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Samuel R. Delany is as well-known and respected for his literary and social/queer criticism as he is for his writing of fiction in multiple, often paraliterary, genres, from science fiction to queer erotica. Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary, a collection of critical essays on race, sexuality, science fiction, and the art of writing, plus a number of interviews on a variety of topics, that demonstrates the breadth and depth of his thinking and his academic work in these areas, and offers the reader a sustained experience both instructive and challenging.

The book is divided into three sections - Part One: Some Queer Thoughts, Part Two: The Politics of the Paraliterary, and Part Three: Some Writing/Some Writers. These categories, while suggestive of the overarching themes of each section, should not be taken as exclusive. In the first section, for instance, Delany has gathered essays and interviews that talk about queerness, but also queerness in relation to art, to his own writing in various paraliterary genres (science fiction, pornography), in other writers. In the second, he examines theory and criticism of science fiction, comics, and other paraliterary genres, but does so from the persoective of a queer academic, critic and author. The third section looks at specific writers and works, both literary and paraliterary.

There’s a documentary about Delany, called The Polymath, or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. I’ve never seen it (though I’d love to if I can ever find a coy), but one thing I am certain of, is that polymath is one of the words that one can definitely use to describe him. It’s there in his writing, in the breadth and scope of his thinking, his references, his allusions, the often very disparate threads of knowledge that he draws together in presenting his arguments. To read Delany is to learn things you never would have imagined. To read this collection of essays and interviews is to have your perspectives on race and sexuality challenged, to have your understanding of the art and practice of writing and the genre of speculative fiction - and a few other paraliterary genres - broadened.
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PM Press’ latest offering in its Outspoken Authors series features work from the undeniably, gloriously outspoken author Samuel R. Delany. In addition to the title novella, The Atheist in the Attic includes Delany’s classic critique of racism in science fiction, and an interview with the author. Delany being one of my literary heroes from a very early age - I fell in love with his writing when I read Babel-17 and never wavered afterward - I had to get the book.

Delany is an author of ideas, which he wraps in polished, precise, gorgeous prose. “The Atheist in the Attic” is a perfect example of the master at work, examining and interrogating the intellectual underpinnings of the Enlightenment. The publisher’s blurb says:

“The title novella, "The Atheist in the Attic," appearing here in book form for the first time, is a suspenseful and vivid historical narrative, recreating the top-secret meeting between the mathematical genius Leibniz and the philosopher Spinoza caught between the horrors of the cannibalistic Dutch Rampjaar and the brilliant "big bang" of the Enlightenment.”

Delany’s Leibnitz is an old man recollecting, and commenting on, a trip to Amsterdam he made when much younger, part if his purpose being to visit the old and reclusive Spinoza. The visits are secretive, because Leibnitz is a young man with a noble patron and a career still to be made among the the intelligentsia of Europe, and Spinoza is an outcast and a pariah, both Jew and alleged atheist, a man whose work caused riots in the street and the brutal deaths of some of those who championed his work.

Leibnitz and Spinoza talk. About their work, and their thoughts about each other’s work. About that terrible and violent reaction of the people to his anti-clerical, anti-theistic treatise. About the great Greek philosophers. About the relation of language and thought. About the meaning, the essence of what Spinoza calls Deus sive Natura - God, or otherwise Nature.

Leibnitz, as he recounts his visit to Spinoza, also contemplates issues of race - specifically anti-Semitism - and class antipathy, the latter brought on by the eagerness of a young manservant at the home he is staying in to do him personal services, and the stories of cannibalism among the peasants during a recent famine that he has heard, most recently from Spinoza.

As always, Delany leaves one thinking, wondering, speculating.

I had read the other work collected here, Delany’s essay on racism in science fiction, before, but it was worthwhile to read it again. So much has happened since it was first written in 1998. There are now many more visible writers of colour in the genre, and, as Delany predicted, there has been pushback.

