Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia

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Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia

by Samuel R. Delany, Kathy Acker (Foreword)

3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 · rating details · 694 ratings · 69 reviews

In a story as exciting as any science fiction adventure written, Samuel R. Delany's 1976 SF novel, originally published as Triton, takes us on a tour of a utopian society at war with . . . our own Earth! High wit in this future comedy of manners allows Delany to question gender roles and sexual expectations at a level that, 20 years after it was written, still make it a co...more

Paperback, 312 pages

Published July 19th 1996 by Wesleyan (first published 1976)

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Dec 23, 2011 Rhys rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Delany is one of my favourite writers, but it has taken me a long time to get round to reading this one. In fact, *Triton* has been on my bookshelves since 1993. I think I was intimidated by the appendix on metalogic. It looks like a 'difficult' novel, but that's really an illusion. It's a beautifully written, complex but totally accessible and engaging work.

The main character, Bron Helstrom, is simultaneously likeable and infuriating, perceptive and unaware, an authentic personality on the page...more

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Feb 26, 2010 Jayaprakash Satyamurthy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In some ways, Triton is as much about science fiction as it is about social and political models.

The infodump or exposition is a vital part of the SF genre; it helps ground us in the imagined world of the story at hand and to contextualise those uniquely science-fictional sentences Delany is so fond of, formations like Heinlein's 'the door dilated' or a statement like 'her world exploded', which could have a much more literal meaning in a science fiction novel than in a mundane novel.

Infodumps g...more In some ways, Triton is as much about science fiction as it is about social and political models.

The infodump or exposition is a vital part of the SF genre; it helps ground us in the imagined world of the story at hand and to contextualise those uniquely science-fictional sentences Delany is so fond of, formations like Heinlein's 'the door dilated' or a statement like 'her world exploded', which could have a much more literal meaning in a science fiction novel than in a mundane novel.

Infodumps give us the necessary context to understand things that do not gel with our everyday experience, they help understand social, political, cultural and technological elements of a story's background that are taken for granted when reading a book about our own times and our own people.

But an infodump is not necessarily informative in the strict sense; there are endless examples of SF infodumps that offer an explanation for things that we know cannot be explained because they have not happened; furthermore, the explanation probably does not have much practical value, because except in very rare cases no one has gone and done those things in the manner suggested therein (although the device or technique described may since have been developed in some different way). Instead, it is a sort of gesture, a string of words with enough familiar terms to reassure the average SF reader (defined by Delany as having the equivalent of a bright 13-year old's knowledge of science) that this is 'proper science' mixed in with enough plausible-sounding esoterica to convince that reader that something fairly authoritative has been said.

One of the first proper infodumps in this book happens when an attack has just been made on Triton, and a government official is trying to tell his companions in a men's cooperative housing building that the brief gravity failure that took place is nothing to worry about. He gives an explanation that starts by referring to things that seem to relate to 'real' science, and rapidly becomes esoteric. Them he is asked to tone it down so that a mentally-deficient person present can understand. He gives a simpler explanation that his person can understand - and even this version makes no sense on our terms if looked at closely. Just as the government agent does not really know quite what has happened, but is asserting his authority by seeming knowledgeable, Delany is giving his made-up explanation more authority by showing how even a mentally-deficient member of his future society can understand what flied over our own head. This is a very clever device, and a way to both demonstrate and practice one of the chief uses of the SF infodump.

But there are many other infodumps in this book. Some relate to a made-up discipline of metalogics - something which again has no relation to any real system of logic we might be able to conceive of, some are in the form of descriptions of dramatic pieces couched in the jargon of academic cultural studies, some relate to genetics and medicine. Others are more personal.

All the infodumps that relate to disciplines of this future world start in terms that seem to make sense, then move into more or less incomprehensible realms for a very long time - most of the mental context of these people is way, way ahead of our own, Delany seems to be implying.

And then there are the personal infodumps. These are much more comprehensible, even as they tell us things about society and politics on the different planets and sattelites of the solar system that are quite fantastic by today's standards. But on the human level, once we adjust a little, they are perfectly comprehensible.

