Product Description
A collection of substantial written interviews. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

U want complex? How bout multiplex??
This multiplex, mind-scrambling narrative is (along with EINSTEIN INTERSECTION) Delany's best novel. Only about 100 pages, filled with dazzling, vivid images & fun characters -- it's fresh, funny, complicated & FAST -- a "space opera" of epic proportions ... in a tight space. U'll have a great time. Some of Delany's philosophical Deep Thots come across 2, but U won't mind. U'll B 2 busy having a great time. 2 bad this guy went on 2 write DAHLGREN, TRITON, etc....

A book to put on your reread shelf
A friend recommended this book to me saying, "As soon as you finish it, you'll want to read it again immediately."He wasn't kidding.

Samuel Delany's book "Empire Star" is basically a novella (about 100 pages).It recounts the life of a young man who is born and raised on a backward planet where thought rarely rises beyond the immediate "now".Nicknamed "Comet Jo" for his curious need to look up at the stars, the young man is given an important message to deliver to the Empire Star... unfortunately, he doesn't know what the message is.Neither does his eight-legged cat.Their adventure, and the reader's, is to unravel the mystery.

The novella is quite straightforward at first, but the reader will discover that everything that has occurred takes on additional meaning by the end of the book.The best way to describe the book is to say that it is the literary equivalent of an M.C. Escher print.

As one friend to another I, too, must recommend that you set aside some time to read the book and then immediately re-read it.

Simplex, Complex, Multiplex
This is one of my all-time favorite science fiction novels.It contains the great concept listed in the title of this review(read the book to understand more!), and demonstrates multiplexity in the way it wraps aroundand around itself.A wonderful book, and a shame it's not still widelyavailable.Whenever I find a used copy, I buy it, so I can give it away.

Time and thought turned back on itself again and again.
This is a delightful book, easy reading but full of content for all level readers.The characters are likable and there are several interesting concepts that are woven into the story line.The reader needs to keep his thinking cap on to catch the intricities of the storyline.I have reread this book several times and it continues to be a favorite.I will not discuss the storyline in this review as I do not want to pre-color the first time readers perception of the book.I prefer to let the author present his own story.I will tell the reader that this is the story of an unsophisticated young man who in the process of growing up leaves the safe enviroment of his backwater planet and is flung into the hustle and bustle of a vast galactic empire where the meaning of the term key players takes on a whole different meaning. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Where Logic Meets Dream
This is perhaps the first Delany novel where his ability to write near-poetry and call it prose really shows up, though there were intimations of it in his The Fall of the Towers. It's an ability he's never lost, and the science fiction field as a whole has been a great beneficiary of it, as his works have helped move the field far beyond its pulp ghetto.

It's the story of Lo Lobey, on a quest to find Kid Death and force him to return his beloved Friza to him before he kills him (which immediately invites the question of how do you kill death?). It's also the story of a far future Earth long ago destroyed by atomic mayhem, inhabited by beings intent on re-creating humanity in all its glory, from Jean Harlow and the Beatles to Jesus Christ, before everyone ends up going to the great rock and the great roll. At a third level it's a fascinating look at the creative process and how events in an author's life become enshrined and intertwined in the end product. At still another level, it's an investigation of individuality, difference, and consciousness. And just for good measure, it invokes the classics via the tale of Orpheus.

There are some problems with this book. The setting of a long-ago apocalypse that has left only somewhat irrational computers and freak mutant creatures was clichéd even at the time this was written. All the characters except Lobey himself are extremely sketchily drawn, though this is perhaps appropriate given the parable-like aspects of this work. The portrayed future culture is in many places quite fuzzy, not given clear description nor quite a totally logical framework, though once again this is partially deliberate, invoking Gödelian mathematics. It is, perhaps, too short, with some critical aspects not given enough working room to really make their point clear.

But regardless of these problems, the book has capturing power, a way of evoking a feeling of otherness and wispy dreamscape whose meaning lies just beyond your grasp. It took the 1967 Nebula Award, a good indication that quite a few knowledgeable readers found this work to have good and important qualities, and even today, over forty years later, still makes for fascinating reading.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Well written but not everyone's cup of tea
There is no doubt Delany can write well but I think you either like his style or you don't with not much in between.Much of his writing is more like science fiction poetry than prose and Einstein Intersection is the most extreme example of that I have read so far.Delany leaves a lot to the imagination and a lot to figure out on your own.I think his reputation as writing "literary" science fiction is well deserved.If you want everything laid out for you this isn't the book for you and Delany is probably not the author for you.On the other hand, if you want great writing that you will enjoy and that will make you think, then this and his other books will fit the bill.Babel-17, Empire Star and Nova are easier to read although even there everything is not laid out in great detail.Nova is probably the easiest to follow and most traditional if that is what you are looking for.

