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Praise
“I read The Jewels of Aptor in 1962, when I was fourteen. Samuel Delany had written it when he was nineteen, and I totally got that, the fantastic youth of the thing, but I was also blown away by what I didn’t yet understand was the style. It induced one of the most persistent and global somatic memories of reading I’ve ever had, to the point that I can actually use it as a sort of time-travel device. And yes, I know he’s written many novels since then, including Dhalgren, but I’ve always wanted a chance to say that about The Jewels of Aptor!”
—William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition
“Samuel R. Delany sits at the crossroads of the story of SF. Explore any path—why SF matters, how, to whom—and he is there, beaming, either in person or reflected in the writers forging ahead. This book of beautiful, brilliant stories, fiction and nonfiction, shows us why he matters so much—and how, and to whom. All of us, of course.”
—Nicola Griffith, author of Hild
“This anthology rocks your mind, rolls your heart, and makes you tingle all over. Nisi Shawl and Bill Campbell have curated an entertaining and provocative volume, a whirlwind tour of the mythic, science fictional landscape that Delany engendered. These stories, essays, and memoirs are sensuous encounters with Delany, an ongoing conversation in the delanyesque universe. A polymath geek fest! Stories for Chip is a perfect tribute to a creative genius, a theoretical titan, and a great adventurer.”
—Andrea Hairston, author of Redwood and Wildfire
“This lovingly made tribute to Samuel R. Delany is packed with tiny delights. Stories that are as diverse as they are refreshing to the palate. A blend of so many different voices and takes on the influence of this great author--one could only dream that in the winter of one’s career such a collection could be constructed in one’s honor.”
—Jennifer Marie Brissett, author of Elysium
“A powerful testimonial to the impact Delany has had in inspiring so many of this generation’s diverse voices.”
—Tobias Buckell, author of Arctic Rising
“A tribute to one of the great geniuses of science fiction, this diamond of a book has stories as multi-faceted, brilliant, and wickedly sharp as Delany himself.”
—Ellen Klages, author of The Green Glass Sea
“Billy Tumult” copyright © 2015 by Nick Harkaway
“Voice Prints” copyright © 2015 by devorah major
“Delany Encounters: Or, Another Reason Why I Study Race and Racism in Science Fiction” copyright © 2015 by Isiah Lavender, III
“Clarity” copyright © 2015 by Anil Menon “When Two Swordsmen Meet” copyright © 2015 by Ellen Kushner
“For Sale: Fantasy Coffin (Ababuo Need Not Apply)” copyright © 2015 by Chesya Burke
“Holding Hands with Monsters” copyright © 2015 by Haralambi Markov
“Song for the Asking” copyright © 2015 by Carmelo Rafala
“Walking Science Fiction: Samuel Delany and Visionary Fiction” copyright © 2015 by Walidah Imarisha
“Heart of Brass” copyright © 2015 by Alex Jennings
“Be Three” copyright © by 2015 Jewelle Gomez
“An Idyll in Erewhyna” copyright © 2015 by Hal Duncan
“First Gate of Logic” copyright © 2015 by Benjamin Rosenbaum
“River Clap Your Hands” copyright © 2015 by Sheree Renée Thomas
“Eleven Stations” copyright © 2015 by Fábio Fernandes
“On My First Reading of The Einstein Intersection” copyright © 2015 by Michael Swanwick
“Characters in the Margins of a Lost Notebook” copyright © 2015 by Kathryn Cramer
“Hamlet’s Ghost Sighted in Frontenac, KS” copyright © 2015 by Vincent Czyz
“Each Star a Sun to Invisible Planets” copyright © 2015 by Tenea D. Johnson
“Clones” copyright © 2015 by Alex Smith
“The Last Dying Man” copyright © 2015 by Geetanjali Dighe
“Capitalism in the 22nd Century” copyright © 2015 by Geoff Ryman
“Jamaica Ginger” copyright © 2015 by Nalo Hopkinson and Nisi Shawl
“Festival” copyright © 2015 by Chris Brown
Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany
Copyright © 2015 by Rosarium Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Rosarium Publishing
P.O. Box 544
Greenbelt, MD 20768-0544
www.rosariumpublishing.com
International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9903191-7-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015943602
Acknowledgement for permission to reprint the following:
“Haunt-type Experience” by Roz Clarke first appeared in Black Static, Witcham, Cambridgeshire, UK, February 2009.