Except that the main character of this novel, Bron Hellstrom, seems to see very different things in these personal revelations than we do. We begin by trying to empathise with what seems to be the main character and hence hero of this story. And yet, we slowly find that the people he resents are among the most integral, self-actualised and compassionate individuals he encounters, and the society he hates is a sort of libertarian utopia that in many ways seems to superior to any current earth society. This brings us to the more commonly discussed aspects of this novel - how it belongs to a dialogue on ambiguous utopias with novels like Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Disposessed', how different societies offer different kinds of liberties and privileges, how much of this is governed by factors like resources and space and may not be possible or even desirable in other circumstances, and what means are justifiable to preserve a desirable way of life. There's also a commentary on gender relations and roles that is worth investigating.

Just as interestingly, Triton is a fascinating study of a completely dysfunctional individual, but one that is told almost entirely via a closely focused third person narrative that gives us this individual's thoughts and perspectives rather than anyone else's. It's easy to fall into subjectivity here, like the people who are seduced by the prose in Lolita and forget that the narrator is a deeply sick sexual predator. Delany's achievement is that Bron's anomie is made clear to us despite immersion in his viewpoint.

I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what there is to enjoy and think about in this novel; there is a passage in one of the appendices where Delany offers a comparison of the difficulty of understanding SF versus its potential range of expression as compared to mundane fiction that evokes similar dichotomies between tonal and atonal music, representational and abstract art. This alone is a point that deserves being engaged with in detail; that odd second appendix opens up even more ideas. The whole narrative is a mine-field seeded with explosive ideas and concepts. This is a science fiction novel that does it all - engages in a dialogue with its genre, offers deep, thought-provoking world-building and gives us total character-immersion. It isn't so much that they don't write them like this anymore as that they hardly ever did.(less)

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Feb 07, 2009 Erika rated it 3 of 5 stars

Trouble on Triton is supposed to inhabit a utopian (heterotopic) future when Earth is no longer the only hospitable planet, where personal expression has evolved through a widened acceptance of differing sexualities, and gender takes on radical new perspectives. I appreciated the gender exploration, but found it extremely hard to sympathize with the protagonist, Bron Helstrom. As a teenager, Bron was a (legal) male prostitute, but well into adulthood, he seems homophobic. This wasn’t the worse o...more Trouble on Triton is supposed to inhabit a utopian (heterotopic) future when Earth is no longer the only hospitable planet, where personal expression has evolved through a widened acceptance of differing sexualities, and gender takes on radical new perspectives. I appreciated the gender exploration, but found it extremely hard to sympathize with the protagonist, Bron Helstrom. As a teenager, Bron was a (legal) male prostitute, but well into adulthood, he seems homophobic. This wasn’t the worse of his qualities. He’s also egotistical, self-centered, and unbelievably frustrating. Despite this, he manages to live in an all-male commune--the evolved living situation in Delany’s imagined future. Convinced no one save himself understands his situation, Bron chooses a radical future for himself that ultimately leaves him less satisfied than before.

The homages to a quaint, ancient Earth where manners and delicate social maneuvering like tipping and gentlemanliness, are satire at its best. Delany also challenges preconceived notions of gender and sexuality that, along with his humor, make Trouble on Triton worth the read. Bron, however, ruined most of the novel for me, but he also pushed me to think the most. I wonder if using such an unsympathetic, irritating protagonist so out of his element in a free, sexually liberating universe, to impose such an anomaly, is to present a creature wholly relatable to an extant homophobic readership upon publication.

Maybe the fact that Bron goes to such lengths to discover himself is really a plea or wishful thinking rather than the indictment of white male intellectual thinking Delany presents. I’m inclined this direction only because Bron doesn’t, in fact, discover anything past the stubborn limitations of his psyche, but he does seem to reach an honesty with himself at the end, if a disappointing one. Optimistically, he did try, albeit for the wrong reasons. Close-minded or not, Bron Helstrom represents the worst in all of us; our frustration with him is a frustration with the limited prejudices we recognize in our own society.

