Short Fiction Month: Aye, and Gomorrah . . . - Samuel R. Delany

This particular story originally appeared in what must surely be the most famous anthology in science fiction: Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions (1967). In it, Ellison attempted to break away from established science fiction and, whether or not you agree with his selection, it did turn out to be very influential in what we think of as the New Wave today. I have only read a few of the stories in this anthology but Aye, and Gomorrah . . . was definitely something different.

Some time in the future a group of astronauts - or spacers as they are referred to in the story -  is living a kind of life most people can only look at in awe. They travel the solar system to work on the grandest projects. It comes at a price however. They receive such a large dose of radiation in space, that rather than to try and shield them from it, their bodies have been adapted. It isolates them from the rest of humanity in ways that are not always easy to deal with.

This story is about human sexuality. A topic close to Delany's heart. Delany is gay and was, at the time this story was written, in the middle of a complicated marriage with the poet Marilyn Hacker. The sexual revolution may  have been washing over the US at that moment, it can't have been an easy life. Although the main character's position is different, some of Delany's personal experience as someone not conforming to the sexual norm must have made their way into the story. The main character is a Spacer and asexual. He, that is how he started out, never went through puberty, has an androgynous appearance and no sexual desires. That doesn't stop other people from wanting him though.

Delany does two things in this story that quite radically break away from golden age science fiction and what I think of as John W. Campbell science fiction. It removes the aura of competence and dedication from astronauts and replaces it with something a lot less glamorous. These astronauts have been changed before they could possibly oversee the consequences of their chosen career for the rest of their lives. It is a very dubious practice, that does  point out one of the major obstacles to manned space travel. You can feel the unease of the main characters when he is among regular humans. Everybody seems to be uncomfortable with it. I think this story would have had a snowball's chance in hell in the magazine market just for that aspect of it. But Delany is not done yet.

What the story also does is explore human sexual preferences that do not fit in the norm of sex within matrimony for reproductive purposes, or even more widely accepted ideas of romantic love. Sex and desire are described as urges that will not be denied, even if it makes the person experiencing them unhappy. What the situation the main character ends up in implies, there is no actual explicit scene in the story, is sex as one way traffic. The motivations of the various characters to go along with it will make a lot of readers uncomfortable fifty years after the story was published. Which should give you an idea of how 'dangerous' this story really was.

The way Delany uses loneliness, the desire for companionship and sexual fetishes in this story make it groundbreaking. It is one of those stories you really should read to understand the development of the genre. If Ellison was looking for controversy, then that is exactly what he got with this story. I'm not surprised at all he made it the parting shot of the anthology. It is, there is no other way to put it, a brilliant piece of work.

Story Details
Title: Aye, and Gomorrah . . .
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Language: English
Originally published: Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison (1967)
Read in: Dangerous Visions, Gollancz SF Masterworks edition (2011)
Story length: Short Story, approximately 3,700 words
Awards: Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award nominated
Available online: Strange Horizons

Nova - Samuel R. Delany

A very young Samuel R. Delany burst upon the science fiction scene in the 1960s. In rapid succession he produced a number of stories that are now considered new wave classics between 1962 and 1968. After that publications topped for a number of years, and his next notable speculative fiction novel is Dhalgren (1975), which is highly regarded in science fiction circles . Nova is the final novel of the first part of his career. It appeared in 1968 and was nominated for a Hugo the following year. Having only read one other book by Delany, Babel-17 (1966), I'm not really in a good position to say anything about how this work fits into his oeuvre. What I did notice was the same kind of almost uncontrollable energy in the writing. Nova is a wild ride.

In the 32nd century humanity has colonized the galaxy. This expansion is fuelled by a group of super heavy elements (300+ on the periodic table) collectively known as Illyrion. It is extremely rare but the energy contained in these atoms is huge. Captain Lorq von Ray is on a mission to gather Illyrion at the source, the heart of a star going nova. Doing so will change the power dynamic of the galaxy and those currently in power would rather keep it that way. The captain and his eccentric crew are in for a wild ride into the heart of a sun, if they live long enough to get there.