“Nilda” by Junot Diaz first appeared in The New Yorker, New York, NY, USA, October 1999. It was subsequently reprinted in his collection This Is How You Lose Her, New York, NY, USA, September 2012, Riverhead Books.
“Real Mothers, a Faggot Uncle, and the Name of the Father: Samuel R. Delany’s Feminist Revisions of the Story of SF” by L. Timmel Duchamp first appeared in Cruising the Disciplines: A Symposium on Samuel R. Delany, Kenneth R. James, editor, Annals of Scholarship, Aliso Viejo, CA, USA, Volume 20 (2013).
“Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany at the Joyce Kilmer Service Area, March 2005” by Eileen Gunn first appeared in Foundation, Kempston, Bedfordshire, UK, Winter 2007. It was subsequently reprinted in her collection Questionable Practices, Easthampton, MA, USA, March 2014, Small Beer Press.
“Guerilla Mural of a Siren’s Song” by Ernest Hogan first appeared in Pulphouse, Issue 4 (Summer 1989). It was subsequently reprinted in Alien Contact, Marty Halpern, editor, San Francisco, CA, USA, November 2011, Night Shade Books. A Polish translation appeared in Nowa Fantastyka, Warsaw, Poland, January 2013.
“Empathy Evolving as a Quantum of Eight-Dimensional Perception” by Claude Lalumière first appeared in Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology, David Joseph Clarke, editor, Charleston, SC, USA, November 2013, Obsolescent Press.
“Kickenders” by Kit Reed first appeared in monkeybicycle, Montclair, NJ, USA, Summer 2014.
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“The Master of the Milford Altarpiece” by Tom Disch first appeared in The Paris Review, Paris, France, Spring 1969. It has been subsequently reprinted many times, including in Getting into Death and Other Stories, New York, NY, February 1976, Knopf.
Contents
Introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson
Eileen Gunn
Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany at the Joyce Kilmer Service Area, March 2005
Nick Harkaway
Billy Tumult
devorah major
Voice Prints
Isiah Lavender, III
Delany Encounters: Or, Another Reason Why I Study Race and Racism in Science Fiction
Anil Menon
Clarity
Ellen Kushner
When Two Swordsmen Meet
Chesya Burke
For Sale: Fantasy Coffin (Ababuo Need Not Apply)
Haralambi Markov
Holding Hands with Monsters
Carmelo Rafala
Song for the Asking
Kit Reed
Kickenders
Walidah Imarisha
Walking Science Fiction: Samuel Delany and Visionary Fiction
Alex Jennings
Heart of Brass
Claude Lalumière
<
br /> Empathy Evolving as a Quantum of Eight-Dimensional Perception
Jewelle Gomez
Be Three
Ernest Hogan
Guerilla Mural of a Siren’s Song
Hal Duncan
An Idyll in Erewhyna
L. Timmel Duchamp
Real Mothers, a Faggot Uncle, and the Name of the Father: Samuel R. Delany’s Feminist Revisions of the Story of SF
Junot Díaz
Nilda
Benjamin Rosenbaum
The First Gate of Logic
Thomas M. Disch
The Master of the Milford Altarpiece
Sheree Renée Thomas
River Clap Your Hands
Roz Clarke
Haunt-type Experience
Fábio Fernandes
Eleven Stations
Kai Ashante Wilson
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Michael Swanwick
On My First Reading of The Einstein Intersection
Kathryn Cramer
Characters in the Margins of a Lost Notebook
Vincent Czyz
Hamlet’s Ghost Sighted in Frontenac, KS
Tenea D. Johnson
Each Star a Sun to Invisible Planets
Alex Smith
Clones
Geetanjali Dighe
The Last Dying Man
Geoff Ryman
Capitalism in the 22nd Century
Nalo Hopkinson & Nisi Shawl
Jamaica Ginger
Chris Brown
Festival
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
About the Editors
Introduction
Kim Stanley Robinson
I was in a dusty used bookstore in downtown San Diego, looking at its science fiction shelves, when I pulled down a little book titled City of a Thousand Suns. Author one Samuel R. Delany. I had recently discovered science fiction and was on the hunt for new writers, so I opened this book and started to read. It was February 12, 1972. I know that because I wrote the date on the flyleaf after taking the book home, and in all the years since I’ve held on to that volume, despite my frequent cullings of my library, because it means something to me. It brings back the feeling of that time: a twenty year-old reading another twenty year-old (more or less), discovering science fiction and the world.