For example, men and women freely wander the pages of this book in little to no clothing without apparent embarrassment or fear. In a society where sexuality has become so evolved and the human body less of a sin than a recognizable joy, it’s no wonder and an odd restoration of peace among us, that women, as well as men can exercise that right. However, Bron frequently expresses extreme irritation when propositioned and even scorns the naked physicality of his male suitors, choosing instead disgust rather than flattery if, say, Lawrence were female, over his prospects despite not being gay.

If you don’t mind a book that so openly features the best and worst of human sexuality, gender (and mannerisms in regard to either), definitely pick up Trouble on Triton. The only questions I have are: does Delany ever get tired of a naked cast or do his characters ever get cold?(less)

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Jul 06, 2008 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not as good as Dhalgren, but maintained my impression of Delaney as an author working beyond his pigeon-holed genre. In each of his books I've read he seems more concerned with the relationship between reality and art than with the technicalities of "hard sci-fi." Not that he doesn't fully embrace the genre--this book is most definitely science fiction with its share of technical flamboyance--but I feel that is only his platform to attack greater issues.

I'm not sure what I think about his repres...more

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Feb 04, 2011 Erik Graff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Delany fans

Recommended to Erik by: James I. Gottreich

Shelves: sf

Although I may have read Delany unknowingly as a kid, it was Jim Gottreich, my favorite high school teacher with whom I and several of his former students maintained relations after graduation, who brought him to consciousness. Jim had tried reading his Dahlgren, a long novel, and had told us of it on several occasions, conveying an ambivalence in his representations of it. On the one hand, he was impressed with the writing. On the other hand, he found it dense and difficult. I have no idea if h...more

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Jan 21, 2009 Jon Torn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was a big fan of "Nova" back in the day and a couple of Delaney's other books but I heard this was a bit difficult. It turned out it wasn't. It's a very funny, very sad book about a relationship turning sour in the background of a interplanetary conflict . . . the unusual nature of the book, of course, is how the space opera stuff is just the background to the protag's personal problems.

The main setup is pretty ingenious. In the future, no one ever needs to be unhappy in relationships because,...more I was a big fan of "Nova" back in the day and a couple of Delaney's other books but I heard this was a bit difficult. It turned out it wasn't. It's a very funny, very sad book about a relationship turning sour in the background of a interplanetary conflict . . . the unusual nature of the book, of course, is how the space opera stuff is just the background to the protag's personal problems.

The main setup is pretty ingenious. In the future, no one ever needs to be unhappy in relationships because, first, if you have a particular desire you can be matched to someone else that shares your desire and two, you can be essentially brainwashed to fall in love with that person. If you are rejected by someone no problem, find someone who you are compatible with and you can be caused to fall in love with someone, no problem. But our protagonist refuses to do this, he is set on mooning after a women he had a short, unhappy affair with. Nobody, especially his ex, doesn't understand why he doesn't just get with the program.

Delaney could have made the story simpler by making his main character more likable, I guess, or a classic nerd. Actually, his hero Bron is an Adonis and a sexual athlete to boot. But his personality is a put off to everybody, because he has the misfortune of feeling self-pity in a world where such an emotion is completely useless, because where any relationship problems you might have can be fixed automatically, but you choose not to take advantage of it, why should anyone listen to your whining?

It is typically for Delaney a amazingly detailed, from the technology to the sociology, vision of a future civilization. But I related to this book as an allegory about today, where pills like Prosac and books like "The Secret" are offering the same promise, that you can have anything you want if only you know how to ask for it. Unhappy people are just deluded, etc. My own rejection of such easy fixes has sometimes caused others who accept them to look at me as odd for choosing to be unhappy. But I'm not unhappy . . . some of my desires are in a pretty fufilled state and some of my desires are not, and the unfulfilled desires are just as important to my sense of being as the fulfilled desires are. That's one of the reasons I relate to this book.(less)

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Mar 30, 2013 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2013

Let's be honest with each other: this book is a bit of a mess. It's a glorious sort of mess, but it is oftentimes barely coherent. This isn't a reason to not read the book, as it's something that should be read, but it is definitely something to bear with.

