel R. Delany. One book that has been sitting on my shelves, unread for many years, is his work Nova. I am not sure why I neglected this book for so long, but having picked it up for this challenge, I couldn't put it down. Delany is a poet in his use of the English language, and Nova is no exception. Set in the 32nd Century, at a time when humanity has spread out to fill galaxies, has conquered disease, and no longer is torn apart by racism, Nova shows us a world where the rich still are different and where envy and hatred continue to rule lives. One thing that I, as a student of language, appreciate is that the way the people of New Brazillia speak brings echos of Romance language structure into their everyday English--especially with regard to sentence structure. Instead of normal English's subject-verb-object, the people of the Outer Colonies speak with subject-object-verb, "Look, look! He her down has. --One, two, no, she away pulls. --No! He her has." At times, with especially convoluted contexts, this structure makes reading a challenge. But at the same time, it is an interesting way of showing how people on different worlds can communicate while keeping some of their ancient heritage alive. Delany is a master at showing differences and similarities between people of varying backgrounds and ethnicities. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More Energy Than a Nova

    Lorq Von Ray is a man on a quest, driven by his desire to defeat his nemesis Prince Red, wrest away the primacy of the Draco system, Earth and its immediate colonies, controlled by the Red family, and establish the supremacy of the Pleiades Federation, Lorq’s home system. With worlds separated by light years, the principal industry is transportation, both the building of ships, controlled by the Red family, and the mining of fuel, a major Von Ray business, to propel them. The fuel is Illyrion, a precious substance because only small quantities can be extracted by mining it in the Outer Colonies. However, at the moment a star goes nova, tons of the stuff are created. Lorq has tried before to capture Illyrion and failed, but discovered that he can pilot straight through a nova and scoop of vast amounts of the stuff, seven tons to be exact, and thereby accomplish his twin goals. His quest and the various adventures it entails comprise the overarching narrative of the novel. And as a rip-roaring adventure novel, it in itself is a great yarn. In addition, though, Samuel R. Delany, who wrote this at age 25, jams quite a bit of sharp and witty observations on life grounded in the mundanity of good old Earth of 1968, not to mention current times. And it’s these layers that add immensely to the novel’s enjoyment.

    Science fiction readers like to see authors create substantial worlds, both as backdrops to the action and as places removed the confines of this world. Delany’s worlds span light years in our galaxy, with some, like the planet Vorpis, at once alien, inhospitable, beautiful, and testament to human ingenuity. Those weaned on the likes of Star Trek and Star Wars like characters to traverse vast distances in the blink of an eye, and Delany doesn’t disappoint. Too, many want their protagonists larger than life, stronger, wittier, prettier, and humbly flawed. Here Delany provides a host of fatally flawed characters, like Prince Red, blind with revenge, Ruby Red, magnetically beautiful but unalterably attached to Red, and Lorq, who can’t see beyond an ambition that could destroy him. This, combined with the idea of power, how to get it, how to hold onto it, should satisfy a majority of readers.

    Delany notches things up by expanding on other subjects very much on the minds of humans stuck here on Earth for the foreseeable future. In Delany’s distant future, race and nationality are still dividers, as crew member Mouse’s origin story reveals, not to mention the contrasted appearances of twins Lynceos and Idas. Too, Caucasians predominate in the Draco sphere, while both Pleiades and the Outer Colonies feature a racial mix, as Lorq himself exemplifies. Like our world of today, where we find ourselves not only attached to devices that determine to an increasing degree whether or not we will be successful, in Delany’s world, human and machine fuse via plug-in sockets that make flesh and metal one, and employment and acceptance accrue to those who accept this merging. Delany also ventures into philosophy as it involves creativity, with Mouse an accomplished musician able to conjure moods and worlds on his syrynx that incorporates a sort of hologram projector driven more by spontaneity vs. fellow crew member Katin, highly educated, given to long expositions on a variety of topics, and obsessed to the point of inaction by intellectualizing and planning the novel he wishes to write.

