Captives of the Flame / The Psionic Menace

by Samuel R. Delany, Keith Woodcott

Ace Double, Contains Captives of the Flame by Samuel R. Delany and The Psionic Menace by Keith Wolcott.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

255 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1963

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The B side -- Keith Woodcott’s The Psionic Menace. Keith Woodcott is a pseudonym for John Brunner, British sci-fi writer thought of as too American by British New Wave authors, according to Wikipedia (zing!). Wikipedia also says that Brunner acted in two incest themed porns, The Incestuous Lovers (1969) and Ball in the Family (1973). ...Interesting...

Anyway, The Psionic Menace sets up a complex social struggle on the planet Regnier between autonomist collectivist psions, Regnier’s settler population, and the Starfolk, a sort of totalitarian interstellar group that governs Regnier through puppets and keeps the planet in a state of dependence through its trade monopoly in this sector of space. Starfolk hate and persecute psions, with Woodcott describing them as being both eugenicists and carrying out “pogroms” against the psion population, making them a sort of cross between the Nazis and Stalinist Soviet Union. The plot is set in motion by a distress signal that only the psion population can hear. The signal drives them nuts while also making them believe in the immanence of the end of the world. Enter archeologist then Earth government undercover agent Gascon, who enters Regnier through Starfolk space to see if he can help the psions while also investigating the mysteries ruins of a vanished alien civilization. What’s fascinating is how completely the narrative’s sympathies withdraw from the psions and their extremely stressed out leader Hein as soon as Gascon starts doing Earth undercover intelligence work on Regnier. Indeed, in the climax of the novel Gascon kills Hein (after attempting to body-snatch him) in order to end the transmission of the galaxy disrupting distress signal. Over the course of the novel, Gascon’s primary thoughts, after getting intensive training at an Earth academy, is I’m killing it! Or, How am I not killing it? Through the shift to Gascon, what might be a fascinating sociological novel moving between the perspectives of characters in uneasy alliances turns into a fast-paced adventure yarn. A crude political reading of the novel is that Woodcott/Brunner forwards a kind of America adventurism, with Gascon as the crude knot that cuts through the knots of foreign conflicts in order to not really help anyone but to protect Earther interests and gather information. Here’s the ending of the novel, with Gascon’s fresh off his sacrifice of the subaltern Hein: “[Earth CIA guy] gestured at the blue arch of sky above him. “There’s the universe—as big as ever, as challenging as ever. Do you find life exciting?” Very slowly, Gascon nodded. “Yes,” he said after a while. “Yes, I do.” Who is a good boy? Who is a very good boy?

Samuel Delaney's second novel, Captives of the Flame. I'd send this back in time to my fantasy devouring self: "As Tltltrlte came forward, his shoulders narrowed. He pushed back the hood of his cloak and a mass of ebony hair cascaded down his shoulders. With each step, his hips broadened and his waist narrowed. A very definite bulge of mammary glands now pushed up beneath his black silk tunic. As Tltltrlte reached the bottom of the steps, she raised her sword. Think at him, came Arkor from the bird cage. Think at him, came from Petra. Jon saw the blade flash forward and then felt it slide into his abdomen. At her, he corrected.  At her, they answered. As Jon toppled down the steps, dying, he asked, What the hell is this anyway? We're inhabiting a very advanced species of moss, Arkor explained. " 1963. As for the whole, either the plot, at points, operates thru dream logic and/or I was really sleepy. I went with it. Enjoyed the poisoned fish/large v small producers/vicious bureaucracy subplot. 

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

An ok but clumsy contribution from Samuel R. Delany. It was interesting to see the choice to begin a trilogy but I think the novel feels unfinished and a little rushed - and after looking it up, it was later republished after editing as Out of the Dead City, before the trilogy was continued.

I can see why Delany wanted to edit and polish this further, since it was a good start but nowhere near as good as his other books - not as good as The Jewels of Aptor, for instance, which was published before this.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: I only had a Gutenberg version of CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME. Delany shows that even early on he had different takes on traditional science fiction concepts. It's both futuristic and primitive, combining aspects of science fiction and fantasy. The imagery seems to be pointing the way to Afrofuturism. It's also an exciting read.

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ace Double Novel F199
Captives of the Flame, collection, grade C
Psionic Menace, Keith Woodcot, grade B