Science fiction. Short stories. I’ve known Delany’s name since I was a sci-fi-devouring teen, and I read and loved a memoir by him almost a decade ago, but this was my first time picking up any of his fiction. It certainly wasn’t the case in his writing about his own life, but I’d always had a vague sense – constructed from who-knows-what, since reading things about science fiction rather than reading the thing itself wasn’t really something I did back them – of his stories and novels as having an imposing and difficult reputation. After reading this collection, I can say that my sense of things was exaggerated, but I can also see where it comes from. Many of these stories are smart and interesting, but don’t go out of their way to invite you in. Many are weird, but not in a lush and playful way like, say, some of China Mieville’s writing, but are more stark and self-contained. They also, having been written between the ’60s and the very early ’90s, have a bit of a feel of being from another era, though it isn’t always possible to tease out what’s about the years and what’s about the author’s distinctive way of doing things. In a few of the stories, I couldn’t tell if he and I just have very different sociological imaginations (i.e. ways of imagining how the social world does and can work) or if he was pointedly prioritizing story over catering to a version of the plausible too attached to the real world. Anyway, I read this collection because an article recommended it as a good place to start before picking up his novels…which I suspect I will do at some point, at least the one or two most famous, but I’m not in a rush. I appreciated these stories, mostly, and I’m glad I read them, mostly, but they were a bit of work.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.