    In short, then, Delany’s Nova can be read on a variety of levels, from fast-paced space opera to exploration of societal issues to metaphysics, enough to satisfy all types of sci-fi readers, as well as those who only occasionally read the genre.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I probably read this because of what Jo Walton said in [Why is this Book so Great] Really? I’m not very archetype’d. Interesting and not the same-old-same-old, it nevertheless doesn’t strike me as mythic as [Wave Without a Shore], though it is better and less annoying. Maybe WWaS is a tribute. Seven not exactly companions and a few (why more than one) beasts, and they mostly survive. Lorq mutilates his insides as his outsides is scared, but the original traumas had already bent the core of him.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My dear friend Jason Huntington (cognomen here on goodreads) recommended I read this. It was the second Delany book he ordered me to read, I never read the first but this one immediately captured me. It's a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My reactions to reading this novel in 1998. Spoilers follow.After reading this novel, I can understand why, in the 1960s, Delany had the literary fame he did. Again, in its poetic language and depiction of a subculture intimately linked to its machines, Delany, as in his Babel-17, reminded me of William Gibson, and an interview with Gibson I recently came across confirmed that influence. (In Gibson, it is computer cowboys. Here it is the jacks nearly everyone has to link to all kinds of machines.) Delany does a lot of things in this novel: poetic descriptions, intriguing characters, an adventure tale, speculation on human culture and political and social trends, and, like Babel-17, also presents some ruminations on art – particularly the aesthetics of the novel. In the poetry department, Delany eschews precise technical description (for instance, when describing Prince’s prosthetic arm) for suggestion and mood. He also never exactly describes Tyy and Sebastian’s pets. The characters were all interesting: the intuitive, spontaneous artist Mouse (his sensory-syrnyx is so typical, in its modulation of light, sound, and odor, of sixties' interest in multi-sensory, psychedelic art); the overly introspective and planning – yet brilliant – would-be author Katrin (It was a nice touch to reveal, in a bit of self-referentialism, that the novel is, in fact, the novel he always is talking of writing and prepares for with thousands of notes), the tarot reading Tyy; the twins (actually triplets who long to be reunited with their missing brother) Idas and Lynceos; and the compelling triumvirate of the obsessive Lorq von Ray, Prince and his sister, Ruby Red. Lorq von Ray comes across as generally likeable but his obsessive plans to harvest the power source Illyrion from a nova seem callous and egotistical when he explains the social and political consequences of finding it. Yet, he can also be seen as advancing history and the human condition (what economists would call creative destruction) even though its for personal ego gratification. The Prince, seeming psychotic that he is, can be seen as defender of the stagnant status quo. There is a definite sexual attraction between Ruby Red and von Ray but that doesn’t stop her from trying to kill him (the novel’s quest/adventure plot is paced in very unexpected ways). Though Delany does not say it, I got the sense there was an unspoken sexual attraction of Prince for his sister. Their dispute with von Ray stems from them regarding von Ray as the inferior heir of a fortune based on the piracy of von Ray’s grandfather. As an adventure tale, I was interested in the story though it is paced oddly with many scenes taking place on worlds before the final encounter with the Prince, Ruby Red, and the nova begins. That encounter does not take up nearly as much room as it probably would if another author wrote this tale. Delany shows a command of astrophysics (though I confess I don’t know what astrophysics involving novae consisted of in 1968), but he doesn’t let a knowledge of hard science stop him from speculating on a vastly expanded table of periodic elements or the reality of Tarot. Delany, mainly through Katrin (though he is the “author” of Nova, I can’t think his stalling, preparations and note-taking make him a surrogate for the prolific Delany), expands on theories of history, literature (including the statements that a novel should reflect its time’s theory of history and that good characterization is done through habitual, purposeful, and gratuitous actions), and society. I found especially interesting his idea that twentieth century man is alienated because his “work” so seldom leads to tangible, productive ends. As 1960s novels are wont to do, there is an assumption that the art of the sixties represents a new plateau and renaissance for man. Thus in Delany’s Paris of 3166, the music of the Momma and the Poppas is still played and there is also a seeming allusion to the music of the Byrds. (Katrin notes that the 20th century was the first time that information technology began to bind mankind into a single society, a point that cyberpunks picked up on.) Another sixties' allusion is the obvious use of JFK’s assassination and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ life for the segment on the assassination of Morgan by Underwood and the life of von Ray’s aunt, Cyana.