The main drive in the book is Bron, our main character, who is a self-deluding jerk on the moon of Triton, a society where sexual freedom is at its utmost. It takes a few hours to get an entire sex change, down to the genomic level, and only fi...more

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Jan 06, 2012 Matus rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

On the surface, a fun story about a future civilization with some of our social kinks worked out (or at least, strongly reacted to), told with the usual variety and flair Delany cooks up. Deeper down, I think it's really a character study.

The supremely odd thing with this book is that the main character (narrator) is a really, really terrible person. Specifically they are selfish, lie to others and themselves (alter reality for their pride & general benefit), and are even borderline maliciou...more On the surface, a fun story about a future civilization with some of our social kinks worked out (or at least, strongly reacted to), told with the usual variety and flair Delany cooks up. Deeper down, I think it's really a character study.

The supremely odd thing with this book is that the main character (narrator) is a really, really terrible person. Specifically they are selfish, lie to others and themselves (alter reality for their pride & general benefit), and are even borderline malicious. It's really hard to read what is going through their head, and how they react to some situations. Meanwhile what makes the story engaging are all the amazing people around. Some of them are initially viewed highly by the narrator, but as you see the narrator's opinions swing on even those people, you start to realize that maybe everyone in the book is pretty awesome, and the narrator is just completely unreliable. (Maybe the clearest example is how Sam is introduced?) Anyway so it's interesting seeing the world through this super fractured lens, and also makes you wonder about yourself.

Back to the social side; Delany balances his sci-fi-y stuff with his usual desire to cook up progressive, liberal, bizarre societies. In the setting of the book, mars and especially earth are very conservative; meanwhile, everything farther out (referred to as 'the satellites'), thanks to being new, is very progressive (and Delany manages to inject lots of weirdness). As an example, there are interesting sub-narratives on gender issues, using the planets and the satellites to clarify contrasts (also "e-girls"? "footmen"/"waitresses"?). For a particularly nice bit on this, without giving much away, check out the narrator's view on women at the end of the book, and specifically how their psychologist (also mars emigrated!) explains it.

I think it must have been challenging to write a book with such a messed up narrator. It is amazing that Delany manages to give the reader guideposts with which to actually measure reality, but without clearly discrediting the narrator. It's just there for you to find. Though I should say, it gets more obvious as the story progresses, to put it mildly.

(Miscellaneous nonsense comments. Delany's use of racial and sexual slurs which, uh, target his own real life demographic, is kindof hilarious. Anyway, I want to give this book 5 stars, but the narrator is really so terrible that you feel miserable reading some parts (it's so convincing that you think "this book is bad" not "this person is bad"). Maybe that is the WHOLE POINT and this book deserves 500 stars. So okay, 5 stars it is. You win, Samuel Delany. (Also, you may say "samuel shortens to sam and both are black, whoa", but wait 'til you read about Sam's origins..))(less)

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Feb 28, 2011 Alexis Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: engl-487-queer-literature

Described on my class syllabus as "an ambiguous heterotopia," this science fiction novel takes place in a future where not only are the moons of Saturn, Neptune et al inhabited, they are at war with Earth and the other planets. The reason behind this war? Life for "moonies" is significantly more laid back, in terms of lifestyle, fashion, living arrangements, and even sexual identity (whether gender preference or gender identity; here, having one's gender changed is an out-patient procedure that...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Zulu rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is another really cool book from a period of SF writing that I want to know more about! Delany's writing is always very challenging for me. It's rarely straightforward, and I mean that both in terms of the characters' actions/the plot, and in terms of the voice and style. Delany uses a lot of parentheses, em-dashes, broken sentences, returns in thought to earlier time, and while he's doing this he doesn't explain his worldbuilding, he just plops you right down in the middle of it. But, like...more This is another really cool book from a period of SF writing that I want to know more about! Delany's writing is always very challenging for me. It's rarely straightforward, and I mean that both in terms of the characters' actions/the plot, and in terms of the voice and style. Delany uses a lot of parentheses, em-dashes, broken sentences, returns in thought to earlier time, and while he's doing this he doesn't explain his worldbuilding, he just plops you right down in the middle of it. But, like Russ, his books really reward rereading. You can pay more attention to events and emotions once you settle into his style, and once you know the basic events from a first read, the second read can be slower and more thoughtful.

