Theodore Sturgeon and Alfred Bester are the science fiction writers to whom Delany owes most in themes and style, especially evident is the debt of Dhalgren to Sturgeon's More Than Human (1953) and Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit." Outside of the field, he is indebted to the French Symbolists, especially Arthur Rimbaud, and he is very aware of the Modernists, such as T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. Not only in Dhalgren but in many other works, such as Empire Star, The Einstein Intersection, Nova, and "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones," he seems involved in a dialogue with the psychology, history, and methods of Finnegans Wake (1939). Dhalgren exploits the conventions of both science fiction and contemporary experimentalism.