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I can't say I was too keen on this one, seemed overly convoluted and I just couldn't get into it.At the end of the book I had no positive feeling from the reading experience, it was just meh.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Samuel R. Delany’s Nova is a space opera centered around a privileged young spaceship captain and his ragtag band of alien misfits. It’s hard to say exactly how cliche all of this was when Delany originally wrote it, but much of the book feels silly when read contemporarily. Of course, being of Delany’s authorship, it is a somewhat challenging and somewhat flamboyant read, which lends the otherwise typical story a unique flair. In the end, it’s not one that I would recommend to folks interested in checking out Delany’s early scifi work. Bite the bullet and work your way through Dhalgren.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It is easy to forget that one of the joys of science fiction is the immersion into worlds. The old Golden Age of Science Fiction (think Campbell, et al) was often nothing more than immersion and the science of dreams. And it is just as easy to forget that the immersion into strange, incomprehensible worlds that reflect our fears of what will happen to us did not start with the cyberpunk movement. In another golden age of science fiction (think Ellison, et al) authors were exploring new ideas in science, in the mind, and in writing. The balance of all these parts was often unachievable (depending on the ability of the writer) but, when executed, made the finest writing.All this to preface a book that does a good job at all. Nova is not Delany’s greatest work, but it is a very good book. This is the story of a rich captain trying to fly his ship through a nova to obtain one of the rarest things in the universe and, consequently, bring down his main rivals. Others who have read this may quibble with me on some of my word choices in this brief description, but that speaks to the complexity of this relatively short novel, and the layers of understanding that can be brought to bear. What leaps this above the standard science fiction novel is that it does not so much focus on the destination, but on the journey, and on the people taking that journey. The trip in the star does not even occur until the last twenty pages. But, by then, the star and the destination are not important. Instead, what is important is what makes up this civilization, and the people that inhabit it. And what you will notice is that you are now a part of that civilization; of that universe. And even some throw away ideas (those ideas that seem to help the verisimilitude of the author’s universe) come back to be important points At times I couldn’t help but think that this is the writing that gave William Gibson his base. And that Delany would have written cyberpunk back then if computers were what they are now. This is not a light breezy read (though neither is it James Joyce). But worth the time to explore.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Nova is in some ways a much more traditional scifi yarn than The Einstein Intersection (Delany's previous book): it tells the story of the various members of the small crew of a starship that visits a series of planets in the course of an interstellar quest. In other ways it is every bit a surreal and challenging as anyone who reads Delany has come to expect. This is virtuoso writing; he may leave you confused but you have to admire the man’s facility with putting together words to achieve exactly his desired effect. Delany takes us from intriguing world to intriguing world, and paints compelling pictures of the strange places man has come to inhabit. The long scene set on Earth is especially compelling. Nova features an interestingly bizarre cast of characters who are caught up in intriguing relationships, most notably the incestuous pairing of the villainous Prince and his sister Ruby Red. The book is rife with, and at times even a bit heavy handed in its use of symbolism and plays on familiar mythology (in particular the Grail and Tarot cards). My biggest disappointment came in the climactic final chapter, where Captain Von Lorq, Prince, and Ruby Red each meet their respective destinies. The final resolution felt rushed, not really worthy of the buildup that had preceded.