Because the book was the third in a trilogy, I read it with some confusion, but when I was done I went looking for more Delany. Soon I had found all of it, and Delany had become one of my favorite writers. He was, I gathered, a young writer traveling the world, his life an adventure that was vivid and romantic and filled with literature. My own life became more exciting because of his writing: this was an intense feeling, a kind of joy.
I see versions of that feeling in all the stories and essays collected here. Delany’s writing is beautiful, which is rare enough; but rarer still, it is encouraging, by which I mean, it gives courage. People respond to that encouragement with pleasure and thanks, as you will see here.
These tributes mostly don’t try to imitate Delany’s style, which is good, as it is a very personal style, one that has morphed through the years in complex ways. Imitation could only result in pastiche or parody, forms of limited interest, although a good parody can be fun, and I’ve seen some pretty good ones of Delany’s work elsewhere. A “Bad Delany” contest would be at least as funny as the famous “Bad Hemingway” and “Bad Faulkner” contests. But a better tribute, as the writers gathered here seem to agree, results from considering not style but substance. Delany’s subject matter, his mode or method, involves a characteristic mix of the analytical and the emotional, the realistic and the utopian. By exploring this delanyesque space (and I think delanyesque has become an adjective, like ballardian or orwellian or kafkaesque), the stories and essays here make the best kind of tribute. They perhaps help to make the Delanyspace a new genre or subgenre. However that works, it’s certain that Delany’s work has effected a radical reorientation of every genre he has written in. Time and other writers will tell the sequel as to what that means for science fiction, fantasy, sword and sorcery, pornography, memoir, and criticism. Here we get hints of what that will be like.
It was a persistence of vision that created the Delanyspace, over decades of hard work. It’s both theoretical and material; it pays attention to sex and bodies more than most fiction, but also it is often more social and political. It is, remembering what Virginia Woolf said about George Eliot’s books relative to earlier English literature, “a literature for grown-ups.” Reading Delany provides us with new cognitive maps, which reorient us to our experiences and to our own thoughts. This is what literature should always do, but it’s rare to experience the effect so distinctly and joyfully. Even when emerging from his books chastened, or alarmed, or shocked, or even appalled, there is something deeply positive in Delany’s vision. His books are utopian in a sense bigger than politics. They make you bolder. Their greatness includes a great generosity. This volume is one sign of their impact.
Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany at the Joyce Kilmer Service Area, March 2005
Output from a nostalgic, if somewhat misinformed, guydavenport storybot, in the year 2115
Transcribed by Eileen Gunn
Their journey took place in verdant March, when the sun was not yet so high in the sky as to be dangerous. The New Jersey Turnpike was redolent with the scent of magnolias, and the trees in the Joyce Kilmer Service Area were clad in exuberant green. What brought them, the nascent politician and the noted philosopher, to this place, in a vehicle that shed its rich hydrocarbons liberally into the warm, clean air?
The truth was that Michael Swanwick and Samuel R. Delany shared a taste for animal flesh, and had come to this bucolic waystation to satisfy their common need. “I’m a burger kind of guy,” said the future ruler of Russia. “So am I,” said the white-bearded semiotician, and they chose an imperial meat-patty palace for their repast.
