Samuel R. Delany

Babel-17

193 pages

During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as a weapon. Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought. This is discovered by the starship captain Rydra Wong. She is recruited to discover how the enemy are infiltrating and sabotaging strategic sites.

Dhalgren

879 pages

A mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name.

Nova

These are at least some of the ways you can read NOVA: as a fast-action farflung interstellar adventure; as archetypal mystical/mythical allegory (in which the Tarot and the Grail both figure prominently); as modern myth told in the S-F idiom...

Samuel R. Delany

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

368 pages

Tales of Nevèrÿon

264 pages

A group of interrelated stories taking place in an ambiguous distant past setting that on the surface resembles sword-and-sorcery. As always, Delany works his magic by drawing you in with vivid sensory immediacy, and then opening up uncountable doors of thought into language, semiotics, politics, economy and technology. The first in an addictive and haunting series, it also forms, along with many of his other works, part of a larger work he calls Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus. If that intimidates you, don't worry about it.

The Einstein Intersection

The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are "different" must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey's mythic quest for his lost love, Friza.

Triton

Published 1976 · 369 pages