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Nova - Samuel R. Delany

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF SAMUEL R. DELANY

I consider Delany not only one of the most important SF writers of the present generation, but a fascinating writer in general who has invented a new style. —Umberto Eco

Samuel R. Delany is the most interesting author of science fiction writing in English today.The New York Times Book Review

Dhalgren

"Dhalgren’s the secret masterpiece, the city-book-labyrinth that has swallowed astonished readers alive for almost thirty years. Its beauty and force still seem to be growing." —Jonathan Lethem

A brilliant tour de force.The News & Observer (Raleigh)

"A Joyceian tour de force of a novel, Dhalgren … stake[s] a better claim than anything else published in this country in the last quarter-century (excepting only Gass’s Omensetter’s Luck and Nabokov’s Pale Fire) to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature." —Libertarian Review

The Nevèrÿon Series

Cultural criticism at its most imaginative and entertaining best.Quarterly Black Review of Books on Neveryóna

The tales of Nevèrÿon are postmodern sword-and-sorcery … Delany subverts the formulaic elements of sword-and-sorcery and around their empty husks constructs self-conscious metafictions about social and sexual behavior, the play of language and power, and—above all—the possibilities and limitations of narrative. Immensely sophisticated as literature … eminently readable and gorgeously entertaining.The Washington Post Book World

This is fantasy that challenges the intellect … semiotic sword and sorcery, a very high level of literary gamesmanship. It’s as if Umberto Eco had written about Conan the Barbarian.USA Today

The Nevèrÿon series is a major and unclassifiable achievement in contemporary American literature. —Fredric R. Jameson

Instead of dishing out the usual, tired mix of improbable magic and bloody mayhem, Delany weaves an intricate meditation on the nature of freedom and slavery, on the beguiling differences between love and lust … the prose has been so polished by wit and intellect that it fairly gleams.San Francisco Chronicle on Return to Nevèrÿon

One of the most sustained meditations we have on the complex intersections of sexuality, race, and subjectivity in contemporary cultures. —Constance Penley

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Delany’s first true masterpiece.The Washington Post

"What makes Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand especially challenging—and satisfying—is that the complex society in which the characters move is one … which contains more than 6,000 inhabited worlds and a marvelously rich blend of cultures. The inhabitants of these worlds—both human and alien—relate to one another in ways that, however bizarre they may seem at first, are eventually seen to turn on such recognizable emotional fulcrums as love, loss and longing." —The New York Times Book Review

Delany’s forte has always been the creation of complex, bizarre, yet highly believable future societies; this book may top anything he’s done in that line.Newsday

Nova

As of this book, [Samuel R. Delany] is the best science-fiction writer in the world.Galaxy Science Fiction

"A fast-action far-flung interstellar adventure; [an] archetypal mystical/mythical allegory … [a] modern myth told in the SF idiom … and lots more." —The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

"[Nova] reads like Moby-Dick at a strobe-light show!" —Time

The Motion of Light in Water

A very moving, intensely fascinating literary biography from an extraordinary writer. Thoroughly admirable candor and luminous stylistic precision; the artist as a young man and a memorable picture of an age. —William Gibson

Absolutely central to any consideration of black manhood … Delany’s vision of the necessity for total social and political transformation is revolutionary. —Hazel Carby

"The prose of The Motion of Light in Water often has the shimmering beauty of the title itself … This book is invaluable gay history." —Inches

Nova

Samuel R. Delany

To

Bernard and Iva Kay

Contents

chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A Biography of Samuel R. Delany

chapter one

HEY, MOUSE! PLAY US something, one of the mechanics called from the bar.

Didn’t get signed on no ship yet? chided the other. Your spinal socket’ll rust up. Come on, give us a number.

The Mouse stopped running his finger around the rim of his glass. Wanting to say no he began a yes. Then he frowned.

The mechanics frowned too.

He was an old man.

He was a strong man.

As the Mouse pulled his hand to the edge of the table, the derelict lurched forward. Hip banged the counter. Long toes struck a chair leg: the chair danced on the flags.

