Samuel R. Delany is one of the most successful of the so-called New Wave writers, publishing stories remarkable for their introduction of formal innovations such as decreased emphasis on narrative structure, heavy reliance on mythic patterns, and...

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 mystery novel by a black writer. Frank Yerby adopted the...

"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 adds, "Delany's not for everyone.... But his writing...

In the following essay, Fox examines the significance of graphic, polymorphous sex in both The Tides of Lust and Triton. According to Fox, explicit sexual content in these novels provides the philosophical-aesthetic perspective from which Delany exposes the extreme contradictions of racial identity, social order, erotic desire, and individuality.

In the following essay, Kelso addresses aspects of postmodern literary theory in the Nevèrÿon cycle, notably the influence of Derrida and Foucault on Delany's notion of deconstruction and marginality. Kelso draws attention to the motifs of sexual deviancy and degradation in the Nevèrÿon narratives, through which Delany explores the limits of racial identity, feminism, and sexual politics.

The fiction of Samuel R. Delany seems a striking example of what Robert Scholes calls the "structuralist imagination."… Instead of reflecting some objective "reality," the fictional work is seen as primarily a word-construct, a self-contained system whose relation to our familiar world is homologous, but in no way necessary or determined by it. Both in theory and in practice, Delany's "speculative fiction" (SF) is structuralist. Delany is a rare combin...