Samuel R. Delany Summary

"Samuel R. Delany," comments Jane Branham Weedman in her study of the author, "is one of today's most innovative and imaginative writers of science fiction." School Library Journal critic John Adams a... Read more

Few black writers have employed popular forms--the mystery novel, the historical or gothic romance, or science fiction. Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher has been credited with the first myster... Read more

Critical Essay by Michael Goodwin Samuel Delany has been the cutting edge of the SF revolution for more than ten years. He works within the traditional SF iconography (i.e., spaceships and cyborgs), ... Read more

Critical Essay by T. A. Shippey Drawing themes out of Samuel Delany's story collection Driftglass is made much more difficult by the author's preoccupation … with texture, immedi... Read more

Critical Essay by Gerald Jonas "Tales of Nevèrÿon" strikes me as superb science fiction, although it deals with an ancient civilization, vaguely Mediterranean in flavor an... Read more

In the following essay, Fox examines the etymology and function of language in Dhalgren, drawing attention to the novel's circular textual pattern, mythological associations, and embedded socia... Read more

In the following review, McLemee provides an overview of Delany's life and literary career and offers a positive evaluation of Longer Views. Samuel Delany published his first novel in 1962, ... Read more

In the following review, Paddy offers praise for Dhalgren, reissued by Wesleyan University Press in 1996. Nothing would be easier than to declare Delany’s 1975 magnum opus a literary masterp... Read more

In the following review, Sallis offers praise for both Longer Views and Atlantis. We witness a strange period in which it seems that, at the same time the canon of approved, proper literature narro... Read more

In the following excerpt, Morrison offers positive assessments of The Bridge of Lost Desire and The Motion of Light in Water. The central literary conceit of the cycle of linked tales that Samuel R... Read more

In the following review, Samuelson provides an extended analysis of Delany's comments on literary theory, the politics of marginalization, and science fiction in Silent Interviews. Though notin... Read more

In the following essay, Blackford examines various scientific and linguistic inconsistencies in Triton, which he identifies as symptomatic of Delany's fiction in general. According to Blackford... Read more