They Fly at Çiron

by Samuel R. Delany

A distant world that is similar to prehistoric Earth is home to the Winged Ones of Hi-Vator, a fun-loving race that experiences the ultimate sexual pleasure while in the air. Reprint.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, War, United States, Speculative Fiction

243 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1993

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

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple premise: the Myetrans need Lebensraum, ; whereas the Cirons believe in Lagom along with pacifism
. Complicating this Nazis versus Eloi is a species of flying humanoid beings. The winged "people" aren't racists nor are they dirty hippies. This would appear to be a classic fantasy scenario but with lasers that we all could safely ignore. Chip Delany wouldn't let that happen. We have monologues on desire and ontology. There's more than a bit of interrogating the Other and the plight of the subaltern. It was ultimately satisfying, if only just.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I do laundry I like to bring a book small enough to fit into one of my pockets with me. This happened to be on top of a pile of mass markets I hadn't read, so it got read today.

It's ok. In college I took a Sci-Fi literature class, and the teacher got really excited about what SF and Fantasy could do in the area of social commentary that other literature couldn't. He never really sold me on this point, yeah there is social commentary in the books, but there are in lots of books, and well just because a book has some social commentary doesn't mean that it is necessarily insightful social commentary (as in the book we read in the class about the women who live in a big walled city and only bring in men to fuck in order to reproduce with, I think there were supposed to be some deep messages in that book, but it was just a 'what-if' women ruled and acted in civilized manners that men are not capable of. Ok, that's possible, but it's also sort of simple minded and lacking any real complexity in the thought of what causes evil shit to happen in the world).

This book is about an evil imperialist nation (city-state?) who needs to take over land to grow the food it needs to sustain it's population. They conquer and destroy in OT biblical fashion, kill 'em all, it is our destiny to have your land as our land kind of way. The story takes place when the evil imperialists come to take over a peace loving community (nation? city-state? large village? I don't know). The evil doers look to wipe the good peaceful folk off the map, but some of the peaceful folk fight back.

This was originally written in the late 1960's. There is a certain anti-war thing going on. The aggressors are described repeatedly as pig looking, the evil doers describe the good doers as dogs and maggots. There is a blurring of lines at times between what is good and what is evil, but never more than just kind of mentioned and never developed. There is also a feeling to me that this is sort of a stab at America's western movements and our treatment of the native population, but with an idealized qualities but on the evil and the good. There is a little bit of a discussion of religion, and one kind of funny shot at Christianity and it's worship of a dead god on a tree, but I never quite figured out what the purpose of the few theological discussions were supposed to mean for the book.

Criticism aside, the book was kind of fun to read. It was very light, went by quickly and had enough plot development going on to make me want to keep reading it even though there are like six other books that I'm halfway through all within arms distance from where I sat reading this.

One more gripe though, the blurbs on the back of the book make this sound like something much greater than it really is. I think it's the blurbs fault that I feel so critical about it. The blurbs also promised lots of sex, ('full of sex'). Now I don't pick my books based on if they have sex or not, but if you are going to promise a book 'full of sex' there should be some sex in the book, maybe at least one sex scene that doesn't involve three flying creatures pleasuring a man by throwing them in between themselves as they fly and nibbling at his legs. That was the one sex scene in the book, and it's just as confusing to imagine reading in the book as it is from my paltry description.

[William Thrall]

My last Delany :(

[Tomás · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una novela de fantasía con tintes de ciencia ficción sobre un conflicto entre tres culturas. Los invasores, pueblo avanzado y regido por la violencia y los invadidos, un pacífico pueblo pre-tecnológico que no conoce los aspectos oscuros de la humanidad y finalmente una especie de murciélagos, que vendría a ser un punto medio entre las otras dos culturas. Ademas de venir incluidos dos cuentos al final, uno relacionado con la novela y otra no.

Habiendo leído "La intersección de Einstein" de Delany, mis expectativas por "En Çiron vuelan" eran bastante altas. Lamentablemente, a mi parecer la historia no pasa de un tres. Si la historia hubiera seguido con el ritmo y la forma narrativa de la primera parte, podría haber sido mucho mejor. Sin embargo, decido darle un 4 de puntaje debido al excelente cuento "Ruinas", incluido en la edición, que sí está a la altura de este genial autor. Trata sobre un muchacho muy pobre que encuentra, en un día de lluvia, un templo lleno de riquezas y una extraña mujer que está allí.
Espero seguir leyendo más de este autor, hasta ahora a mi parecer, de los más originales y locos en la ciencia ficción junto a Theodor Sturgeon y Ray Bradbury.

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delany wrote it. I read it. That gives it five stars. Always. It's a wonderful mix of early and late Delany. I am just a fan-thing really when it comes to Delany. Reading his writing is pure pleasure. Read on the plane. Other bits in the Kindle version read waiting for the plane to take me home.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mish-mash. The new Delany briefly courts the old. While it briefly smacks of the Neveryon series in the more recent material, there's too much tonal confusion between the material written in the 60s and the rest which was written in the 90s.