Old. Strong. The third thing the Mouse saw: Blind.

He swayed before the Mouse’s table. His hand swung up; yellow nails hit the Mouse’s cheek. (Spider’s feet?) You, boy …

The Mouse stared at the pearls behind rough, blinking lids.

You, boy. Do you know what it was like?

Must be blind, the Mouse thought. Moves like blind. Head sits forward so on his neck. And his eyes—

The codger flapped out his hand, caught a chair, and yanked it to him. It rasped as he fell on the seat. "Do you know what it looked like, felt like, smelt like—do you?"

The Mouse shook his head: the fingers tapped his jaw.

We were moving out, boy, with the three hundred suns of the Pleiades glittering like a puddle of jeweled milk on our left, and all blackness wrapped around our right. The ship was me; I was the ship. With these sockets— he tapped the inset in his wrist against the table: click —I was plugged into my vane-projector. Then— the stubble on his face rose and fell with the words —centered on the dark, a light! It reached out, grabbed our eyes as we lay in the projection chambers and wouldn’t let them go. It was like the universe was torn and all day raging through. I wouldn’t go off sensory input. I wouldn’t look away. All the colors you could think of were there, blotting the night. And finally the shock waves: the walls sang! Magnetic inductance oscillated over our ship, nearly rattled us apart. But then it was too late. I was blind. He sat back in his chair. I’m blind, boy. But with a funny kind of blindness: I can see you. I’m deaf. But if you talked to me, I could understand most of what you said. Olfactory nerves mostly shorted out at the brain end. Same with the taste buds over my tongue. His hand went flat on the Mouse’s cheek. I can’t feel the texture of your face. Most of the tactile nerve endings were killed too. Are you smooth—or are you bristly and gristly as I am? He laughed on yellow teeth in red, red gums. Old Dan is blind in a funny way. His hand slipped down the Mouse’s vest, catching the laces. A funny way, yes. Most people go blind in blackness. I have a fire in my eyes. I have that whole collapsing sun in my head, my visual tectum shorted wide open, jumping, leaping, sparking. It’s as though the light lashed the rods and cones of my retina to constant stimulation, balled up a rainbow and stuffed each socket full. That’s what I’m seeing now. Then you, outlined here, highlighted there, a solarized ghost across hell from me. Who are you?

Pontichos, the Mouse offered. His voice sounded like wool with sand, grinding. Pontichos Provechi.

Dan’s face twisted. Your name is … What did you say? It’s shaking my head apart. There’s a choir crouched in my ears, shouting down into my skull twenty-six hours a day. The brain-end synapses, they’re sending out static, the death rattle that sun’s been dying ever since. Over that, I can just hear your voice, like an echo of something shouted a hundred yards off. Dan coughed and sat back, hard. Where are you from? He wiped his mouth.

Here in Draco, the Mouse said. Earth.

Earth? Where? America? You come from a little white house on a tree-lined street, with a bicycle in the garage?

Oh yes, the Mouse thought. Blind, and deaf too. The Mouse’s speech was good, but he’d never even tried to correct his accent.

Me. I’m from Australia. From a white house. I lived just outside Melbourne. Trees. I had a bicycle. But that was a long time ago. A long time, wasn’t it, boy? You know Australia, on Earth?

Been through. The Mouse squirmed in his chair and wondered how to get away.

Yes. That’s how it was. But you don’t know, boy! You can’t know what it’s like to stagger through the rest of your life with a nova dug into your brain, remembering Melbourne, remembering the bicycle. What did you say your name was?

The Mouse looked left at the window, right at the door.

I can’t remember it. The sound of that sun blots out everything.

The mechanics, who had been listening till now, turned to the bar.

Can’t remember a thing any more!

At another table a black-haired woman fell back to her card game with her blond companion.