Ugh!
Don't get me wrong. I'm kind of a fan of Chip Delany. I think that "Aye, and Gomorrah..." is one of the best stories in the disorienting-loss-of-personal-control-and-bodily-integrity subgenre since Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain." However...

This book is potentially successful only as a send-up of fantasy/sf subgenre conventions. The dragons and the ornate city are hilarious in the context of fantasy and sf as they existed at the time. However, the rest of the book amounts to nothing more than pretentious crap. The plot is, relatively, pointless and never resolved, Delany's insistence on inserting pointless, self-important, page-long quotations from his own journals to begin chapters (such as they are) is annoying to the nth degree (to see how inserting long quotations can torpedo an otherwise good story, see exhibit A, "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," by Harlan Ellison," and many of his sentences verge on utter incoherence. (Few things piss me off more than declarative sentences without verbs, and Delany has them here in spades). A lot of the book comes across to me as if I were watching "The Beast of Yucca Flats" again: "Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"

Granted, we can probably give Delany a little bit of leeway because he was supposedly engaging in some sort of linguistic experimentation, but one might rightly expect him to go all-out, rather than mixing what amounts to what would be a fairly decent short parody of genre conventions with spells of half-cocked Joyce imitation that leaves this critic absolutely at sea.

How this book won a Nebula is a mystery to me. Delany himself loves to tell the story about how one of the old guard cussed out the SFWA membership for handing it to him, but I believe that the SFWA in its early days had a bias definitely in favor of the most severe, alienating avant-garde writing possible, and I can prove it: In 1967, the year The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula for best novel, the attendees of the World Science Fiction Convention decided to bestow the Hugo Award for best novel upon an obscure, now-forgotten work by Robert A. Heinlein entitled The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. I rest my case.

The best of the "New Wave"
While many of the "New Wave" science fiction writers of the 1960s did little more than adapt long-dead literary styles to their own work (as John Brunner, in "Stand on Zanzibar" adapted the style of John Dos Passos), Delany forged a new style of his own, telling a science fiction story through the creative use of ancient and modern myth.Warning--this is not a book for a lazy reader or a slow one.But if you've got the chops, this book has the chops for you.

The Song of the Machete-Flute
This is essentially a retelling of myths and archetypes using what seems to be aliens or mutants. Now, bear with me for a second: This book is extremely well-written. I place it in the sci-fi section even though it is more like a fantasy on the surface. This is a world where people actually quote Ringo Starr and treat the rise and fall of the Beatles the way we treat the rise and fall of Achilles. We know it is our world, but something has gone awry. What, we never know.

This book won the Nebula and is full of rich, poetic prose. But I recommend it only to those people who love fantasy sci-fi with a good dose of poetic language on the side. For Delany's more straightforwardly "sci-fi" novels, see NOVA or THE FALL OF THE TOWERS. ... Read more

Product Description
An anthology of original new stories of science fiction and the fantastic by leading African, Asian, South Asian, and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of colour. With writing by Opal Palmer Adisa, Celu Amberstone, Wayde Compton, Andrea Hairston, Maya Khankhoje, Tamai Kobayashi, Larissa Lai, Karin Lowachee, devorah major, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Eden Robinson, and others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

I just didn't get "into" it
This book entails a lot of highly politically charged post-colonial science fiction. It felt a lot like reading a poetry from an annual collection for people interested in post-colonial literature.The works in this book are more serious, mature, and anchored in the real world than most traditional science fiction.If your a fan of most western science fiction, brace yourself for a very different style.It wasn't my cup of tea - again too political for me.

Several great stoies
As the author of, The Second Virgin Birth, I have to say that Hopkinson book is very believable, with well developed-characters with amazing dialogue that surrounds several action-packed stories that will keep you guessing the entire time.It's an easy read, and extremely well written.

