Jewel Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

by Samuel R. Delany

From the four-time Nebula Award–winning author, an indispensable work of science fiction criticism, revised and expanded.Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw appeared originally in 1977, and is now long out of print and hard to find. The impact of its demonstration that science fiction was a special language, rather than just gadgets and green-skinned aliens, began reverberations still felt in science fiction criticism. This edition includes two new essays, one written at the time and one written about those times, as well as an introduction by writer and teacher Matthew Cheney, placing Delany’s work in historical context. Close textual analyses of Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ read as brilliantly today as when they first appeared. Essays such as “About 5,750 Words” and “To Read The Dispossessed” first made the book a classic; they assure it will remain one.“Delany’s first work of non-fiction, The Jewel Hinged Notes on the Language of Science Fiction , remains a benchmark of sf criticism thirty-three years after its initial publication in 1977. . . . Extensively revised and reissued in 2009, JHJ has become even stronger, containing twelve essays in ten chapters and two appendixes.” —Isiah Lavender, Science Fiction Studies“I re-read The Jewel-Hinged Jaw every year as a source of guidance, as a measure of what all criticism and literature should aspire to be, and as a challenge for those of us who want to write.” —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao“What a joy it is to have The Jewel-Hinged Jaw back in print! These essays glitter with insights into writing, reading, society, and the multiple relationships of the three.” —Reginald Shepherd, author of Orpheus in the Bronx

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Criticism, Writing, Literary Criticism, Reference, Science Fiction Fantasy

326 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1977

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

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The s-f writer, whether he is writing about what he thinks could, should, or (heaven help us) might someday exist, or whether she is dallying with some future fantasia so far away all subjunctive connection with the present is severed, has become entranced with and dedicated herself to the realization of what is not. And all the “socially beneficial functions of art” are minimal before this aesthetic one: It allows the present meaning; it allows the future to exist.'

[Ruxandra Grrr [in a slump :(((((] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look, I'm not smart enough to have understood all of it, and quite a bit is very connected to the times it was written in. I've read only some of the books referenced. But oh my god, did I enjoy so much of it! The depth of affection this book of critical (academic-style) essays has instilled in me for Samuel R. Delany is huge!

He writes with a lot of bite and humor about the genre. The essays are very varied (one of them, [A Fictional Architecture that Manages Only with Great Difficulty Not to Mention Harlan Ellison] is more like a memoir piece). I also love how Delany doesn't just use the default pronoun 'he', when talking about writers, a lot of times it's also 'she', which still feels powerful today!

These were my favorites:

[Letter to the Symposium on "Women in Science Fiction" Under the Control, For Some Deeply Suspect Reason, of one Jeff Smith] - this essay is such a great railing of sexism, in the world, in science fiction. It's incredibly funny and keeps alluding that when men say people do this and that, they actually mean men. Delany talks about the two roles allowed women in SF at the time (Evil Bitch and Simp) and many other things! Like his wife discovering her jean pockets were much worse than his! There's also a cute tidbit where he, Jeff and *Tiptree* (the three men supposedly involved in this symposium) have to reckon with the sexism, because this essay was written in 1975, two years before the world found out about Tiptree being actually a woman!

[To Read The Dispossessed] - read this for the second time, because the first time I rushed it to get to book club, back in September. And it feels very validating, because Delany has most of the same critiques I have for Ursula LeGuin's novel (which I haven't written the review for, still, oof), aka we are told Anarres is an egalitarian society, but there are many instances when this thing we've been told is at odds with what's in the foreground of the book. Might do a re-read of Dispossessed and write a review in a few months!

[Thickening the Plot] - a super cool discussion on writing process and how you can't truly separate the elements, so it's better to talk about plot more as 'story process'.

[Quarks] - helping me articulate better my opinions on entertainment. And how all aesthetic problems (emotions, intellect and the pure pleasure we take in form) are actually entertainment. Yes, that's how I can be completely beguiled by political issues and history being used in historical romances! The politics in books is very entertaining to my brain.