There is a bit of hard (and very speculative) science in the synopsis, and it does have links to golden age science fiction. There is a reference to Isaac Asimov's Foundation for instance, and to Clark Ashton Smith, a prolific author in the pulp and golden age of science fiction. In most regards, it is a new wave novel. It has been described as a grail quest in space for instance, and the crew has been likened to the Argonauts. The mystical aspects of the novel are certainly much more important than the science. Von Ray's grail (or golden fleece) is a vast supply of energy.

Another element, one that hard science fiction fans may frown upon, is very prominent role of tarot in the story. Most characters seem to believe the outcome of a reading. The one exception is the Mouse, a Gypsy character. The novel is showing its age here, these days he would probably have been a Romani character. It reminded me a bit of how the characters seek guidance in the I Ching in Phillip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle (1962). The belief in tarot is so prevalent in the novel that even the Mouse feels uncomfortable at a reading. Fortunately Delany does not appear to have used tarot to guide his plot.

There is a political element to the novel as well. All the characters have sockets installed that allows them to operate machinery with their brain. A machine as extension of a body. Distancing workers from the product of their labour, so Delany argues, leads to a lack of satisfaction in one's job, to unhappiness, and ultimately depression. It's an idea that runs parallel to Marx' ideas on capital. Just as separating workers from the product of their labour, separating them from the means of production has undesirable consequences for society. Delany's society has addressed these issues and while class still exists - Marx would be disappointed - the people are better for it. It's a future that moves away from automation and computerisation. Delany nods at Asimov's work but clearly takes a different route for his future.

Delany overlays these reflections on society, politics and economy with a story of rivalry. A merchant prince and a pirate lock horns over Illyrion. The outcome of their struggle could reshape the galaxy and both men have very different opinions on what that shape should be. To raise the stakes even further there is a personal element to their conflict as well. Grievances go deep and in the scenes where the rivals meet, the tension ranges from barely suppressed to outright, naked hatred. The interesting thing about this conflict is that Delany makes it galaxy spanning and deeply personal at the same time. Delany draws them larger than life but it is still a nice bit of characterisation.

What struck me most about the novel though, and I suppose the same is true for Babel-17, is the prose. There is so much urgency in the text. The novel reads like Delany had to get the story out. The prose drives the story on relentlessly. It does not have the same attention to poetry and linguistics as Babel-17 does - that novel deals with an alien language after all - but for all that, the writing is something special. Delany's work hit the genre hard and his prose is a very important factor in that.

If I had to pick a favourite I would probably pick Babel-17, simply because the subject appealed to me more. Nova is a superb example of what the new wave accomplished in the genre however. It's a story that on the surface connects with much of what has gone before in the genre. If you look under the surface however, new ideas, elements and themes enter into the narrative. Add to that Delany's distinct voice and you have a novel that is bound to attract attention. It's easy to see how this novel became as influential as it did. Nova is a novel everybody with an interest in classic science fiction should read.

Book Details
Title: Nova
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 241
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-473-211991-9
First published: 1968

Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany

I asked you which classic science fiction novel I should read next a while ago. A question prompted by my reading of Among Others by Jo Walton, with contains references to numerous works of science fiction. Babel-17 (1966) by Samuel R. Delany was the winner of that poll. It's the first novel I've read by Delany and I was quite eager to find out why people hold his writing in such high regard. He received the Nebula award for this novel in 1966 and it shares some traits with a number of other works often referred to as New Wave Science Fiction.

Delany certainly was part of a new generation of writers, Babel-17 was published when he was 24. What's even more remarkable is that he had already had six other novels published by that time. Although Babel-17 contains some hard Science Fiction elements that are so typical of Golden Age stories, the emphasis of the novel is much more focussed on linguistics, sociology and psychology. As much as I like Science Fiction, I feel the genre doesn't get really interesting until the 1960s, when a whole new range of topics suddenly becomes acceptable and more attention is paid to the quality of the writing. This novel embraces the opportunities this New Wave offers completely. As such it sounded like something I might enjoy. And indeed, that turned out to be the case.

