Samuel R. Delany

Journeying to the central United States city of Bellona, where all have fled save madmen and criminals, a poet and adventurer known only as the Kid wonders at the strange portents that appear in the city's cloud-covered sky.

Dhalgren

Babel-17

If one street in America can claim to be the most infamous, it is surely 42nd Street. Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 42nd Street was once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers and movie houses. Over the last two decades the notion of safety-from safe sex and safe neighborhoods, to safe cities and safe relationships-has overcome 42nd Street, giving rise to a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes. 42nd Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester, and New Jersey's suburbs.
Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there: the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being renovated behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as family values. Unless we overcome our fears and claim our community of contact, it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Nova

an ambiguous heterotopia

Trouble on Triton

Stars in my pocket like grains of sand

Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

Jewel Hinged Jaw

A, B, C: Three Short Novels: The Jewels of Aptor, The Ballad of Beta-2, They Fly at Ciron

Out of the Dead City

Heavenly Breakfast, an Essay on the Winter of Love

Tales of Nevèrÿon

Dark reflections

The fall of the towers

"For nearly thirty years, in his fiction and non-fiction, Samuel R. Delaney has explored to the roots various realms of discourse: sociteies, language, sexualities ... and the ever-shifting interpenetrations, transgressions, limitations, and dissolutions that play and replay between them. Now he turns his unflinching critical eye to the most mysterious realm of all: his own life, writing, and soul.":--Dust jacket flap.

Nico Grove

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