There are also some really interesting comparisons between SF and poetry that I loved in this book, and I made a fairly long reading list of things mentioned within. And I really have to make time to read Dhalgren this year, I'm so excited! I've only read two Delany books, but I already rather love him.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep, fine thinking. Often hilarious. Any serious writer of science fiction or fantasy or both should read this book, though it is a deeper and more rigorous than most writing about writing, in genre or out, so it may daunt. This is one of the few books to take the entire process seriously enough to find it (1) worthy of careful thought and (2) funny.

It’s like training with Yoda, really. I’ll certainly come back to this.

[Griffin Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I think I can say with confidence now that Delany is the closest thing Americans will ever get to having our own Borges (and as a heretofore unknown aside, the first Borges story to appear translated in the USA was 'Death and the Compass,' and it appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). I make the comparison mainly due to their breathtaking erudition, and their ability to write both fiction and essays from a seemingly endless fount of inspiration with a knack for overhauling each genre as they go.

If you like anything of Delany's, read this. It is the other, and inevitable, side to his great works of Science Fiction, as well as a beautiful document of the thoughtful pursuit of writing and reading in the twentieth century. If you have the time, it would be fruitfully read in tandem with his memoir, The Motion Of Light In Water: Sex And Science Fiction Writing In The East Village.

[Simona B]

Not only is Delany one of the most sophisticated critics SF has ever had, he also succeeds splendidly in making his critical work as engaging as could be. (To my regret, I haven't checked out his fiction yet.) I have a special fondness for the first essay in this collection, "About 5,750 Words." The phenomenology of reading SF that Delany offers here has become a classic, but it's more than that. It's the absolute love and respect that shines through Delany's words for this form of artistic expression. It's the contempt for uninformed generalizations and the easy dismissal that a certain highbrow critical attitude reserves for "adventure fiction"--which is not absolutely akin to saying that discussions of "quality" are futile. Delany simply offers a different paradigm, and a new approach for reading not only SF, but literature in general (in this regard, I also recommend his "Science Fiction and 'Literature'" in Starboard Wine). Since, as I said, Delany's writing is both extremely acute and extremely accessible, I recommend at least the essay mentioned above to all who enjoy and/or are interested in SF, even if you have no patience for literary criticism. It really changes the way you think about and experience reading fiction--all fiction.

[Arthur Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a few years to go back and finish this (it might be the book that stayed the longest in my "reading" shelf), but I'm so glad I finally did it. The essays here are useful from an academic perspective - Delany's definition of SF is miles away from most of its contemporary celebrated attempts - but they are more than that. They are delightful pieces of criticism, beautifully written and wittily structured. I recommend it to every Sf fan

[boocia]

This series of essays desperately needs its own exegesis (esp the journal portions) to really digest, but I still had a great time !!

Partially, a portrait of a person: delaney seems romantically scary elder and spunky young hothead in turns. He has what can only be described as Hot Takes (he dedicates an entire essay to deconstructing the bad writing in The Dispossessed! Whoa!)

There were some really compelling takeaways about how to write, and what words do. They kind of make me want to start writing again, maybe try prose? So to that end this book was an absolute success.

Delaney describes his own process as imagining a scene in detail and trying to describe it, with the writing itself unspooling more details of the scene. Most important is trying to depict the scenes/actions “accurately”.

Accurate is interesting here; partially it means accurate to the reader’s own life (a writer cannot make a reader see red, only remember it). Delaney describes science fiction as an evocation of a particularly radical mixing of memories. My favorite part of this anthology was his critique of a scene in The Dispossessed where the only gay character sees a child and laments never being able to have children, of how cruel fate is to make him gay I guess? And Delaney’s response is that this writing is bad because it isn’t consistent with lived experience, which is being in an 18-man gay child-rearing commune with, I guess, him, 17 of his bros, and 16 children. Your experiences aren’t universal, but god I wish they were my dude. I’m butchering the subtleties here, but it’s a good time.