During an interstellar war in which coalitions of several species vie for control of the explored galaxies, the human intelligence service investigates a number of sabotages that have hit important human targets. All of them are accompanied by a strange code language, dubbed Babel-17. Nobody is able to crack the code and in a desperate attempt to stop the sabotages, they turn to poet Rydra Wong. She is a woman with an unbelievable gift for languages and  she quickly finds out that they are not dealing with a simple code. Wong insists on being given all information available before setting out on a mission to find the origin on Babel-17, a language more compact than anything she has ever encountered and one that fascinates her like no other.

Babel-17 leans heavily on a strong version of an idea that was very popular in science fiction at the time: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The basic idea is that the structure of language influences the world view of the speaker. The debate to what extend this is true is still raging but generally the influence is thought to be a lot weaker than Delany describes in his novel. The author included some very interesting ideas on languages, expression and thought throughout the novel.

'Why? Well most textbooks say that language is a mechanism for expressing thought, Mocky. But language is thought. Thought is information given form. The form is language.'

Wong to Dr. T'mwarba - Part I, chapter II

Given the problems people can experience in putting thoughts into clear language, I'd say the relationship isn't 1:1. To me, language and thought are a lot more imprecise than Wong states here and I guess a lot of characters in the novel feel that way too. In a way she acknowledges that in her poetry.

'...You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with there half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels so it doesn't hurt any more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.'

Wong to Dr. T'mwarba - Part I, chapter II

Her mastery of language sets Wong apart. Although she speaks just about everybody else's language and can express other people's thoughts more clearly and beautifully than the owners of these thoughts ever could, she has yet to find a language that can fully express her own thoughts.

Wong thinks a lot about concepts, what languages have words for what concepts and how that affects thought. I guess this is best expressed in her interactions with the character known as The Butcher. Although he speaks a form of English, the word 'I' does not appear in his vocabulary, nor does it have any meaning for him. In fact the problem seems to extend to other personal and possessive pronouns as well. Although this was brought about by a form of manipulation, not by natural language formation, it impacts The Butcher deeply and in the end offers the key to explaining his behaviour. Scientifically, I have some serious reservations about the way Delany links The Butcher's actions to his unique way of thinking (shaped by the language he speaks) and the specific, engineered, omissions in the concepts he is able to grasp through his language. Literary, Delany builds a wonderful story around it though. I especially liked his search for someone who speaks 'his language'. Aren't we all looking for that?

Delany plays with language in this novel. Not just in the plot but the prose as well. It contains snatches of poetry for instance, and an attempt to render Wong's train of thought in Babel-17 into English that is quite a stylistic experiment. My edition includes an introduction by Adam Roberts in which he points out the importance of names as well. Something I probably would have missed without the introduction. Delany's prose is ... almost exuberant in this novel. The tale is pretty fast paced, almost inviting the reader to rush though the story. I frequently found myself rereading sections of sometimes whole chapters because I felt I had missed things. Wong's thoughts and the way she uses Babel-17 concepts to tackle problems lead to a lot of leaps and bounds that can be pretty hard to follow at times. It did fall into place eventually though. Maybe I've become a bit of a lazy reader lately.

Babel-17 certainly deserves its status as a classic of the genre. Although a linguist would probably have a field day pointing out all the errors in Delany's novel, and the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is currently considered disproven, Delany has managed to build a very good novel around these concepts. It is a novel that does what science fiction ought to do, provoke thought on scientific theories and concepts that are packed into a good story. It's obvious why this novel made an impact when it was published and it certainly aged more gracefully than some of its contemporaries. I guess the collective wisdom of Internet users is not to be underestimated, you did me a service by picking this novel.

Book Details
Title: Babel-17
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Publisher: Gollancz
Pages: 192
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-575-09420-8
First published: 1966