That being said--I still love Delany. The adventure was pleasurable enough. And I'm a sucker for winged characters.

[Ryan Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tight sort of spec fic diorama. Philosophical, sometimes in ways the deepen the emotion of the situation but also sometimes in ways that make it feel like Delany is stepping in in place of the previous narrator for a minute. Miniature sketches of life under resistance where everyone stays a person but that doesn't imply moral ambiguity or equivalency.

[Mat]

This was better than I expected, given Delany's own preface to it. The part about how killing changed the protagonist made me think of Le Guin's the Word For World is Forest. A fun early Delany read.

[Charles McGonigal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just meh. What I assume is supposed to be a clever flip in the denouement left a sour taste in my mouth - yes, the author set things up one way and then explicitly, ham-fistedly revealed them to be another, that's just bad writing.

[Susan Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a slow start, but once I got used to the names and the world that had been created, it was very good. Ending seemed a bit abrupt, and I honestly couldn't remember who the character was who had the last word, but all in all a good read.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this 15 years ago, but I remember it being good. Strange, but good. I should re-read it.

[Andrez · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn't exactly bad, but it didn't bring anything new to the table. Pretty boring and uninspiring.

[Fabián Marilao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cada vez me gusta más la ciencia ficción, así que uno se vuelve más exigente. Bueno el libro, pero le sobran 50 páginas.

[Bud Winn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, hard to describe. Weird is a good word.

[Kinch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to believe this has such a relatively low rating, an absolute delight, devoured it in a morning

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2024, #1: Chip Delany is odd and this book is more of an extended fever dream than anything else, but it is, per usual, a very beautiful and occasionally grotesque one.

[Vladimir Villarreal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una historia de ciencia ficción y fantasía muy bien llevada por el autor, que te deja pensando acerca de las diferencias que hay entre culturas y pueblos, que muchas veces, esas diferencias, trascienden los conceptos de bondad, maldad y justicia que entendemos, donde los personajes, provenientes de distintos pueblos, no logran entender el comportamiento de los otros. En este sentido, el autor logra transmitir muy bien esos momentos de confusión de los personajes, momentos de tensión. Hay un capítulo con acción, con una batalla que puedes llegar a disfrutar más que los otros capítulos. En general es una historia que entretiene y deja al lector con un buen sabor de boca al final.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty straightforward fantasy novel, with two short stories at the end. One only tangentially related, the other a kind of epilogue or outtake.

I was pleased to find the cover illo is highly inaccurate: Delany's Winged Ones are not ethereal, angelic-looking men with feathers but Bat People with flattened noses, large ears, and leathery wings.

Fascinating on a sentence level. I wanted to diagram these sentences, to determine how they could be at once so "muscular" yet also revelatory, like poetry. The plot, though not complicated at all, moves masterfully through various points of view. The characters tend to monologue, which is fine in the beginning, when they're brooding over questions of ethics or the afterlife, but seems unnecessary near the end, when we have a handle on the characters and already know what they're thinking/feeling.

Not my favorite Delany novel, but quite instructive.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, if flawed, piece of fantasy science fiction that follows a pretty simple path and reaches a pretty obvious conclusion. There are depths of interest in it (the nature of the Winged Ones, the future of Rahm), but nothing too Earth-shattering. But an enjoyable read, especially when the "evil" prince reveals a more tender nature.

That ambiguous nature is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early sci-fi/fantasy novel from Delany, one of my favorite authors. Delany worked on this story for 30 years until he got it where he wanted it. It is really a cautionary tale of inadvertent fascism, of forcing your values & culture down the throats of your neighbors for their own good. Take heed, imperialist regimes!

[Tyrannosaurus regina · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was really some interesting examination here of the roles that people play in their communities, and the ways that people perceive their own morality (and their own importance). I appreciated the misdirect, that not everything was as straightforward as it seemed. Even expanded as it has been, though, the story felt somewhat slight and the characters underserved.

[Caleb Liu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light and sweet little fantasy novel. Good fun.

[Felipe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coaching con PNL

[Scott Golden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong fantasy about a conquering army that meets its match in a group of humble villagers aided by some neighbors with wings.

[Jesús · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una historia que mezlca la ciencia ficción y la fantasía de forma aceptable, cargada de mucha violencia y sadismo.

[Betsyvsews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this book on the curb, no idea what to expect. Ambivalent - not my style but I found I had to finish it. I think I would recommend to YA readers starting a fantasy binge.

[Fraterno Dracon Saccis · Rating 2 out of 5]

ZZZZZZZZZ...

[Christy]

I rated and reviewed this book, just not for Goodreads/Amazon. See http://www.librarything.com/profile_r...

[Miguel Ángel Moreno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nada reseñable. En absoluto al nivel de sus obras más conocidas.