Decolonializing the Alien
Speculative fiction, at least that popular in the West, usually projects Western and White attitudes into the future or supernatural situations. This important book, which gets its title from a quote by Harriet Tubman, collects stories on such matters from people of color who have been informed by the colonial experience in their homelands. These submissions often utilize non-Western storytelling techniques featuring unexpected moral constructions and non-linear plotlines. Thus, several of these stories seem to have abrupt and inconclusive endings, but that's if you perceive them in a standard linear fashion. Meanwhile, a common motif in this collection is science fiction treatments of White/European colonialism through the eyes of aliens who are being colonized by humans. That's a great twist on a trusty sci-fi device, but many of these writers apparently came up with the concept before constructing their plots, leading to some stories that are very contrived and preachy (the most heavy-handed example is by Carole McDonnell).

But on the other hand, the stories here are almost uniformly haunting and incredibly thought-provoking for informed readers of any culture. Karin Lowachee and devorah major really make the aforementioned humans-colonizing-aliens motif work in exciting ways. Tobias S. Buckell offers an intriguing space war with a Mesoamerican twist, and Opal Palmer Adisa brings redemption in an alternative history of slavery. Wayde Compton creates a marvelously updated version of a piece of old African folklore, to illustrate post-human discrimination, while Larissa Lai finds the inherent humanity and prejudice of supposedly inhuman robots. The most moving tale here is by Celu Amberstone, in which humans who have been forcibly relocated by aliens to a new planet try to connect with this strange new Earth in a Native American fashion. As with any collection of stories by different authors, some submissions here work better than others, with preachiness being a common drawback. But overall, this is an especially stirring collection of tales that tackle shopworn sci-fi and fantasy concepts from fresh non-Western viewpoints, offering the reader new ways of looking at the past, present, and future of the real world. [~doomsdayer520~]

Fantastic - a must have
The stories are short but packed with depth and information. Fantastic writing from authors who should be paid attention to. A must buy for anyone interested in postcolonial writing, science fiction, race, and gender among others.

The way to the stars
Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan have joined forces to produce a powerful and insightful anthology of Science Fiction literature from a broad spectrum of experience and (counter) experience.Please note, Amazon doesn't credit Boston-based professor Mehan (who teaches at Emerson College) with having much to do with this book, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out he had just as much say in assembling the contents as did his co-editor, Nalo Hopkinson, the famous novelist of Canada whom many credit as being the "next Octavia Butler."Together they make an imposing duo and they are wise indeed both in what they decided to do for and the people to whom they appealed for new work.The result is smashing and one of the very best books of 2004.

Wayde Compton's "fairy tale" is almost too beautiful to describe.A "growing ball of light as bright as a sky full of half moons" appears to our hero and tells him that his name is Mr. Polaris.By the way, the hero is called Lacuna and thus describes the position of writers of color, often, marginalized within the already marginalized community of science fiction.That is, it's a world filled with its own rules and domains, yet those in charge of the dominant culture regard it with skepticism and even violence, based on the fear of losing their own Antaean strength--the exploring strength of the colonizer.

The blind Victorian writer Celu Amberstone contributes a diaristic and chilling account of a mother-daughter relationship gone tragically wrong.In this brief and pointillistic tale, the daughter is called "Sleek" and she is almost like the spirit of the mother before society's pressures (and the pressures of colonization) took the free will out of her.The months and the days are each given beautiful and poetic names.The penultimate entry will bring tears to your eyes--even if you are a rock.

I wish I had time to list all the stories and what makes them good.Before I sign off I could add that, although Compton and Amberstone are both Canadian, the anthology has many writers from other parts of North America too, including the USA, as well as from other parts of the world.This world--our world.The editors have skillfully suggested to their readers the ways in which all science fiction embodies aspects both of colonizing and post colonialist teleology.It's an eye opener.Hooray for Arsenal Pulp for bringing us the news in this handsome and durabe volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

