"Some psychic shock causes insanity in any human—or for that matter, any intelligent species or perceptual ma chine or computer—that goes more than twenty thousand light-years from the galactic rim . . ." This sets forth one of the important premises that profoundly shape the society Delany depicts. In the cosmos of The Star Pit the Einsteinian postulate that mass and gravity define the underlying physical properties of the universe is extended to define all reality as well.

The universe is a jumble of physical laws defined by the gravity of stars and galaxies, and human beings are no less subject to these elemental forces.

About twenty thousand light years from the Milky Way the force of gravity shifts and so do the laws of physics; the effect on most human beings of this shift is complete insanity. The effects at twenty-five thousand light years away are...