On Samuel Delany

The gay (or bisexual?) Samuel Delany's first book-length sci-fi novel was 1962's "The Jewels of Aptor." It's a quest tale, starring a poet, a couple of sailors and assorted gods, their clerics, and servants... a philsophical treatise with swords and a post-holocaust scenario that drags in a few places -- it was written by a university student for students. But a satisfying read, nonetheless.

"The Jewels of Aptor" also includes more black characters than had previously appeared in a single sci fi work -- I mean as main characters. Delany was one of the few, if not the only, published black sci-fi writer of the time.

Some of the lovely language presages Delany's future lyricism. His later work is more poetry than prose -- a hard read (but this is not a criticism). Seth McEvoy, in the 1984 literary analysis and proto biography "Samuel R. Delany," wonders whether Delany's dyslexia led to the author's singular obsessions with text and words. Delany's newer books force readers to fill in blanks, to work at understanding in the same way he has to, as someone with a reading disability.

"The Jewels of Aptor" was initially published in a double edition, paired back to back (and upside down) with "Second Ending" by James White (a novelette about the declining mental health of the last man on earth, and about his worried robotic servants).

McEvoy writes that these double books were seen by some as filler produced by hacks: insiders assumed Delany was the pseudonym of a house writer, and so although the novel was seen as a good work, the name of Delany received no credit for the work at the time because it was thought fictional.

If you want the credit you deserve in this world, you hafta make a racket.