Second paragraph of third section:“Hey, how long have you been back?”
I don't always get on with Delany's writing, and this is a good example of a story that I admire but don't especially like. The protagonist is a professional criminal in a near-future society who goes by many different aliases, all of which have the initials H.C.E. (this is a lift ( Read more... )

I do recommend reading sf classics at the same time as you work your way through this year's Hugo shortlist. It's a good yardstick for checking what's changed in the field and what hasn't. This is quite a long book, which ends without an ending, promising a second half of the story which has never appeared (and now that we are thirty years on ( Read more... )

This is an anthology of classic sf stories - and classic pieces of sf criticism - assembled in the mid- 1990s on behalf of the Science Fiction Research Association. I found it somewhat frustrating and slightly incomprehensible. There is very little editorial apparatus to help the reader appreciate whatever point the editors are trying to make; some ( Read more... )

12) Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

3) The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, by Samuel R. Delany ( Read more... )

7) Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany

I've read only one Delany novel before, one of his minor ones (either The Towers of Toron or The Fall of the Towers, not sure which) and wasn't wildly impressed. This is miles better, and helps me understand why he developed the early reputation that he did. I had been expecting something like a half-way point ( Read more... )

( What I got in Glasgow )

6) Nebula Award Stories Number Three, ed. Roger Zelazny


( Read more... )