In his essay, he said “As long as there are only one, two, or a handful of us, however, I presume in a field such as science fiction, where many of its writers come out of the liberal-Jewish tradition, prejudice will most likely remain a slight force—until, say, black writers start to number 13, 15, 20 percent of the total. At that point, where the competition might be perceived as having some economic heft, chances are we will have as much racism and prejudice here as in any other field.”

And lo and behold now that there are more than a handful of sff writers of colour, along comes RaceFail (Google it) and the Sadly Rabid Puppies and ComicGate and all the whiney (mostly) white boys of all ages who want stories with white boy heroes doing white boy hero things like conquering other planets and winning space battles against bug-eyed monsters.

Sadly, Delany knew whereof he spoke.

The volume closes with a pleasant interview by Terry Bisson, the editor of the series, which does not illuminate the author so much as give a hint at how vey much there is to learn about him and his work.
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Samuel Delany's memoir, The Motion of Light in Water: East Village Sex and Science Fiction Writing 1960-1965, is as much an exploration of memory and the processes of representation of both memory and thought as it is traditional (or rather, non-traditional) memoir. As Jo Walton says in her review,
The first time I read The Motion of Light in Water, Delany had been one of my favourite writers for at least ten years, but in that time I had known almost nothing about him. I remember going “Wow” a lot the first time through. I was expecting an autobiography that covered 1960-1965 to talk about how he wrote the spectacular early novels, and it does, and wow. But also wow, he’s black, wow, he’s gay, wow, he’s dyslexic and most of all, wow, in writing an autobiography he’s examining the entire concept of what it’s possible to remember and retell. This isn’t a memoir like Pohl’s The Way the Future Was which is essentially a charming retelling of fascinating anecdotes. This is a memoir that questions the very possibility of memoir, a memoir that makes you feel as if you’ve been turned upside-down and the contents of your brain and your pockets have all fallen out and been rearranged in different places. It questions the concept of memory and the way we remember and rearrange and reassess, and the way we make our own lives into stories. [1]
Delany begins by talking about his father's death - an event which falls near the beginning of the chronological period covered by the memoir. It's clearly significant moment for him - but as soon as he has penned the story, he speaks of the unreliability of his memory of it, of how in a later set of biographical notes prepared for researchers writing about his work, the factual details he includes about this event are incorrect, even to the age he remembers he was and the year in which his father died.

Having made this initial point about the unreliable narrator - a theme he refers back to and riffs upon throughout the work - Delany proceeds with his story, which is that of selected incidents in the life of a young gay (although not yet identifying as such despite an awareness of homosexual desire since early adolescence) black (but just light enough to pass sometimes as white) middle-class man growing up in New York who wanted to be a scientist but became a writer, who married young because of a pregnancy from his first heterosexual experience with a gifted young poet, Marilyn Hacker (who miscarried shortly after their marriage).

Delany is frank in discussing all aspects of his life - emotional, intellectual, creative, sexual. He and Marilyn had an open marriage, in which both had other relationships with men and women, sometimes sharing lovers, and for a period of time living in a triad with a young working class man. Their friendship and shared intellectual delight in literature was ultimately not sufficient to make their marriage work for them, and the memoir ends with Delany, having turned in the manuscript of his classic novel Babel-17, leaving Marilyn in New York as he heads off to spend seven months in Europe.

There is so much packed into this narrative - not just the key elements of Delany's life and his development as one of the great writers of his time, but also social history, sociological observation, meditations on race, gender, intimacy, commitment and representation... It's a rich and valuable work.