"Oh, I’ve been sent to doctors! They say if they cut out the nerves, optic and aural, slice them off at the brain, the roaring, the light—it might stop! Might?" He raised his hands to his face. And the shadows of the world that come in, they’d stop too. Your name? What’s your name?

The Mouse got the words ready in his mouth, along with, excuse me, huh? I gotta go.

But old Dan coughed, clutched at his ears.

"Ahhh! That was a pig trip, a dog trip, a trip for flies! The ship was the Roc and I was a cyborg stud for Captain Lorq Von Ray. He took us—Dan leaned across the table—this close—his thumb brushed his forefinger—this close to hell. And brought us back. You can damn him, and damn Ulyrion for that, boy, whoever you are. Wherever you’re from!" Dan barked, flung back his head; his hands jumped on the table.

The bartender glanced over. Somebody signaled for a drink. The bartender’s lips tightened, but he turned off, shaking his head.

Pain— Dan’s chin came down—after you’ve lived with it long enough, isn’t pain anymore. It’s something else. Lorq Von Ray is mad! He took us as near the edge of dying as he could. Now he’s abandoned me, nine-tenths a corpse, here at the rim of the Solar System. And where’s he gone— Dan breathed hard. Something flapped in his lungs. Where’s blind Dan going to go now?

Suddenly he grabbed the sides of the table.

Where is Dan going to go!

The Mouse’s glass tumbled, smashed on the stone.

You tell me!

He shook the table again.

The bartender was coming over.

Dan stood, overturning his chair, and rubbed his knuckles on his eyes. He took two staggering steps through the sunburst that rayed the floor. Two more. The last left long maroon prints.

The black-haired woman caught her breath. The blond man closed the cards.

One mechanic started forward, but the other touched his arm.

Dan’s fists struck the swinging doors. He was gone.

The Mouse looked around. Glass on stone again, but softer. The bartender had plugged the sweeper into his wrist and the machine hissed over dirt and bloody fragments. You want another drink?

No, the Mouse’s voice whispered from his ruined larynx. "No. I was finished. Who was that?"

"Used to be a cyborg stud on the Roc. He’s been making trouble around here for a week. Lots of places throw him out soon as he comes in the door. How come you been having such a hard time getting signed on?"

I’ve never been on a star-run before, came the Mouse’s rough whisper. I just got my certificate two years back. Since then I’ve been plugged in with a small freight company working around inside the Solar System on the triangle run.

I could give you all kinds of advice. The bartender unplugged the sweeper from his wrist socket. But I’ll restrain myself. Ashton Clark go with you. He grinned and went back behind the bar.

The Mouse felt uncomfortable. He hooked a dark thumb beneath the leather strap over his shoulder, got up and started for the door.

Eh, Mouse, come on. Play something for—

The door closed behind him.

The shrunken sun lay jagged gold on the mountains. Neptune, huge in the sky, dropped mottled light on the plain. The starships hulked in the repair pits half a mile away.

The Mouse started down the strip of bars, cheap hotels, and eating places. Unemployed and despondent, he had bummed in most of them, playing for board, sleeping in the corner of somebody’s room when he was pulled in to entertain at an all-night party. That wasn’t what his certificate said he should be doing. That wasn’t what he wanted.

He turned down the boardwalk that edged Hell³.

To make the satellite’s surface habitable, Draco Commission had planted Illyrion furnaces to melt the moon’s core. With surface temperature at mild autumn, atmosphere generated spontaneously from the rocks. An artificial ionosphere kept it in. The other manifestations of the newly molten core were Hells¹ to ⁵², volcanic cracks that had opened in the crust of the moon. Hell³ was almost a hundred yards wide, twice as deep (a flaming worm broiled on its bottom), and seven miles long. The canon flickered and fumed under pale night.

As the Mouse walked by the abyss, hot air caressed his cheek. He was thinking about blind Dan. He was thinking about the night beyond Pluto, beyond the edge of the stars called Draco. And was afraid. He fingered the leather sack against his side.

