![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
puritybrown.livejournal.com2009-01-18 12:36 am
Entry tags:
48: Stars in my pockets like grains of sand by Samuel R. Delany
48: Stars In My Pockets Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany
Main reaction: wow.
Sundry thoughts:
1. I've written up two Delany books in this comm before, and each time I expressed a certain ambivalence. With Stars... I find that the ambivalence is completely gone, transmuted into the kind of affection that transforms even faults and flaws into aspects of the loveable (and beloved) whole. Delany's ridiculously wordy and his characters make implausibly eloquent speeches and he can be terribly precious in a way that drives me mad -- but that's the price of admission, and it's totally worth it.
2. I'm glad I didn't read the blurb before I read it, because (on my edition) it is way spoilery. And one of the ways in which it's spoilery is by giving the impression that it's about ten times as plot-oriented as it is. There is a plot in Stars..., but it unfolds at a leisurely, unhurried pace, and it's not really the main point.
3. The fertility of Delany's imagination is astonishing. There are enough ideas in Stars... to fill fifty novels: the evelm, the Thant family, the Industrial Diplomats, the Web, the war between the Family and the Sygn -- any one of these could be the basis of a long-running series. The opening section fits an entire world into 80 pages.
4. The flipside of #3 is that there's sometimes less exposition than I'd like. The ratio of "weird alien stuff/concepts" to "explanations of weirdness" is not what I'd normally expect. Which is actually a good thing; for starters, there's a shedload of exposition in Stars... and I don't think the novel could fit any more without exploding. And as well as that, the ultimate effect of this relative lack of exposition is to disorient the reader, undermine their expectations, leave them displaced and unmoored in the world of the book, which is exactly the way one of the two protagonists feels most of the time.
5. And he has other ways of unmooring the reader -- I've got used to the fact that Delany's characters mostly walk around naked by now, so that doesn't startle me as it once did, but he's got other tricks up his sleeve. Like the business with pronouns, for instance: in Stars..., "she" is used as the default third person, with "he" being reserved for any person the speaker is at that very moment sexually attracted to. This isn't immediately explained, and even when it is explained it takes a while to get used to, and to stop hunting for clues as to gender every time a new character is introduced. This is exactly the kind of thing that science fiction should be doing.
6. "The door deliquesced." = Best Sentence In A Science Fiction Novel Ever y/y?
7. It makes me sad that the planned sequel was never written and at this point probably never will be. Because that ending... *sigh* If the novel had been intended as a standalone, it would be an acceptable ending. Not the ending I would want, but not one that would make me scream in frustration either. But knowing that it was meant to be #1 of 2 turns the loose ends and unresolved subplots (and also the fact that ( cut for brief spoiler ) into a bit of a tease. I'm glad that I knew in advance that the sequel doesn't exist, because I would hate to have found that out immediately after finishing Stars...
8. This may be the one Delany novel everyone should read if they only read one Delany novel. Certainly of all the Delany books I've read, it's the one I recommend most highly.
Main reaction: wow.
Sundry thoughts:
1. I've written up two Delany books in this comm before, and each time I expressed a certain ambivalence. With Stars... I find that the ambivalence is completely gone, transmuted into the kind of affection that transforms even faults and flaws into aspects of the loveable (and beloved) whole. Delany's ridiculously wordy and his characters make implausibly eloquent speeches and he can be terribly precious in a way that drives me mad -- but that's the price of admission, and it's totally worth it.
2. I'm glad I didn't read the blurb before I read it, because (on my edition) it is way spoilery. And one of the ways in which it's spoilery is by giving the impression that it's about ten times as plot-oriented as it is. There is a plot in Stars..., but it unfolds at a leisurely, unhurried pace, and it's not really the main point.
3. The fertility of Delany's imagination is astonishing. There are enough ideas in Stars... to fill fifty novels: the evelm, the Thant family, the Industrial Diplomats, the Web, the war between the Family and the Sygn -- any one of these could be the basis of a long-running series. The opening section fits an entire world into 80 pages.
4. The flipside of #3 is that there's sometimes less exposition than I'd like. The ratio of "weird alien stuff/concepts" to "explanations of weirdness" is not what I'd normally expect. Which is actually a good thing; for starters, there's a shedload of exposition in Stars... and I don't think the novel could fit any more without exploding. And as well as that, the ultimate effect of this relative lack of exposition is to disorient the reader, undermine their expectations, leave them displaced and unmoored in the world of the book, which is exactly the way one of the two protagonists feels most of the time.
5. And he has other ways of unmooring the reader -- I've got used to the fact that Delany's characters mostly walk around naked by now, so that doesn't startle me as it once did, but he's got other tricks up his sleeve. Like the business with pronouns, for instance: in Stars..., "she" is used as the default third person, with "he" being reserved for any person the speaker is at that very moment sexually attracted to. This isn't immediately explained, and even when it is explained it takes a while to get used to, and to stop hunting for clues as to gender every time a new character is introduced. This is exactly the kind of thing that science fiction should be doing.
6. "The door deliquesced." = Best Sentence In A Science Fiction Novel Ever y/y?
7. It makes me sad that the planned sequel was never written and at this point probably never will be. Because that ending... *sigh* If the novel had been intended as a standalone, it would be an acceptable ending. Not the ending I would want, but not one that would make me scream in frustration either. But knowing that it was meant to be #1 of 2 turns the loose ends and unresolved subplots (and also the fact that ( cut for brief spoiler ) into a bit of a tease. I'm glad that I knew in advance that the sequel doesn't exist, because I would hate to have found that out immediately after finishing Stars...
8. This may be the one Delany novel everyone should read if they only read one Delany novel. Certainly of all the Delany books I've read, it's the one I recommend most highly.