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The Ballad of Beta 2 / Empire Star
The Ballad of Beta-1
The Star Folk were an anachronism. Living in their cluster of giant ships far out in space, cut off from contact with their fellow humans, they were shrouded in mystery. Through the allegory of an ancient song, Joneny, an anthropology student, set out to unravel that mystery—and found a truth stranger than any allegory.
The Star Folk were an anachronism. Living in their cluster of giant ships far out in space, cut off from contact with their fellow humans, they were shrouded in mystery. Through the allegory of an ancient song, Joneny, an anthropology student, set out to unravel that mystery—and found a truth stranger than any allegory.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1973
69 people want to read
About the author
Samuel R. Delany
305 books2,274 followersSamuel 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 23, 2014
I read Empire Star in a collection of space opera classics, and found it to be quite extraordinary -- an epic science-fiction novella with all the pulse and rhythm of Kerouacian jazz poetry. As with the characters in "Aye, and Gomorrah," Delany's protagonist Comet Jo is jazzy and full of verve despite challenging circumstances .... The story is vivid, dynamic, and full of gleeful paradox. It may be my favorite work of science fiction for Delany's vivacious, quasi-New Wave style, even as it plays fast and loose with pulp space opera tropes.
The same collection also has "The Ballad of Beta-2," a unique variant of the generation starship story -- Heinlein's "Universe" is the classic of that subgenre; Le Guin's "Paradises Lost" explored similar terrain in the '90s. Delany's take involves haunted spacelanes, and the social as well as genetic effects on human society after 200 years in isolated interstellar transit ... The ending is a touch too pat, but it is thrilling and spooky where "Empire Star" is vivacious and jazzy ... Both highly recommended.
The same collection also has "The Ballad of Beta-2," a unique variant of the generation starship story -- Heinlein's "Universe" is the classic of that subgenre; Le Guin's "Paradises Lost" explored similar terrain in the '90s. Delany's take involves haunted spacelanes, and the social as well as genetic effects on human society after 200 years in isolated interstellar transit ... The ending is a touch too pat, but it is thrilling and spooky where "Empire Star" is vivacious and jazzy ... Both highly recommended.
March 20, 2022
Then came one to the City,
Over sand with her bright hair wild,
With her eyes coal black and her feet sole sore,
And under her arms a green-eyed child.
- 'The Ballad of Beta-2'
The double publication of two short novels marks this out as a ‘genre’ SF book. It also shows that a writer such as Samuel R Delany, with his highly experimental styles, was more likely to find a (moderately) more receptive publishing environment in science fiction. I say moderately because he has written elsewhere in detail about the racism he has encountered in SF.
‘The Ballad of Beta-2’ and ‘Empire Star’ were published in 1965 and 1966 respectively. Both have a pulp SF sensibility: ‘Ballad’ is a generation ship story (if you have no faster than light drive [FTL] - build a vessel large enough for everything you would possibly need for a long voyage and many generations of crew); ‘Empire' is about interstellar war. However in both Delany undercuts the regular themes of SF for these types of stories.
Generation ship tales often involve the ‘crew’ forgetting that they are on a starship until a young rebel uncovers the truth. In ‘Ballad’ however the purpose of the multiple generation ships is not forgotten, but has been made redundant by the discovery of FTL travel after the ships have set out. Thus their arrival at their destination is a non-event as humans are already there. The culture that the ‘crew’ developed over several generations in the meantime seems so uninteresting that the initial protagonist, a graduate anthropology student named Joneny, is extremely put out that his professor is making him study these ‘Star Folk’ (anyone who has been a graduate student will recognise this feeling). However his investigations of the ballads of the Star Folk leads him to a tale of messianic figure of the distant past who appears to be a pregnant woman.
Of the two novellas, ‘Ballad’ has the more straightforward narrative. ‘Empire’ by contrast, has a constant shifting between first-person and third-person omniscient perspectives - as explained by the narrator ‘Jewel’, a crystallized alien Tritovian (a talking rock). This ‘multiplex’ universe is reflected in the social structure of the galaxy spanning societies of the story, which are explicitly stratified into simplex, complex, and multiplex. Jewel has 'multiplex consciousness, which means I see things from different points of view’; whereas the main protagonist ‘Comet Jo’ starts out with ‘simplex’ consciousness, as he has spent his entire life tending the fields of plyasil, (a fictional crop).
