Samuel R. Delany

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Samuel Ray "Chip" Delany, Jr. (born April 1, 1942) is an award-winning science fiction author. He has written works that have garnered substanial critical acclaim, including the novels Dhalgren and Hogg. He is a professor at Temple University, and is also known in the academic world as a literary critic.

Contents

Biography

Delany was born and raised in Harlem and attended the Bronx High School of Science. Delany and the poet Marilyn Hacker, who met in high school, were married for several years and have a daughter.

Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20, and published six well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass). Dhalgren was published in 1974. His main literary project through the late 70s and 80s was the Neveryon series.

Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a gay writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.

In recent years, Delany has been teaching English, Comparative Literature, and writing. Delany spent 11 years teaching at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half at the University at Buffalo, and moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and other essays.

Themes

Most of his works deal more explicitly with sexual themes than is common. Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and some books like Equinox, The Mad Man and Hogg could even be considered pornography. He has published several books of literary criticism, with an emphasis on issues in science fiction and other paraliterary genres, comparative literature, and queer theory.

Selected bibliography

Novels:

Memoirs and letters:

  • Heavenly Breakfast
  • The Motion of Light in Water (1988, a memoir of his experiences as a young gay science fiction writer; winner of the Hugo Award)
  • Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999, a discussion of changes in social and sexual interaction in New York's Times Square)
  • Bread & Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999, an autobiographical comic drawn by Mia Wolff with an introduction by Alan Moore)
  • "1984" (2000)

Short story collections:

  • Driftglass (1971)
  • Distant Stars (1981)
  • Atlantis: Three Tales (1995)
  • Aye, and Gomorrah (2003)

(Driftglass and Distant Stars include the Hugo Award and Nebula Award-winning "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones." Aye, and Gomorrah is a compilation of all of Delany's short fiction, excepting the Neveryon tales)

The Return to Neveryon series:

  • Tales of Neveryon (short stories) (1979)
  • Neveryona (novel) (1983)
  • Flight from Neveryon (novellas) (1985)
  • The Bridge of Lost Desire (novellas) (1987)

Critical works:

  • The Jewel-hinged Jaw (1977)
  • The American Shore (1978)
  • Starboard Wine (1984)
  • The Straits of Messina (1989)
  • Silent Interviews (1995)
  • Longer Views (1996)
  • Shorter Views (1999)

Other facts

  • Delany's name is one of the most misspelt in science fiction, with over 60 different spellings in reviews. His publisher Doubleday even misspelt his name on the title page of his book Driftglass as did the organizers of the 16th Balticon where Delany was guest of honour. Ironically, Delany is dyslexic.
  • Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany, known as the Delany sisters. They both lived to be over 100 years old, and published Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years.
  • Among Delany's more unusual credits is that he wrote two issues of the comic book Wonder Woman in 1972, during a controversial period in the publication's history when the lead character abandoned her superpowers and became a secret agent. Delany scripted issues #202 and 203 of the series.
  • One of his stories was included in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions. Harlan gave a short introduction that ironically pointed out how Delany was one of the last straight science fiction authors.

See also

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

References

  • Robert S. Bravard; Michael W. Peplow, Through a Glass Darkly: Bibliographing Samuel R. Delany in Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 18, No. 2.
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