An examination of how societies in multi-generational spaceships can (d)evolve over time
Joneny is a student of galactic anthropology and is given the task of decoding "The Ballad of Beta-2." Beta-2 was one among a group of multi-generational spaceships moving between the stars where the crew was killed, leaving only a song that was an obvious metaphor for the events leading to their deaths. His search took him to the damaged ships and after some solid detective work and exploration; he was able to learn that civil order broke down in the ships. The moral authority gained dominance over the civil, leading to people being executed for being outside the norm, which included everything from height and weight to political and religious opinions.
Within the destruction, there was the birth of a new species, based on a crossbreed between humans and another species. The captain of the Beta-2 was impregnated, and was able to have the fetus removed and kept with the other fetuses held in storage for the trip. However, when the moral authority learned of the deviance of her pregnancy, she was executed. Fortunately, a sympathetic doctor was able to shield the resulting fetus from destruction and the new species of mind-reading humanoids was created and Joneny learns the meaning of the ballad, as it chronicles the largely self-destruction of the people on the ship.
As humans move out into space, no one really knows what wonders and other species will be encountered. Furthermore, no one knows how long-term space travel will affect the humans in the ships. Physical laws prevent interstellar travel in anything other than multi-generational ships and it is clear that the society that begins the trek will not necessarily be the same one that ends it. Furthermore, humans being what they are, it is also very possible that the society will destroy itself via internal conflict. In this story, Delany explores both of these events and sets forward interesting ideas about what fate human cargo ships will face when they attempt to move between the stars. While the story is not compellingly written, it certainly meets the bar of worth reading.

Short, but very interesting reading
Here is the story of mankind's first, and unsuccessful, attempt to colonize another planet.

A dozen slow, multi-generation ships were sent to a distant star system called the Leffer System. Soon afterwards, mankind developed a star drive, so that by the time the ships reached their destination, mankind had been traveling around the galaxy for a hundred years. Of the dozen ships, two arrived empty, and two others never arrived at all. The ships were simply parked in orbit, and abandoned. Beta-2, one of the ships, even has its own ballad. Years later, as a college assignment, Joneny, a young researcher, is sent to find out just what happened.

Several of the supposedly indestructible ships show evidence of huge internal explosions. Some old audio recordings talk of being attacked by some sort of green humanoid that communicates by telepathy. Joneny meets the humanoid's half-human son, who is able to exist slightly outside of time, and live in hard vaccuum with no problem at all. He watches video from the other ships where the inhabitants have physically, and mentally, de-evolved to the level of an early human. "The Norm" is taken very seriously on the ships. If a person was found to be outside physical norms in any way, whether it's being too tall, or left-handed, or having the "wrong" eye color, they were immediately executed. By the end, Joneny understands just what The Ballad of Beta-2 is all about.

This is a short novel, but a very good one. It's an interesting story about how things on a multi-generation ship can go very wrong, and it's worth reading.

Hard to find but worth hunting down.
I was looking for The Ballad of Beta-2 and Empire Star, a two-in-one Delany title that does not seem to be on amazon.I agree with the other reviewer:Ballad of Beta-2 is a quick and interesting mystery, highly recommended.The other tale that it is bound with, in my copy, Empire Star, is more complex (and not as haunting), but still a rewarding bit of short Delany SF.Delany can be very bizarre (as in Dhalgren) but he can also write good old-fashioned SF.!

Surprised me!
I found "The ballad of beta 2" lying on a used books shelf, on sale, and brought it just for the sake of it. What a surprise! A catching yet dark plot, excelent writing and a GREAT ending which fits all the missing pieces that the book builds up. I found this book so interestingthat i brought other novels by Delany, and i still beleive he is an veryunderrated writer. 4 stars because it gets a bit too long (for my tastethat is), otherwise a GREAT read! ... Read more

Product Description
The contents of 1984 are easy enough to describe: 57letters and documents written in the mid-80s by novelist andcritic Samuel R. Delany. Addressed to various friends, relatives, andcolleagues, they present a vivid and exuberant mid-career portrait ofa writer and thinker whose work has had an enormous influence across astartling range of literary and paraliterary genres, including sciencefiction, autobiography, pornography, historical fiction, comic books,literary criticism, queer theory, and more. All the trademark Delanytouches can be found hererich descriptions of urban life,incisive social observation, sensuous and sophisticated tales of alife lived on the intersections of multiple social margins (Delany isgay and black), and, especially, passionate meditations on theintersection of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy that have madeDelany a figure of paramount importance both for millions of readers,and, more specifically, for a collection of writers and thinkers amere partial list of which reads like a Whos Who of contemporaryintellectual culture: Fredric Jameson, Eve Sedgwick, Um-berto Eco (akey secondary character in the pages to follow), Donna Haraway, HenryLouis Gates, Charles Johnson, William Gibson, and, we learn here most intriguingly but perhaps least surprisinglyThomas Pynchon.-- from the introduction, by Kenneth R. James ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Must Read for the Delany Fan
I am a pretty huge Delany fan, so I think I can say with some confidence that if you're interested in Delany and his work, you have to get this book. This is a collection of letters Delany wrote to friends, fans and business acquaintances in the year 1984. He talks about his interests in post structuralism and how it was informing his work, about what movies and films he is seeing, about problems with his partner and in detail about his incredibly risky sex life at the time.