When the Mouse was ten years old, he’d stolen that sack. It held what he was to love most.

Terrified, he’d fled from the music stalls beneath white vaults, down between the stinking booths of suede. He clutched the sack to his belly, jumped over a carton of meerschaum pipes that had broken open, spilling across the dusty stone, passed under another arch, and for twenty meters darted through the crowds roaming the Golden Alley, where velvet display windows were alive with light and gold. He sidestepped a boy treading the heels of his shoes and swinging a three-handled tray of tea glasses and coffee cups. As the Mouse dodged, the tray went up and over; tea and coffee shook, but nothing spilled. The Mouse fled on.

Another turn took him past a mountain of embroidered slippers.

Mud splattered the next time his canvas shoes hit the broken flooring. He stopped, panting, looked up.

No vaults. Light rain drifted between the buildings. He held the sack tighter, smeared his damp face with the back of his hand, and started up the curving street.

Rotten, ribbed, and black, the Burnt Tower of Constantine jutted from the parking lot. As he reached the main street, people hurried about him, splashing in the thin slip covering the stones. The leather had grown sweaty on his skin.

Good weather? He would have romped down the backstreet shortcut. But this: he kept to the main way, taking some protection from the monorail. He pushed among the businessmen, the students, the porters.

A sledge rumbled on the cobbles. The Mouse took a chance and swung up on the yellow running board. The driver grinned—gold-flecked crescent in a brown face—and let him stay.

Ten minutes later, heart still hammering, the Mouse swung off and ducked through the courtyard of New Mosque. In the drizzle a few men washed their feet in the stone troughs at the wall. Two women came from the flapping door at the entrance, retrieved their shoes, and started down the gleaming steps, hastening in the rain.

Once, the Mouse had asked Leo just when New Mosque had been built. The fisherman from the Pleiades Federation—who always walked with one foot bare—had scratched his thick blond hair as they gazed at the smoky walls rising to the domes and spiking minarets. About a thousand years ago, was. But that only a guess is.

The Mouse was looking for Leo now.

He ran out the courtyard and dodged between the trucks, cars, dolmushes, and trollies crowding the entrance of the bridge. On the crosswalk, under a streetlamp, he turned through an iron gate and hurried down the steps. Small boats clacked together in the sludge. Beyond the dinghies, the mustard water of the Golden Horn heaved about the pilings and the hydrofoil docks. Beyond the Horn’s mouth, across the Bosphorus, the clouds had torn.

Beams slanted through and struck the wake of a ferry plowing toward another continent. The Mouse paused on the steps to stare over the glittering strait as more and more light fell through.

Windows in foggy Asia flashed on sand-colored walls. It was the beginning of the effect that had caused the Greeks, two thousand years before, to call the Asian side of the city Chrysopolis—Gold City. Today it was Uskudar.

Hey, Mouse! Leo hailed him from the red, rocking deck. Leo had built an awning over his boat, set up wooden tables, and placed barrels around for chairs. Black oil boiled in a vat, heated by an ancient generator caked with grease. Beside it, on a yellow slicker, was a heap of fish. The gills had been hooked around the lower jaws so that each fish had a crimson flower at its head. Hey, Mouse, what you got?

In better weather fishermen, dockworkers, and porters lunched here. The Mouse climbed over the rail as Leo threw in two fish. The oil erupted yellow foam.

I got what … what you were talking about. I got it … I mean I think it’s the thing you told me about. The words rushed, breathy, hesitant, breathy again.

Leo, whose name, hair, and chunky body had been given him by German grandparents (and whose speech pattern had been lent by his childhood on a fishing coast of a world whose nights held ten times as many stars as Earth’s), looked confused. Confusion became wonder as the Mouse held out the leather sack.

Leo took it with freckled hands. You sure, are? Where you—

Two workmen stepped on the boat. Leo saw alarm cross the Mouse’s face and switched from Turkish to Greek. Where did you this find? The sentence pattern stayed the same in all languages.