This is the story of Bron, who is so fundamentally selfish, and yet so fundamentally unaware of that fact, that you kind of want to shake him/her while at the same time you pity him/her so intensely that you feel bad for all the imagined shakings. Set on Triton at the edge of a war between the Outer Sattelites and the Worlds (Earth & Mars), we are shown a society that has embraced choice and agency to a very gratifying extent. Whatever you might want--however you might choose to live--you can live that way with others of your own persuasion. You can go to work naked or wearing a tux. You can live in the legal part of the city where laws are enforced, or in the unlegal part where the only rule is that there are no rules. Sexuality, gender, body type, body modification, family size, family composition, modes of childrearing, all are completely up to you. If you don't like how you are, you can get a refixation so that you desire what you want to desire.

The only trouble is if you don't know, you are unable to make a choice because without self-knowledge, it's impossible to make whatever the 'right' choice might be. Or maybe there are no right choices for you. And that's Bron's situation. As the novel opens, he's a bit of an anachronism, a throwback to the patriarchy. He feels misunderstood by everyone because at his heart, he wants to be an alpha male, but this is a society that caters to everything except the alpha-maleness of oppressing others to show one's own strength. And, again lovely, the narrative doesn't support him at all. He's told he's wrong by at least three other major characters and several more minor characters. He's told that he is illogical and emotional in ways that don't make sense in the society he inhabits. He is never once woobified.

So, he decides that if he can't live as he is, he'll get a sex, gender, and sexuality change to become the kind of woman he wishes would love and understand him. Afterwards, though, she has the exact same problems, except magnified, because now she's a woman hearkening back to the patriarchy, except with no one around willing to take charge of her in the manly way she longs for! She can't approach men, and worse, she can't invite men to approach her. She wants them to approach her against her will, which is so basically paradoxical that she's even more confused about what it is she really desires. Getting a refixation changes precisely nothing about her basic problems.

What I love about this is that there is another major character who had a refixation and who is subsequently happy and well-adjusted. There are also characters who love others who have had refixations. The refixation is never villified or seen as unnatural. It is shown to be good and helpful, if the person knows what they want. But for Bron, whose basic problem is not any sort of dysmorphia or gender dysphoria, but rather having absolutely no self-reflexivity or insight, of course changing body and neural pathways isn't a solution. It isn't a solution because it wasn't the problem. The problem is undefinable and therefore insoluble, and therefore it isn't solved!

Bron's a completely unreliable narrator, and so all of this is gotten to by other characters' dialogue and by Bron's changing opinions about them depending on how much they validate him/her. Delany does a great job of presenting this through the parentheticals and asides that show Bron's thought process to be entirely emotional rather than logical (or even, to use the book's term, metalogical).

Along with Russ's Female Man, this is a heterotopia. Different possibilities are presented (on Earth, on Mars, on Luna, and on the Outer Satellites), but although all entirely different, all are unsuitable to Bron, even when they work (or don't work) for their own citizens. Bron's lack of insight allows the reader, interestingly, to get more insight into all the things Bron refuses to acknowledge. I like its complexity and its challenge, especially considering its publication date. Good stuff.(less)

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Oct 30, 2011 Michael Burnam-fink rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, sci-fi, utopia

