![]() ![]() Having just finished reading it myself, it was something of a strange pleasure to meet Delany and Dennis in real life instead of in Wolff’s ink drawings, albeit a few decades older than they appeared in the 1997 comic, with most of that story having taken place years before publication. Delany lives his partner of many years, Dennis the author chronicled a period in his partner’s life - when the then-homeless Dennis was selling books on the streets of Manhattan - in a graphic novel with Mia Wolff, Bread & Wine. ![]() ![]() Alex had his first published work as a writer in the tribute anthology Stories for Chip, “Chip” being Delany’s nickname. I visited Delany’s Fairmount, Philadelphia apartment with Alex Smith, my friend and sometime comics collaborator. “Something I’ve quoted a lot over the years is Thomas Mann on the worth of your own work,” Delany told io9, “‘I cannot know and you cannot tell me.’” In this day and age when queer and trans people are facing active erasure, the autobiography offers a reminder that histories and our elders are important. The book explores the author’s early years - he was born in 1942 - up to age 28, with much of its focus centered around the Harlem native living in the Village, married to a woman, but openly gay and having accepted affairs with men. And almost 10 years before Star Wars: A New Hope, a film Delany reviewed contemporaneously, he penned the short story “We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line,” a stunningly detailed tale of space travel and a clash on an alien planet.ĭelany chronicled the writing of The Jewels of Aptor and his other early works in his 1988 memoir The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village. The collection’s title tale explores gender identity, while “The Star Pit” deals with concepts of work, family, and breaking the limits of perception as a man encounters a young girl with the power to shift reality based on her emotions. The back of the 2003 anthology claims in a delightfully pulpy way that it’s “The ordinary stuff of ordinary fiction-but with a difference!” My first encounter with his work began with Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories. Delany professes confusion at the kinds of titles his audience has sometimes attributed to him - in a Facebook post last year, he mentioned that some considered him a sort of Grand Marshall of Sci-Fi, and wondered what it meant.įor his readers, at least, that means he’s written scores of celebrated science fiction and fantasy books starting with his first published novel in 1962, The Jewels of Aptor, and including epics such as 1974’s Dhalgren. ![]()
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January 2023
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