As they stood in line, contemplating a panoply of burgers, fries, and blue raspberry Icee®s and basking in the cool green glow of fluorescent lights, Swanwick was struck with nostalgia for a time long past.
“I miss Howard Johnson’s,” he said. “Not the food, of course—I miss the orange-roofed temples, celebrated by Jean Shepard as sirens of the highway. Once upon a time, every rest area on the Jersey Turnpike had a Howard Johnson’s. ‘A landmark for hungry Americans.’”
Though Swanwick had spoken the words, each man, involuntarily, heard the chime of the ghastly jingle. “Funny thing,” he continued quickly. “It was capitalism that killed it. Marriott bought it for the real estate.”
“Red in tooth and claw,” said Delany. “I miss the pistachio ice cream cones, that’s all…. But here,” he added in a soothing tone, “here we have trading cards with robots on them.” He accepted a trading card from the cashier. It depicted Cappy, a sleekly androgynous silver-metal lover. “I want a different one,” he said.
“Have it your way,” said the cashier, shrugging. He handed Delany another card, this one featuring Crank, a grubby makeshift robot with rust under his gnawed fingernails.
Delany laughed, a musical sound somewhere between a snort and a giggle. “I’ll keep this one,” he said. He ordered a beef patty made with real beef, medium rare, topped with horseradish and Béarnaise sauce, kosher dill slices on the side.
“Have it your way,” said the cashier again.
“Are you a robot?” asked Swanwick, suddenly concerned. The cashier did not reply.
“I would like a big, sloppy, greasy double cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato and all the trimmings,” Swanwick told the cashier. “I want ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, and Russian dressing with beluga caviar. Hold the pickle.”
“Caviar is available only at the Walt Whitman Service Area,” said the cashier, frowning. “You can’t always have everything your way.” He gave Swanwick a trading card depicting Aunt Fanny, a matronly, pink, lipstick-wearing robot with a protuberan
t posterior. Swanwick accepted it with bemusement, wondering whether Burger King offered the same card in the United Kingdom. “Can I have another, too?” he asked. The cashier handed him a card with a pigtailed Lolita robot on it. “Another?” The third was Madame Gasket, who was a bit scary, frankly, for a trading card. He couldn’t get anything his way.
“Lucky in love, unlucky at cards,” said Delany.
“They hand these things out to children?” Swanwick asked, glancing again at Madame Gasket.
They paid for their meals in the devalued currency of the late-period religio-capitalist hegemony, and took their food trays to a small table at a window overlooking the Sunoco station.
“Bon appétit,” said Delany, gesturing with his hamburger as one would with a wineglass.
“Priyatnovo appetita,” replied Swanwick with a similar gesture. He had recently returned from the Urals, where he had been the toast of Ekaterinburg.
At first they ate in hungry silence, gazing out at the gas station, as languid pump attendants with huge palm-frond fans hailed approaching automobiles and waved them toward available fueling bays as though they were New Jersey’s famous zeppelins. Then, having taken the edge off their appetites, the two men continued the conversation they had begun in the car, the one great debate that writers and thinkers everywhere have carried on since writing and thinking first evolved: the debate about the ultimate futility of writing and thinking.
“I’m a cult writer in Russia,” said Swanwick, “and I’m a cult writer in the United States. And I’m sick of it.”
“Nothing so terrible about being a cult writer,” said Delany. “Christianity started out as a cult, and look at it now.”
◊
“I want to make some difference in the world, communicate with the mass of humanity, have an effect.” He gestured toward the crowded freeway. “I want to change entire lives for the better.”
“Have you thought of a different career?” asked Delany gently. “Perhaps emigration to a land of greater opportunity? You speak some Russian, do you not?”
“Nyemnoshka,” Swanwick answered, with a modest shake of his shaggy head. “A smidgeon,” he translated.
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