I wanted to like this book, but rather than develop characters, a plot, or setting, Delany appears to throw a bunch of interesting ideas into a blender and set to frappe. Delany can do military sci-fi well, witness the ferocious creativity of Babel-17. He is a master of unconventional bodies and sexes, as in "Aye, and Gomorrah...". But in Triton, a fundamentally unlikeable main character wanders through an interplanetary war without witness any of the machinations of power. Triton society places...more

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Jun 10, 2010 chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Trouble on Triton is a rather complex book in the way it deals with interpersonal and sexual politics. Bron has a lot of ideas about the ways in which these relationships work that often seem, if nothing else, wrong. He theorizes, he agonizes, he thinks he is doing things in a proper way, and in the end he is unhappy and frustrated in exactly the same ways he is in the beginning of the book. Despite all of his thoughts and reasoning, he is unable to find purpose or anyone else who understands wh...more

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Dec 12, 2008 le-trombone rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: think-galactic, fiction-sf

The character through whose eyes we see the world is Bron Helstrom, a person who isn't happy with his position in life, but doesn't know where to turn to change it. This is ironic, since the choices open to him are wide open, even in a limited environment as is found on Neptune's moon Triton. He lives in an all-male co-op, but only truly interacts with two of the people there, Lawrence, a gay man who tries to arrange his life so that he never goes out, and Sam, who lives there only part-time and...more The character through whose eyes we see the world is Bron Helstrom, a person who isn't happy with his position in life, but doesn't know where to turn to change it. This is ironic, since the choices open to him are wide open, even in a limited environment as is found on Neptune's moon Triton. He lives in an all-male co-op, but only truly interacts with two of the people there, Lawrence, a gay man who tries to arrange his life so that he never goes out, and Sam, who lives there only part-time and is a fairly important individual in the diplomatic circles of Triton.

Life on Triton is relatively anarchic. Even one's personal space is open for intrusion as long as there's no personal harm done. It is through an encounter with a performance group that does just that that he meets The Spike, an artist who performs short theater pieces that frequently make use of people in the audience.

It is through her and Sam that he begins to change his life. Unfortunately, he is also a self-centered and selfish individual, and change does not come easily to him. While he is traveling through his city on Triton, and later on Earth, he makes very judgmental opinions of the people around him, who come in a wide spectrum of talents and backgrounds, all the while denying that he fits into any single category himself. Because of this self-centeredness, his relationship ends, and he travels with Sam to go to Earth, which has a very hierarchical society that forces Bron to compare the ways of life that he could have versus what he limits himself to.

There is almost too much here to list to describe what I like about this book. Delany puts in a lot of subtle details in, enough that the ones that I caught make me wonder how many I've missed. Mathematics seems to fascinate him (at one point during a performance, an actor is reciting digits that are part of the constant e), and logic is heavily referenced throughout the book. But most importantly is the question of identity. Gender and sexual orientation may be changed, but it's not done on a whim and it's not going to change the fundamental parts of your character. Change is difficult. Even when an emergency causes Bron and Lawrence to act uncharacteristically (Bron acts selflessly to help others, Lawrence manages to go outside to do the same), it is Lawrence who completely changes his life over. Bron may be able to change, but at the end we're still uncertain as to whether he will.

The book has been described as a reaction to The Dispossessed, and there is that to it, but that is not the only reaction there. There is clearly a reaction to Varley's short fiction (generally known as the Eight Worlds stories), where characters switch genders and identities whenever they feel like a change. Heinlein's views on government get an ironic look at, and there may be more that I didn't recognize. Delany is saying to all three that it isn't that simple, while maintaining a story all his own.(less)

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May 29, 2009 Stef rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: feminist, fiction, glbt, sf-and-f, tiptree, science-fiction

Triton is set in a future in which humanity has spread to various moons and planets in the solar system. On the moon Triton, people have a lot of freedoms that we don't have on present-day Earth, for example, they can wear whatever they please or nothing at all; they can change their bodies and their sexual/affectional orientation in whatever way they please; they can live in families, in co-ops (which accommodate a variety of orientations), or both; they can work or not; they can live in a neig...more