I stole it. Even though the words came with gushes of air through ill-anchored vocal cords, at ten the orphaned gypsy spoke some half dozen of the languages bordering the Mediterranean much more facilely than people like Leo who had learned his tongues under a hypno-teacher.

The construction men, grimy from their power shovels (and hopefully limited to Turkish), sat down at the table, massaging their wrists and rubbing their spinal sockets on the smalls of their back where the great machines had been plugged into their bodies. They called for fish.

Leo bent and tossed. Silver flicked the air. The oil roared.

Leo leaned against the railing and opened the drawstring. Yes. He spoke slowly. None on Earth, much less here, I didn’t know was. Where it from is?

I got it from the bazaar, the Mouse explained. If it can be found on Earth, it can be found in the Grand Bazaar. He quoted the adage that had brought millions on millions to the Queen of Cities.

So I’d heard, Leo said. Then in Turkish again: These gentlemen their lunch you give.

The Mouse took up the ladle and scooped the fish onto plastic plates. What had gone in silver came out gold. The men pulled chunks of bread from the baskets under the table and ate with their hands.

He hunted the two other fish from the oil and brought them to Leo, who was still sitting on the rail, smiling into the sack. Coherent image out of this thing, can I get? Don’t know. Since fishing for methane squid in the Outer Colonies, I was, not in my hands one of these is. Back then, pretty well this I could play. The sack fell away, and Leo sucked his breath between his teeth. It pretty is!

On his lap in crumpled leather, it might have been a harp, it might have been a computer. With inductance surfaces like a theremin, with frets like a guitar, down one side were short drones as on a sitar. On the other were the extended bass drones of a guitarina. Parts were carved from rosewood. Parts were cast from stainless steel. It had insets of black plastic, and was cushioned with plush.

Leo turned it.

The clouds had torn even further.

Sunlight ran the polished grain, flashed in the steel.

At the table the workmen tapped their coins, then squinted. Leo nodded to them. They put the money on the greasy boards and, puzzled, left the boat.

Leo did something with the controls. There was a clear ringing. The air shivered; and cutting out the old odor of wet rope and tar was the scent of … orchids? A long time ago, perhaps at five or six, the Mouse had smelled them wild in the fields edging a road. (Then, there had been a big woman in a print skirt who may have been Mamma, and three barefoot, heavily mustachioed men, one of whom he had been told to call Papa; but that was in some other country … ) Yes, orchids.

Leo’s hand moved: shivering became shimmering. Brightness fell from the air, coalesced in blue light whose source was somewhere between them. The odor moistened to roses.

It works! rasped the Mouse.

Leo nodded. Better than the one I used to have. The Illyrion battery almost brand-new is. Those things I on the boat used to play, can still play, I wonder. His face furrowed. Not too good going to be is. Out of practice am. Embarrassment rearranged Leo’s features into an expression the Mouse had never seen. Leo’s hand closed to the tuning haft.

Where light had filled the space, illumination shaped to her, till she turned and stared at them over her shoulder.

The Mouse blinked.

She was translucent; yet so much realer by the concentration he needed to define her chin, her shoulder, her foot, her face, till she spun, laughing, and tossed surprising flowers at him. Under the petals the Mouse ducked and closed his eyes. He’d been breathing naturally, but on this inhalation, he just didn’t stop. He opened his mouth to the odors, prolonging the breath till his diaphragm stretched sharply from the bottom of his ribs. Then pain arched beneath his sternum and he had to let the breath out. Fast. Then began the slow return—

He opened his eyes.

Oil, the yellow waters of the Horn, sludge; but the air was empty of blossoms. His single boot on the bottom rung of the rail, Leo was fiddling with a knob.

She was gone.

But … The Mouse took a step, stopped, balancing on his toes, his throat working. How …?

Leo looked up. "Rusty, I am! I once

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