Delany’s notion of social inequality being reflected in differing perspectives also shows up in his portrayal of slaves in the Empire - beings called ‘Lll’. Owning the Lll slaves makes the owner and all who come into the Llls' presence overwhelmed with sadness -which is how the empire ‘protects' the Lll (by limiting the incentives to own them). Another female messiah-figure named San Severina aims to free the Lll, but she ends up needing to own them in order to save the Empire. This underscores the general cyclical narrative of the story.
Out the two stories ‘Ballad’ is certainly the easier read, but its conclusion falls a little flat. ‘Empire’ is more challenging and probably needs multiple readings (if you like that sort of thing). However you can see in these stories precursors of Delany’s later works such as ‘Dhalgren’ with its endless cycles of time and centring of otherwise marginalised characters.
Over sand with her bright hair wild,
With her eyes coal black and her feet sole sore,
And under her arms a green-eyed child.
- 'The Ballad of Beta-2'
The double publication of two short novels marks this out as a ‘genre’ SF book. It also shows that a writer such as Samuel R Delany, with his highly experimental styles, was more likely to find a (moderately) more receptive publishing environment in science fiction. I say moderately because he has written elsewhere in detail about the racism he has encountered in SF.
‘The Ballad of Beta-2’ and ‘Empire Star’ were published in 1965 and 1966 respectively. Both have a pulp SF sensibility: ‘Ballad’ is a generation ship story (if you have no faster than light drive [FTL] - build a vessel large enough for everything you would possibly need for a long voyage and many generations of crew); ‘Empire' is about interstellar war. However in both Delany undercuts the regular themes of SF for these types of stories.
Generation ship tales often involve the ‘crew’ forgetting that they are on a starship until a young rebel uncovers the truth. In ‘Ballad’ however the purpose of the multiple generation ships is not forgotten, but has been made redundant by the discovery of FTL travel after the ships have set out. Thus their arrival at their destination is a non-event as humans are already there. The culture that the ‘crew’ developed over several generations in the meantime seems so uninteresting that the initial protagonist, a graduate anthropology student named Joneny, is extremely put out that his professor is making him study these ‘Star Folk’ (anyone who has been a graduate student will recognise this feeling). However his investigations of the ballads of the Star Folk leads him to a tale of messianic figure of the distant past who appears to be a pregnant woman.
Of the two novellas, ‘Ballad’ has the more straightforward narrative. ‘Empire’ by contrast, has a constant shifting between first-person and third-person omniscient perspectives - as explained by the narrator ‘Jewel’, a crystallized alien Tritovian (a talking rock). This ‘multiplex’ universe is reflected in the social structure of the galaxy spanning societies of the story, which are explicitly stratified into simplex, complex, and multiplex. Jewel has 'multiplex consciousness, which means I see things from different points of view’; whereas the main protagonist ‘Comet Jo’ starts out with ‘simplex’ consciousness, as he has spent his entire life tending the fields of plyasil, (a fictional crop).
Delany’s notion of social inequality being reflected in differing perspectives also shows up in his portrayal of slaves in the Empire - beings called ‘Lll’. Owning the Lll slaves makes the owner and all who come into the Llls' presence overwhelmed with sadness -which is how the empire ‘protects' the Lll (by limiting the incentives to own them). Another female messiah-figure named San Severina aims to free the Lll, but she ends up needing to own them in order to save the Empire. This underscores the general cyclical narrative of the story.
Out the two stories ‘Ballad’ is certainly the easier read, but its conclusion falls a little flat. ‘Empire’ is more challenging and probably needs multiple readings (if you like that sort of thing). However you can see in these stories precursors of Delany’s later works such as ‘Dhalgren’ with its endless cycles of time and centring of otherwise marginalised characters.
August 16, 2023
3/5
A brief collection of novellas from Delany, both of which were interesting but certainly not groundbreaking or really all that memorable.
The Ballad of Beta-2 follows a galactic anthropology student as he delves into the murky history of a folk song belonging to a group of generation ships, some of which either never arrived at their destination or showed up devoid of life. The ballad ultimately proves to be a key piece of evidence that shows the student the truth behind the matter. A sentient life form, living in clouds of radioactive particles, spawns a hybrid child with a ship captain. This more evolved and powerful fetus is radioactive as well, and kills many other babies aboard several ships, spawning puritan riots as the humans attempt to purge humans with mutations.
It followed the general arch of an episode of Star Trek, though with more deft storytelling I think. I enjoyed the way that the mystery was slowly drip fed to me over the course of the story. I enjoyed the log entrys, the audio files, and the journal books that he discovers, all telling small pieces of the tale.
