Samuel R. Delany

In the fourth volume in the Why I Write series, the iconic Samuel Delany remembers 50 years of writing and shaping the world of speculative fiction. Science fiction dwells mostly in the realm of possibility, where mysteries proliferate nevertheless, meaning is never static, and “time and...

Born in New York City’s Black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married White poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city’s new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in summer 1961. Through the decade’s opening...

The story of a truly galactic civilization with more than 6,000 inhabited worlds. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science-fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First...

The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of Earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale...

Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack...

Given that the suns of Draco stretch almost 16 light-years from end to end, it stands to reason that the cost of transportation is the most important factor driving the 32nd century. And since Illyrion is the element most needed for space travel, Lorq von Ray is plenty willing to fly through the...

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and best-selling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel that rivals the best American fiction of the 1970s. Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there...the population...