The parts of the book that document Delany's continued unsafe sex in the cruising scene in New York right when the AIDS epidemic was really getting going are harrowing and Delany should be championed for his honesty in portraying this world. No edits appeared to have been made to these letters, so we get what Delany was thinking about AIDS at a time when no one really knew what it was. He thought for a while he might be immune, he thought maybe you couldn't get it from oral sex, he though a lot of things that turned out to be totally wrong. And reading him talking about how he and his community were thinking about this disease as it was first being discussed gave me chills. With all the unprotected sex Delany had in those days, it is amazing he survived, and we are better off because we have had another twenty five years of a brilliant writer and and we have this book, which is an amazing document of a crazy time in downtown New York and a remarkable look into one of my favorite writer's life.

Epistolary Brilliance
More than anything, in these letters we are treated to a rich vision of New York City refracted through an admirably refined critical sensibility. For Delany, who navigates cultural and class spaces with a confidence that has become legendary, New York is an endlessly inviting social space under perpetual construction, collapse and reconstitution. Tracing a trajectory that continues the ballistic one of his childhood, Delany finds his way up to Harlem to visit his old home, down to 42nd Street and the gay cruising areas of the porn theaters and across town to upscale publication parties. Armed with the critical tools of modernist flaneurs (Baudelaire, Benjamin) and more contemporary theorists (Foucault, Derrida), Delany traverses a landscape shot through with popular signs of the times (Michael Jackson, Boy George).

But it's not all postmodern fun. Beyond ever-present domestic difficulties-Delany's ongoing battle with severe dyslexia, wranglings with his ex-wife Marilyn over their daughter Iva, and problems with the chronic anxiety of his live-in, Frank-over the course of the year, the Delany household slides into an ever-deepening financial crisis that eventually finds Samuel and Frank scouring the streets for change, and reaches its emotional nadir with Delany's desperate letter to Camilla Decarnin.
But beyond the precincts of this private crisis there is a much larger crisis developing, a political crisis involving ideology, propaganda, censorship and repression of a sort that we might well call Orwellian ...
New York City in 1984 ...?
Read the rest of Ken James's introduction and the letters themselves for the rest of the story.

Letters Like They Used to Write
For those who have read his The Motion of Light in Water and Heavenly Breakfast, this book of letters from late 1983 to early 1985 provide a very nice extension to what Delany's life has been and how it has influenced his writing, both fictional and otherwise.

As indicated in the introduction, the choice of title for this book is deliberately evocative of Orwell's nightmare vision of that year, both as an indication of where Orwell got it right and where the real world has completely diverged from that vision. Within these letters, Delany shows just how completely draconian and life-meddling the IRS can be, as he finds himself without heat, trying to type with mittenedfingers,scavengingcans from the street to get enough money to put food on the table for a day, trying to set his schedule to still provide a nice home for his daughter, where he must have someone else cash his royalty checks so he at least has some money the IRS doesn't immediately grab. And just as nightmarishare his problems with getting his works published, galleys corrected, artwork commissioned and delivered, all under a cloud of mis-information, missed publisher and printer dates,payment contracts that almost amount to slave labor, a phantasmagoric depiction of the Byzantine world of publishing.

On the opposite side of the coin, we see a man who has the freedom to choose a life style that the Ministry of Love would never condone, who can freely publish ideas about politics, sex, and writing that the Ministry of Information would have certainly censored.Delany's ideas in these areas are certainly insightful and he articulates his positions well, even if you don't agree with his conclusions. Some of the material here may not be everyone's taste, as he is occasionally extremely graphic in his depictions of various sexual encounters, but this material shows a Delany who is comfortable with who he is.