It's not really an overly complex story, but an enjoyable one none the less
Empire Star is a weird story about a feline/human hybrid from an agriculture world that is thrust into a quest to deliver a message to a faraway world, a message he doesn't know. Empire Star involves, most notably, slavery in which the slaver experiences immense emotional anguish at all times, that grows with how many they own and how much work they have done, and a complex timescale were events loop on themselves, presumably forever. Did I mention that it's weird yet?
The weirdness is definitely the highlight, reminiscent of Cordwainer Smith's work in its permeation of the story. The characterization was also strong, involving a multitude of different forms of life. Delany spends a lot of time here discussing different levels of complex thought, and how that effects a living beings ability to comprehend their environment, their task, their relationships, etc. The plot line is rather clunky though, with no real effort put towards flow, pacing, or descriptive passages.
Both of these novellas were, I fear, forgettable, even though I found them to be light and interesting in the moment. I don't think that anything from them will really stick in my brain beyond a few days.
A brief collection of novellas from Delany, both of which were interesting but certainly not groundbreaking or really all that memorable.
The Ballad of Beta-2 follows a galactic anthropology student as he delves into the murky history of a folk song belonging to a group of generation ships, some of which either never arrived at their destination or showed up devoid of life. The ballad ultimately proves to be a key piece of evidence that shows the student the truth behind the matter. A sentient life form, living in clouds of radioactive particles, spawns a hybrid child with a ship captain. This more evolved and powerful fetus is radioactive as well, and kills many other babies aboard several ships, spawning puritan riots as the humans attempt to purge humans with mutations.
It followed the general arch of an episode of Star Trek, though with more deft storytelling I think. I enjoyed the way that the mystery was slowly drip fed to me over the course of the story. I enjoyed the log entrys, the audio files, and the journal books that he discovers, all telling small pieces of the tale.
It's not really an overly complex story, but an enjoyable one none the less
Empire Star is a weird story about a feline/human hybrid from an agriculture world that is thrust into a quest to deliver a message to a faraway world, a message he doesn't know. Empire Star involves, most notably, slavery in which the slaver experiences immense emotional anguish at all times, that grows with how many they own and how much work they have done, and a complex timescale were events loop on themselves, presumably forever. Did I mention that it's weird yet?
The weirdness is definitely the highlight, reminiscent of Cordwainer Smith's work in its permeation of the story. The characterization was also strong, involving a multitude of different forms of life. Delany spends a lot of time here discussing different levels of complex thought, and how that effects a living beings ability to comprehend their environment, their task, their relationships, etc. The plot line is rather clunky though, with no real effort put towards flow, pacing, or descriptive passages.
Both of these novellas were, I fear, forgettable, even though I found them to be light and interesting in the moment. I don't think that anything from them will really stick in my brain beyond a few days.
June 26, 2022
3.5 stars. A hard one to rate, and not just because it comprises two disparate short novels (previous Ace Double halves). “Ballad” feels like it’s in a hurry to end right when it’s getting interesting, and “Empire” has more to sink your teeth into but ultimately has more annoyances for me than the former, so now I don’t know what to think. At least I noticed LUMP’s refusing to “pass” this time and grokked its significance. Yet, I’d be an idiot not to recognize this as superior to most of what is published — EMPIRE STAR’s fans in particular are legion — despite my cavils.
February 18, 2024
This is a difficult one for me to rate. I liked the beginning of The Ballad of Beta-2 and the concept a great deal, but the ending? Way too rushed. And random. It went from a four star read to a three star read very quickly.
The opposite happened with Empire Star. I really wasn't that into it in the beginning, but the ending? I dug it. It quickly went from a three star read to a four star read.
So...four stars? I guess?
The opposite happened with Empire Star. I really wasn't that into it in the beginning, but the ending? I dug it. It quickly went from a three star read to a four star read.
So...four stars? I guess?
Read
September 16, 20203.5 stars
November 6, 2023
I'd probably go 4 stars for Beta and 3 for Empire Star. Interesting stuff, but not my favorite Delany.
December 29, 2024
The greatest Ace Double of all time.
May 26, 2020
I've been trying to look through some of the more obscure works of Delaney. This pair are interesting in that they are exactly the kind of highly entertaining and experimental works you would expect from Delany and precursors of his later more well known writings.
Addendum on reread:
In spite of these being short they are amazingly deep and well written stories I got to enjoy even more the second time around.
Addendum on reread:
In spite of these being short they are amazingly deep and well written stories I got to enjoy even more the second time around.
March 28, 2014
The Ballad of Beta-2 was quite enjoyable. Empire Star, not so much.
March 15, 2015
<3 both were incredible and i thank delany for reminding me about my multiplexity
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews