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Samuel R. Delany profile picture
Samuel R. Delany
Author · 59 books

Samuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales. Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City. Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book. Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water. Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City. In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

Series

Books

Return to Nevèrÿon book cover

Return to Nevèrÿon

1987

The American Shore book cover

The American Shore

1978

The Einstein Intersection book cover

The Einstein Intersection

1967

The Tides Of Lust book cover

The Tides Of Lust

1973

They Fly at Çiron book cover

They Fly at Çiron

1993

Babel-17/Empire Star book cover

Babel-17/Empire Star

2001

The Motion of Light in Water book cover

The Motion of Light in Water

Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village

1988

Dark Reflections book cover

Dark Reflections

2007

Trouble on Triton book cover

Trouble on Triton

1976

Babel-17 book cover

Babel-17

1966

Tales of Nevèrÿon book cover

Tales of Nevèrÿon

1979

The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction of Samuel R. Delany book cover

The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction of Samuel R. Delany

1986

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue book cover

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

1999

Out of the Dead City book cover

Out of the Dead City

1963

The Best of the Nebulas book cover

The Best of the Nebulas

1989

The Jewel-Hinged Jaw book cover

The Jewel-Hinged Jaw

Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

1977

Conversations with Samuel R. Delany book cover

Conversations with Samuel R. Delany

2009

Heavenly Breakfast book cover

Heavenly Breakfast

An Essay on the Winter of Love

1979

Empire Star book cover

Empire Star

1966

Nova book cover

Nova

1968

Out of the Ruins book cover

Out of the Ruins

2021

Longer Views book cover

Longer Views

Extended Essays

1996

The Mad Man book cover

The Mad Man

1994

Driftglass book cover

Driftglass

1971

Atlantis book cover

Atlantis

Three Tales

1995

The Towers of Toron book cover

The Towers of Toron

1964

The Novels of Samuel R. Delany Volume One book cover

The Novels of Samuel R. Delany Volume One

Babel-17, Nova, and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

2017

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction book cover

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction

2010

The Atheist in the Attic book cover

The Atheist in the Attic

2018

1984 book cover

1984

Selected Letters

2000

Phallos book cover

Phallos

Enhanced and Revised Edition

2004

American Science Fiction book cover

American Science Fiction

Four Classic Novels 1968-1969 (LOA #322)

2019

Aye, and Gomorrah book cover

Aye, and Gomorrah

2003

Of Solids and Surds book cover

Of Solids and Surds

Notes for Noël Sturgeon, Marilyn Hacker, Josh Lukin, Mia Wolff, Bill Stribling, and Bob White

2021

Dhalgren book cover

Dhalgren

1975

Quark/4 book cover

Quark/4

1971

In Search of Silence book cover

In Search of Silence

The Journals of Samuel R. Delany, Volume I, 1957-1969

2015

Distant Stars book cover

Distant Stars

1981

Quark/1 book cover

Quark/1

1970

Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders book cover

Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

2011

About Writing book cover

About Writing

Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews

2006

Occasional Views book cover

Occasional Views

"More About Writing and Other Essays"

2015

Bread and Wine book cover

Bread and Wine

1999

Driftglass/Starshards book cover

Driftglass/Starshards

1991

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand book cover

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

1984

The Jewels of Aptor/Second Ending book cover

The Jewels of Aptor/Second Ending

1962

Starboard Wine book cover

Starboard Wine

More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

1984

The Jewels of Aptor book cover

The Jewels of Aptor

1962

Flight from Nevèrÿon book cover

Flight from Nevèrÿon

1985

Silent Interviews book cover

Silent Interviews

On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics-A Collection of Written Interviews

1994

Neveryóna book cover

Neveryóna

1983

The Big Book of Modern Fantasy book cover

The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

2020

City of a Thousand Suns book cover

City of a Thousand Suns

1965

We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line book cover

We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line

1968

Letters from Amherst book cover

Letters from Amherst

Five Narrative Letters

2015

Dark Matter book cover

Dark Matter

A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

2000

Hogg book cover

Hogg

1994

A, B, C book cover

A, B, C

Three Short Novels

2015

The Ballad of Beta 2 book cover

The Ballad of Beta 2

1965

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Samuel R. Delany