Synopses & Reviews
In
Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem).
Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there. The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man poet, lover, and adventurer known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.
Review
"A Joycean tour de force of a novel, Dhalgren...stake[s] a better claim than anything published in the country in the last quarter-century (excepting only Gass's Omensetter's Luck and Nabokov's Pale Fire) to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature." The Libertarian Review
Review
"Ultimately, a study in identity and illusion, Delany's huge and difficult novel will interest admirers of Ballard, Pynchon, and the like, though one suspects there's many an unread copy of the original mass market edition floating around." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Dhalgren features themes of racial identity, religious faith, and self-awareness revealed in a multilayered plot that will be right at home with today's audiences." Library Journal
About the Author
After his seventh novel Empire Star (1966), Samuel Delany began publishing short fiction professionally with "The Star Pit." It appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow and was turned into a popular two-hour radio play, broadcast annually over WBAI-FM for more than a decade. Two tales, "Aye, and Gomorrah" and "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones," won Nebula Awards as best SF short stories of, respectively, 1967 and 1969. Aye, and Gomorrah contains all the significant short science fiction and fantasy Delany published between 1965 and 1988, excepting only those tales in his "Return to Nevèrÿon" series. A native New Yorker, Delany teaches English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. In July of 2002 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.