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Mar 14, 2012 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really hated this book. It was really boring and the main character was very whiny. The setting was very interesting, but it did not make up for the fact that I disliked the plot so much.
The plot with the main character questioning his place in life wasn't very interesting. That also didn't seem to make sense to set that kind of theme in such a setting.
The setting was interesting, though. I wish he had set a different plot in it. It talked a lot about the interesting clothes the people wore....more

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Jan 26, 2010 Chip rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I must admit that I am really enjoying Triton (almost finished as of this writing). I had tried Dhalgren many years ago and put it down for its lack of narrative drive and over-reliance on hardcore sex scenes. But I wanted to like Delany...no, not the best way to approach a writer...but I was looking for the perfect blend of mind-blowing and psychedelic that seems to keep eluding me in my sci-fi quest.

At last, I found it in Triton. The mix of satire and personal, the desolate futuristic landsca...more

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May 15, 2013 Charlie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

This book really challenged me. I like Delany in general, so I came to this novel prepared to appreciate it, but I found that the storyline and the underlying philosophy left me cold. The narrative felt disconnected and ultimately meaningless, like a postmodern commentary on the futility of attempting to impose narrative structure on an actual life. At the same time though, Delany indulges several fantastic scenes of space opera that seemed to require a more momentous plot. At the same time, the...more

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Aug 31, 2011 Stuart Lutzenhiser rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

I can't say I either really understood or enjoyed this book. It seems to fall into that genre of social science fiction envisioning the repurcussions of various social changes. Set on Triton in the near future there is a way between the inner system and the outer system. Bron - a statistician - struggles with his social, sexual, and personal identity during this conflict. Other than exploring these issues,not really sure what the point was. Three stars for respect of the work and its craft - rat...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Trouble on Triton could be read as a postcolonial allegory. Distinct cultures developed as a result of humans spreading throughout the solar system. Moonies live on various satellites. Marsies and Earthmen live on the planets Mars and Earth.

Ultimately, war breaks out between those who live on moons and those who live on planets. The novel could be read as a war story. Bron, the main character, was born on Mars but immigrated to the satellites; he is caught between the two sides, even if he doesn...more

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Oct 21, 2010 Max rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anarchism, sf

There are a lot of things going on in this book, and to be frank, I feel like I missed most of them. Delany is so full of ideas that he's constantly tripping over himself trying to get them all out, and I had a difficult time untangling the knots of philosophy and gender theory woven throughout the text. Ultimately, I'm not sure what the reader is supposed to take away from Bron's dissatisfaction with the society he lives in, nor am I certain whether this dissatisfaction is supposed to stem from...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Ben Babcock rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 2011-read, gender-issues, science-fiction

It’s been almost five weeks since I did this, so let’s hope my skills haven’t atrophied too much! My student teaching practicum was awesome, but it left me little time for reading and no time for reviewing. Now I need to catch up. So please forgive me if the details in this review are sparser than ordinary; there is a very good reason why I write reviews as soon as possible after finishing a book!

Fortunately, Triton is a very memorable book, which one might have expected coming from Samuel R. De...more

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Aug 17, 2010 Wealhtheow rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Wealhtheow by: think_galactic

Shelves: sci-fi, queer-characters, pocmaincharacters

Stylistically, this felt close to the Heinlein that I've read, with lots of free love, gender bending, libertarianism, communal relationships, and non-Terran humans at odds with Earth. Plus lots and lots of infodumping--not a chapter went by without several pages of the classic sf "as you know Bob..." explanations. The concepts were interesting enough; the method of conveying them, deeply boring. I starting skimming them about halfway through this book.