True to his argument that memory is fluid and personal, Delany intersperses his recollections with selections from Marilyn's poems written at the time, thus declining to privilege either his memories or his chosen mode of expressing them. As he notes at one point, after a section of the memoir in which he attempts to record every detail he remembers,
But no simple, sensory narrative can master what it purports—whether it be a hitchhiking trip to Texas or the memories that remain from such a trip twenty-five years later. That age-old philosophical chestnut, the Problem of Representation (in its twin forms, the Problem of Verification and the Problem of Exhaustiveness) makes mastery as such a non-problem, with no need of haute théorie. Theodore Sturgeon’s fine insight is perhaps germane here: the best writing does not reproduce—or represent—the writer’s experience at all. Rather it creates an experience that is entirely the reader’s, forged and fashioned wholly from her or his knowledge, of her or his memories, by her or his ideology and sensibility, and demonstrably different for each—but which (according to the writer’s skill) is merely as meaningful (though not necessarily meaningful in the same way) as the writer’s, merely as vivid.
As Constant Reader is surely aware, Samuel Delany is one of the writers I have the highest regard for, and whose works I consider to have had a significant influence on my own development. Reading his thoughts about his life at the time he was writing the early works that influenced me the most was a fascinating experience. I'm thinking that once I finish my Hugo reading, I need to revisit those books.

[1] http://www.tor.com/2010/01/07/the-whole-notion-of-autobiography-samuel-delanys-lemgthe-motion-of-light-in-waterlemg/

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Samuel Delany is best known (at least in the circles I exist in) first, for his science fiction writing and second, for his science fiction criticism. But Delany's writing ranges well beyond these realms in its scope, extending from essays on comparative literature and queer studies, to memoir, to porn.

In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany uses both the approach of personal narrative and that of academic analysis to examine the link between urban development and architecture and vertical social contacts among urban dwellers. The two very different essays in the book were prompted by yet another plan to "clean up" Times Square in New York City, and taken together present a strong argument for the inclusion of places where people of different classes, races, and cultural niches can connect - in this instance, to form a loose community based on engagement in transgressive behaviours.

The first essay, Times Square Blue, is a personal record of Delany's experiences and observations as a participant in the street life in and around "old" Times Square - a neighbourhood of porn theatres and other establishments where gay men (and men who, while not identifying as gay, nonetheless chose to have sex with other men) could find willing casual partners, among other things that the renovators want to root out in the interests of protection of family values. Three Two One Contact: Times Square Red is a more theoretical essay, focusing on the changes in Times Square since the beginning of the urge to refurbish the area, and the resulting loss of an important public space where informal contacts can take place, subverting the modern tendency toward uniform neighbourhoods and sterile work spaces.

And interesting book, and a passionate argument for the importance of an urban environment that is organic, messy, open to a diversity of peoples and their needs, and able to facilitate unstructured contact between people.

For another perspective, read Jo Walton's review on tor.com. (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/07/sex-and-urban-planning-samuel-r-delanys-times-square-red-times-square-blue)

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Symposium: Women in Science Fiction (Khatru Issues 3 & 4), ed. Jeffrey D. Smith (1975); revision edited by Jeanne Gomoll (1993)

If you're a feminist and a science fiction reader, you've almost certainly heard of the Symposium. Published in the fan magazine Khatru in 1975, it was the record of an incredible roundtable discussion, an exchange of letters among some of the leading writers of feminist science fiction at that time (and since) - Vonda N. McIntyre, Suzy McKee Charnas, Kate Wilhelm, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, James Tiptree, Jr., Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ, Raylyn Moore, Luise White - plus agent Virginia Kidd and the editor of Khatru, Jeffrey D. Smith.

It's hard to believe, but I've never before read the complete Symposium. A landmark in the development of feminist science fiction and feminst criticism of science fiction - you'd have thought I would have read it long before now. But it hasn't always been exactly the easiest thing to get your hands on, and so I've languished for years reading only reminiscences, exererts and discussions of it.

But it is now available, in an annotated 1993 edition with additional commentary from some of the original participants and other scholars of feminist sf, from The James tiptree Jr. Literary Award Council, and if you are interested in feminism and women in science fiction, you really ought to order it.

Reading it was, for me, like going back to the late 60s and early 70s, when questions of the role of women in society were being hotly debated and challenged on all sides and being a feminist was, if you were like me, one of the most important things you could imagine doing for the future of humanity. Those were very heady times, and very scary times as well, when there seemed to be so much to think and re-think and do and change and challenge. The Symposium takes that moment in time and narrows the focus to science fiction, but you can heard the echoing clarion calls of a worldwide revolution behind it and around it, even after 30 years.

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