About my only real complaint is that we don't get to see the other side of these letters, that we only hear one side of the conversation.And sometimes it is obvious that that other side would be very interesting to be able to read. And a couple of quibbles: there are often references to people obviously known to both correspondents, but who is a complete unknown to the reader (some of these are footnoted as to who they are, but far from all), and, as letters, these works are lacking in the often poetic sense of language that Delany displays in his fictional works. But overall, these letters provide a fascinating look at a fascinating, brilliant, poetic, and sometimes very human person.

A year in the life of an extraordinary author and lecturer
I came out of this book feeling I know Samuel Delany a little more personally, which I count as a great honour. It's a collection of letters written during 1984 to friends and colleagues. They're highly detailed, witty, sad, bizarre, at times brutally honest about himself and others -- often containing explicitly sexual details of real-life and imagined gay and straight(-ish) encounters that sneak up on you at the turn of a page and quite take your breath away. This is not a book for shrinking violets!

Away from the heat of these sexual excursions, Delany experienced trouble with the taxman during the period in question and the acute frustration he felt in trying to live life with no money to hand, despite having had much success with his novels and academic work, is obvious -- it's hard to imagine just how demoralising it was, but his description of winter in an unheated New York apartment, bundled up in jumpers, jackets and gloves to ward off the biting cold, tapping away at a word processor at 4am trying to finish a final draft of this or that book or article in order to earn some money, only to have it immediately snatched away by the IRS -- this I found particularly poignant. He also writes copiously about the difficulties of getting his then-current projects into print -- fascinating for anyone who has ever wondered what's really involved in getting a book into the shops.

On the positive side though, Delany writes with obvious love and affection about his (then ten-year-old) daughter Iva, product of a well-intentioned but failed marriage; he touches here and there on the deeper aspects of his relationship with Frank, his live-in partner (but I get the feeling much of it is kept private, even from his closest correspondents); his descriptions of the occasional high-flying Manhattan parties and soirees to which he's invited are positively "Dhalgrenesque", teetering on the edge of absurdity; and he writes about the sci-fi conventions he attends (often reluctantly) with deft insight into the natures of the characters involved.

There are references to Dhalgren and the real-life people and places behind some of the characters and locations, and some discussion about the many corrections that have been incorporated into the various reprints over the years; there are several academic discourses about books, music, writers, films and plays that, frankly, went over my head -- but there's enough accessible stuff here to keep an average reader like me absolutely enthralled.

We're now over fifteen years since these letters were written; I can only hope that life for this extremely gifted writer and -- well, a really nice guy, I reckon -- has improved immeasurably (especially financially) since then, because I feel he certainly deserves to have reaped the rewards of what has apparently been a career fraught with difficulties. Delany has provided me with many exquisitely crafted stories to read over the years; 1984 now takes pride of place alongside the other Delany masterpieces on my bookshelf. I only hope there's been enough public interest in this volume to warrant publishing some more of his correspondence. Personally, I can't wait.

Chip's Ahoy
Private letters by a living writer, written in a year I actually remember??? The thought alone is drool-producing. And Delany's letters are so thoughtful, incisive, gossipy... why, it makes me never want to write another letter. Please be warned, these are not for the squeamish. Delany is very open regarding his sexuality, and his sexual exploits, occurring during a time when AIDS was not considered the threat it is today. I'd recommend this book to all Delany fans, to everyone interested in gay culture, to all voyeurs, people interested in the politics of publishing, everyone who wants to know what Times Square used to be like... in short, to almost all. ... Read more

Product Description
"Startling and provocative. . . .Reid-Pharr presents a cogent analysis that combines the personal with the political, the intellectual with the emotional and the erotic. . . .Reid-Pharr's ability to move these works-and their themes-from the limited analysis of the academy into a broader realm of lived experience and social context that makes them, as well as Reid-Pharr's own thoughts, vital and genuinely consequential."-Publisher's Weekly

At turns autobiographical, political, literary, erotic, and humorous, Black Gay Man will spoil our preconceived notions of not only what it means to be black, gay and male but also what it means to be a contemporary intellectual. Both a celebration of black gay male identity as well as a powerful critique of the structures that allow for the production of that identity, Black Gay Man introduces the eloquent new voice of Robert Reid-Pharr in cultural criticism.

