Einstein Intersection. Samuel R. Delany

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       Praise for Samuel R. Delany’s Other Books

      “The Neverÿon series is a major and unclassifiable achievement in contemporary American literature.”

       —Fredric R. Jameson

      “Delany’s work exists on a kind of borderline—between theory and literary practice, between canonical and popular culture, between academic and nonacademic culture—a borderline familiar to feminist theory and cultural critique. The Neverÿon series is one of the most sustained meditations we have on the complex intersections of sexuality, race, and subjectivity in contemporary cultures.”

       —Constance Penley

      “[Delany] works real magic in these pages . . . Portions of ‘Atlantis: Model 1924’ linger, even loom, in my memory, and I suspect they will long endure there.”

       —Hungry Mind Review

      “ ‘Atlantis: Model 1924’ is neither SF nor fantasy . . . [but it] has an odd, unsettling power not usually associated with mainstream fiction . . . should be of interest to all Delany fans for its wondrous (and entirely characteristic) ability to introduce us to a living world. It’s a talent very close to time travel—or magic.”

       —Locus

      “One of the most interesting pieces now published, [‘The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals’] is a melding of fiction, commentary and diary, bringing together Delany’s Nevèrÿon characters with people from the equally fantastical setting of modern New York during the early years of the AIDS epidemic . . . redolent of Defoe’s ‘The Plague Years,’ [it] is a moving and powerful statement that strikes home.”

       —San Francisco Chronicle

      “This may be the most successfully experimental work yet from an author for whom language and story are inseparable . . . [‘The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals’ is] a lengthy masterpiece, whose kaleidoscopic fragments cross the border between fact and fiction, extracting one from the other with meticulous precision.”

       —Library Journal

      “A Joycean tour de force of a novel [Dhalgren] seems to me . . . to stake a better claim than anything else in this country in the last quarter-century . . . to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature.”

       —Jeff Riggenbach, Libertarian Review

      “The very best ever to come out of the science fiction field . . . The usefulness of Dhalgren to you and to me is beyond question. Having experienced it, you will stand taller, understand more, and press your horizons back a little further away than you ever knew they would go . . . a literary landmark.”

       —Theodore Sturgeon, Galaxy Bookshelf

      “[Trouble on Triton] is classic Delany that maintains a cutting edge of sheer platinum. Delany sets his interrogation of the myth and politics of a central culture within an infinitely richer galaxy of interwoven margins. The dazzle always illuminates: the novel offers vision-altering thrills on the order of paradigm shifts or sex at its most rapturously cataclysmic.”

       —Earl Jackson, Jr., author of Fantastic Living: The Speculative Autobiographies of Samuel R. Delany

       The Einstein Intersection

       Books by the Author

       Fiction

      The Jewels of Aptor (1962)

      The Fall of the Towers:

      Out of the Dead City (formerly Captives of the Flame, 1963)

      The Towers of Toron (1964)

      City of a Thousand Suns (1965)

      The Ballad of Beta-2 (1965)

      Empire Star (1966)

      Babel-17 (1966)

      The Einstein Intersection (1967)

      Nova (1968)

      Driftglass (1969)

      Equinox (formerly The Tides of Lust, 1973)

      Dhalgren (1975)

      Trouble on Triton (formerly Triton, 1976)

      Return to Nevèrÿon:

      Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

      Neveryóna (1982)

      Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

      Return to Nevèrÿon (formerly The Bridge of Lost Desire, 1987)

      Distant Stars (1981)

      Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand (1984)

      Driftglass/Starshards (collected stories: 1993)

      They Fly at Çiron (1993)

      The Mad Man (1994)

      Hogg (1995)

      Atlantis: Three Tales (1995)

       Graphic Novels

      Empire Star (1982)

      Bread & Wine (1999)

       Nonfiction

      The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977)

      The American Shore (1978)

      Heavenly Breakfast (1979)

      Starboard Wine (1984)

      The Motion of Light in Water (1988)

      Wagner / Artaud (1988)

      The Straits of Messina (1990)

      Silent Interviews (1994)

      Longer Views (1996)

      Shorter Views (1999)

      Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

       Samuel R. Delany

       The Einstein Intersection

      FOREWORD BY NEIL GAIMAN

      Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459

      Copyright © 1967 by Samuel R. Delany

      All rights reserved

      Printed in the United States of America 5 4

      CIP data appear at the end of the book

      First published by Ace Books in 1967. Subsequently reprinted by Bantam Books.

      Wesleyan University Press paperback 1998.

      This edition originally produced in 1998 by Wesleyan/

      University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755

      For Don Wollheim,

      a responsible man in all meanings

      to and for what is within,

      and Jack Gaughan,

      for what is without.

       Foreword

      BY NEIL GAIMAN

      Two misconceptions are widely held about written science fiction.

      The initial misconception is that SF (at the time Delany wrote The Einstein Intersection many editors and writers were arguing that Speculative Fiction might be a better use of the initials, but that battle was lost a long time back) is about the future,