ask sam delany a question?

When I met him, I was very self-conscious about my nail-biting, although I realized that I was probably 20 years too young (and maybe 50lbs too thin) for his tastes. (Actually maybe I didn't know that latter part at that point; I met him before I had read much.)

Motion Of Light ends before he writes Dhalgren; I don't think he mentions it at all.

Just finished Dark Reflections. The first two sections are really good, but the third one is weak, and almost makes me think less of the book as a whole. But going back and rereading bits of the first two sections is the antidote to that. Overall it's a good book, but not great.

What's this? Is it a new collection of critical works?

No, it's a new novel.

Are you shitting me there's a new actual Delaney novel OMG?!?!

Wow, didn't hear about this at all.

Is it another pr0n? (Not that I'm judging-- I liked Mad Man.)

Not porn. Not SF. Delany, not Delaney.

Oh hell, here.

I know I could easily have gone and found that myself, but thanks.

Looks great, actually. Might buy it tonight.

hurry up and finish the sequel to "stars in their pockets like grains of sand" you fat bastard

v4h1d hurry up and listen to the radio show me and mark s dedicated to him! it includes a reading of "aye and gomorrah".

link pls

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/09/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-11/

hurry up and finish the sequel to "stars in their pockets like grains of sand" you fat bastard

would be amazed but thrilled if this ever happens. Will be somewhat surprised if he ever publishes another sf novel.

Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders coming sometime from Bamberger Books.

June 2009 interview: http://io9.com/5295779/samuel-delany-answers-your-science-fiction-questions

His 1971 film The Orchid has recently gone up on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub4lqJXApRE&feature=related

haha my first question on the revive was gonna be "where is 'through the valley of the nest of spiders' (you fat bastard)?"

LOL pwnage

...some of the most recent incarnations of the Cyberpunk stuff seem to me to be kind of dull. It seems to become a collection of endless mannerist fights, with everyone firing various and sundry power guns at each other from around corners, and I don't see what the point of it all is.

Bamberger went out of business, so he had to find a new publisher for Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. New publisher is Magnus Books, release date October 18 2011.

hmmmmm.

btw fellow nerds, interview in the current paris review. (one with wm. gibson too.) haven't read it yet but it's the first p.r. i've been interested in front-to-back in quite a while.

Nice. $30/4 issues for ipad, I might do that.

Also, since the last time I checked (3-4 months ago), finally there's some Delany available as e-books.

dear mr delany

pls finish "the splendor and misery of bodies, of cities" before dying

Not likely, according to the interview I linked above.

Djehuty asks: "Will he ever finish and publish The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities?"

Probably not, I can't say for sure. Again, I haven't written it off entirely. I did write about 150 pages of it at some point. But a number of things had come up to undercut it. I've explained it many, many times, and don't mind explaining it again. I was in a major relationship at that time, that kind of fueled the first volume, Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. And that relationship broke up, and that was the beginning of the Eighties, at the same time the AIDS situation came in. A lot of it, as the diptych was originally planned out, was a celebration of lot of the stuff I saw at the time in the gay world. Sort of in allegorical form, a lot of that was being celebrated. There was a lot of the gay situation that made me rethink some of that, not in any kind of simplistic way, but in a fairly complicated way. So between the personal breakup, which was an eight-year relationship that came to ane nd, and the changes in the world situation, there were other things that sort of grabbed my interest more. That made the second one a little hard to go on.

was thinking in the car earlier that if there's any writer whose personal archives i want picked up by the harry ransom center it's srd

yeah i'd heard something similar, though at the time i had interpreted it to mean that a lot of characters in the story were based on people who'd died of AIDS, and that he didn't want to revisit the setting because it was too painful for him to do that. maybe that's part of the story, too.

still, "stars in my pocket" is hands down my favorite work of his ... and i'm DYING to know what the xlv and the web were up to

personally, as much as i like the new covers, they'll never hold a candle to the old bantam paperbacks, what with their silver-age nasa publicity oil paintings of starships and nebula. is their a golden treasury of silver age sci-fi painting out there?

still looking for this

Next year is his 70th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his first novel. I hope he gets some coverage and a higher popular profile from it. He got done dirty by the B. Dalton blacklist and I'm sure it cost him a fair amount of financial security, which sucks considering Dhalgren sold a million plus.

I still haven't read Times Square Red, Times Square Blue -- thinking about buying the ebook of that one now that it's available.

good lord, he's seventy? i mean it makes sense but still. oy.

"higher popular profile" = he needs to get as...liberal with his movie rights as the pkd estate.

actually HAS there been a single srd movie adaptation. i suspect not.

maybe gaspar noe can try his hand at hogg and finally eat up the rest of his art-house goodwill.

Nova could make a good film. Honestly I'm not sure what else would! I mean, there's a lot that might make interesting films, but not much that could get financing to get made.

xpost LOL

in terms of wider pop success, aside from the lack of movie adaptations, and yr right, though i think some of the shorts could be spun out or maybe babel-17, i think the KIND of novels he wrote, as much as the fact that he didn't die young and not yet reclaimed by the ivory tower and has always purposely straddled the line between the straight lit avant-garde and sf himself since dhalgren, is a big part of why he hasn't been given the "guy you thought just wrote shitty drugstore paperbacks was actually a genius!" treatment by the believer crowd.

tom six's 'hogg'

i don't know -- don't you think there's something (ick) zeitgeisty (don't ask which zeitgeist i mean) about pkd -- which explains why the stuff he did adapts so well to being farmed out for adaptation? whereas delany's recurring concerns are sexual freedom and critical theory, neither of which i think anyone wants to see an SF movie address

einstein intersection

plus also this is a really obnoxious thing to say, but -- he's just too good! currently HBO is dumbing down george r.r. martin -- they looked at a george r.r. martin novel and thought to what degree and in which way can we best dumb this down? (the answer was 'more hookers') (this is not actually surprising) -- the hell would they do with stars in my pocket like grains of sand

yeah, I also think PKD's concern with reality and simulacra resonates with cinema very naturally. Delany's interest in language much less so.

well there are also like two good pkd movies so i wasn't exactly offering it as a prescription