At once erudite and readable, the range of topics and positions taken up in Black Gay Man reflect the complexity of American life itself. Treating subjects as diverse as the Million Man March, interracial sex, anti-Semitism, turn of the century American intellectualism as well as literary and cultural figures ranging from Essex Hemphill and Audre Lorde to W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin, Black Gay Man is a bold and nuanced attempt to question prevailing ideas about community, desire, politics and culture. Moving beyond critique, Reid-Pharr also pronounces upon the promises of a new America. With the publication of Black Gay Man, Robert Reid-Pharr is sure to take his place as one of this country's most exciting and challenging left intellectuals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

deceptive title from a hyper-academic writer
TO NONACADEMIC READERS: Be forewarned! Don't let the title deceive you. This is not a cute, accessible anthology with writings that would interest the average gay, black man. This is not "Brother to Brother" or "Fighting Words." This is a series of musings from a professor that is clearly trying to impress a tenure review board. TO ACADEMIC READERS: Reid-Pharr gives nine chapters which deal with theoretical questions on race, sexuality, and gender. The title is supposed to scare you in its seeming essentialism. The book is divided into three sections: black, gay, and man; but these are arbitrary. Reid-Pharr's project is to critique obtuse, overly "socially-constructed" academic hyperbabble without returning to played-out identity politics. However, this book is just as theoretically burdensome as any other recent cultural studies. Shockingly, the author never once mentions postmodernism and only discusses modernism. A lot of this book seems borrowed: the grotesque picture on the cover smacks of Mapplethorpe; the raunchy sexual tales are influenced by Delaney; the "I'm a lesbian" line comes from Sedgwick and Francisco Valdes. I usually would say all black gay lit. enthusiasts should buy something like this; but I can't say that this time. This book is going to disappoint many. It reminds me of Hazel Carby's weird "Race Men" book. ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 9311. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 526 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more

Product Description
Hardover, no DJ as issued. Text offset from that of the 1958 Dell edition. New introduction by Samuel R. Delany. Adds "To Marry Medusa," the original novelette-length version of "The Cosmic Rape." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Utopia science fiction made special by Sturgeon
The Cosmic Rape ("To Marry Medusa" is the short story from which it was expanded) tells the story of a wandering space conquerer who is shocked to discover that humans, unlike any other race it had ever known,did not have a group mind. Convinced that this is how it's meant to be,Medusa enlists the help of a born loser to put all the brainwaves backtogether again.

The Cosmic Rape is one of these utopia vision sci-fi novels that seemed to populate the late 50s/early 60s. Sturgeon is a fine writer, and his recognizable style makes it immediately much more than the sum of its parts. The characters are grubbily and wonderfully real, even if the plot can't always say the same for itself.

Recommended for fans of science fiction writing of the period, and for fans of Sturgeon. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fantasy with a sense of reality
The longest of the Neveryon tales (the other collections are of a bunch of stories each, some novel length, most novella) as well as the second volume overall, this one really gives Delany the chance to stretch out and explore the culture of this world he's created in such detail.The story of a teenage girl Pryn with a goal in mind but basically winds up wandering around all over, encountering all sorts of people and places.However the book is much more than a simple travelogue, and Delany is too smart to reduce the story to simple Point A to Point B to Point C writing.The themes of slavery and sexuality (and when they intersect) are still explored, though not as prominently, but instead Delany chooses to focus more on the nature of power and myth, and how the perception of reality can create myth and perhaps even alter reality.Pyrn herself is a lot of fun, a strong female character, clever enough to follow her own agenda but not completely immune to the forces of other scheming around her.Some other characters make appearances, Gorgik gets basically a glorified guest star appearance but like all the stories, even when he's not in the story itself, his presence informs the actions of all the characters.Pryn's quest takes her all over and if the novel has any problems it seems to ramble at points and not go anywhere, as if Delany couldn't find the right balance between showcasing his culture or making an intellectual point, both of which are harder to sustain over the course of an entire novel.However these are minor issues and will only marginally affect anyone's enjoyment in the book (you also don't need a doctorate in whatever to understand the themes, while a decent amount of this probably went over my head, you can read and enjoy the story just the same) and the rich detail of the Neveryon culture is intact and expanded on brilliantly, from the decadence of the cities to the noble squalor of the huts and villages.His culture feels real but the book doesn't feel like a dissertation.Probably the best prawise I can give is that even with all the highbrow stuff, Delany didn't forget to actually write a story, and given the usual state of fantasy, that's high praise indeed. ... Read more