The plot itself is thin: Bron is very self-...more

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Aug 12, 2008 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

i had an awful time concentrating on this for the first half of the novel. it's a shame, because there are some brilliant ideas in it, and it *really* comes alive closer to its conclusion. this was my third delany novel, and i'm discovering that his prose doesn't often-- i don't know-- "flow" in a way i respond to. in a book like dhalgren (which i'd consider one of the best novels i've ever read), this works to his advantage, since it's structurally so unconventional. in triton, it often falls f...more

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Jun 24, 2008 tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

This was probably the Delany bk that most intersected my own life. As I recall, the novel begins w/ a street performance group entering the "u-l" wch I think meant "un-lawful" zone or some such. I've done many a guerrilla 'performance', I've walked down the streets of Baltimore dressed in totally bizarre clothes completely high at 3AM KNOWING that it was always open season on people who looked different, that I cd be killed at any moment, that there was no such thing as police protection for peo...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Gabriel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While not as verbally experimental as Dhalgren (the first Delany book I read) and significantly more obtuse than Nova (the only other Delany book I've read at this time), this book as tried to take on certain issues that maybe were too big to chew in just 300 and some odd pages. Sexuality, relationships (between beings, planets, space, words) and Modularity just were not appropriately addressed or maybe left so many blank spaces that us, as readers, are forced to fill in the gaps. Unlike most me...more

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Oct 10, 2007 Carl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of intelligent and gender bending sci-fi

Shelves: fantasysci-fi

This probably deserves more than 3 stars, but I had trouble getting into it. I think I wanted more space ships and exploration, and this book was a bit too heavy for me at the moment-- but that's the fault of my mood when reading it, and the novel will definitely reward the diligent reader. The protagonist is a bit of an anti-hero-- if I remember correctly, he is pretty detestable in some ways, but at the same time it is all too easy to recognize one's self in him, and so to be all the more trou...more

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Apr 18, 2011 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: gender, science-fiction

This was hard to get into. The writing style took some getting used to, and the setting and characters and what was going on in the beginning was all so different that it took a lot of energy to parse.

But once I settled into things, it got better, it got easier.

The society he's set up is interesting. Though there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for people who wouldn't want to live in any sort of commune, even if there's all sorts of different communal living groups.

And, I don't know if I have m...more

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Sep 01, 2012 Raymund Eich rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel had one of my favorite science fiction lines: "Were the Christians making another comeback?", which packs a massive amount of background historical change into six words. The novel itself has a lot of sfnal concepts and Delany's skillful prose. That said, Bron is a difficult character to want to spend hundreds of pages with. If you're a traditional sf reader new to Delany, start with Nova or Babel-17.

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Dec 02, 2012 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Delany's a fascinating, completely unconventional writer. Not always the easiest to read, but when you're on his wavelength it's a real treat. I found Nova a bit more interesting but this is still a good introduction to him. Triton is full of social- and psychological-sci-fi ideas about gender, sexuality, relationships, and culture. The plot doesn't always hold together in any particular way (if you can even call it a plot) but that's not really its point, either.

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Jan 10, 2013 Charles rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, kindle

I gave this 5 stars mainly for its audacity. It was not something that I consumed out of pure love for the story and characters. Few -- if any -- of the characters were truly loveable, and when you get right down to it, there was not all that much plot per page. It does not scream to be made into a summer blockbuster movie.

What it does have is some creative writing (often dabbling with techniques that make it feel avante-garde at times, even though it was written nearly 30 years ago), musings on...more

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About Samuel R. Delany

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 7t...more 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.(less)

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Quotes from Trouble on Triton: An ...

“Everytime you read, you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.” — 6 people liked it

“The fantasy/reality confusion...it's just marvelous in her work. I mean, there, it's practically like what we do, the fantasy working as a sort of metalogic, with which she can solve real, aesthetic problems in the most incredible ways -- I was actually in a few of her productions last year, a sort of ersatz member of the company. But finally I just had to get out. Because when that fantasy seeps into the reality, she just becomes an incredibly ugly person. She feels she can distort anything that occurs for whatever purpose she wants. Whatever she feels, that's what is, as far as she's concerned. But then, I suppose...' Bron laughed at the ground, then looked up: they'd just left the Plaza -- 'that's the right we just fought a war to defend. But Audri, when someone abuses that right, it can make it pretty awful for the rest of us.” — 1 person liked it

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