Accuracy also means accurate to some sort of causal matrix of reality that any given imagined thing would imply (“The door dilated” implies not just a round door without hinges, but a whole world and technology and society where having such a door exists, sensically). His critique of sexist/homophobic attitudes in The Dispossessed basically comes down to “in an anarcho-socialist society that the author tells us is gender-equal, this and that reaction from a character isn’t consistent with the world”. This method of world-building or of world-creating or of world-potentiality is such a fascinating sibling to the cruder “historical realism says we can’t have women knights” vs. “it’s make believe, anything is possible!” type back-and-forth - “it’s a fantasy world!” feels like such a weak excuse, compared to Delaney’s take that, say, not having women knights is failing to meet a rigorous, involved internal consistency. This seems to be a nugget of how science fiction works or is compelling; the causal matrices it has access to are wider than in other genres because it is set between reality and future, begs the question of reason/causality.

A component of the above writing process seems to imply how much of writing is for the writer themself. Delaney is v insistent that the reader is the final say on the story, on what they get out of a work (as interpretation is reliant on memory), and it’s something a writer has much less control over. He also seems pretty hard line on the every single word matters side of the, idk, style vs content debate. Style and contents are one and the same for Delaney. Can’t not respect that I think! Nevertheless, accuracy and precision in words is so intensely personal in the way he describes them; it feels more correct to situate it from the perspective of the writer than the reader; or at least very aggressively delineate that that difference is there. However, I feel like the personalness of interpretation/writing is less of an ideological fact than like, a helpful framework/approach to reading/writing/critiquing. And Delaney's own writing, his way of approaching SF and writing in these essays is a very cool practice of this; he’s not afraid to bring in his own personal anecdotes (boldly anti-objective), explain how this history allows him to relate to these works in his own particular way.

Good yard!

[Clara Collier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delaney is usually intelligent, occasionally profound, and often extremely frustrating. In a way, the essay is his natural habitat - at least, it lets him indulge the didactic tendencies which crop up again and again in his novels. He's relentlessly structuralist, which now reads as dated, but it's a useful framework for exploring some of the thought processes driving new wave science fiction in the 60s and early 70s - and it's worth reading if you want to understand the very particular climate of that era. (I would have given the book four stars if not for the essay on The Dispossessed, which merits special mention for being very famous and - in my opinion - very, very stupid. Uncharitably, Delany begins by assuming that the book is an uncritical endorsement of Odonian philosophy and then attacks every observable social problem in Anarresti society as a failure of imagination on Le Guin's part. He does make a few very valid critiques towards the end but at that point it's almost too frustrating to take seriously).

[carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

An indispensable collection of essays for anyone who wants to think about science fiction/sci-fi/SF on a deeper level, whether as a critic or a writer. If you’re familiar with Delany, you know he is exceedingly smart; Jaw is a rigorous read, and especially demanding if, like me, your undergrad memories of the structuralism he favors are quite hazy. He often pivots into sudden tangents or makes wide lateral leaps in his argument, but you are in the deft hands of someone thinking on a much higher plane, and within a few paragraphs (or pages) his aside dovetails into the main argument once again.

I feel like a much better reader for having read this collection; there are diamonds of thought, crystalline and lucid and irreducible, to be found in each essay

My favorite essays in this collection:

“About 5,750 Words,” which close reads the construction of a sentence

“Thickening the Plot,” which close reads the construction of a story

“Alyx,” which uses the works of Joanna Russ to investigate, name, and define the fundamental elements of science fiction (and fantasy) writing; this, in turn, forms the base of a materialist/feminist critique, using Russ again as example of that critique in action

“To Read The Dispossessed,” a novella-length close read of Ursula Le Guin’s novel (one of my favorites!) in which Delany systematically dismantles the book, reading it against itself to highlight lapses and lacunae in Le Guin’s thought and prose

“A Fictional Architecture…” part travelogue, part diary, part rumination on the act of creation

“Midcentury,” an essay in the appendix of the revised edition in which Delany seeks to situate and historicize his thinking and perspective

[Larou]

This book, and in particular the essay opening the collection, “About 5,750 Words” is famous (I wouldn’t know whether justly or not) for being the first attempt to define Science Fiction not by way of its content (“It takes place in the future”, “It has robots and starships”) but by way of its literary form. In all honesty, I’m not at all sure there actually is any formal element that would allow to identify a given work as being distinctly Science Fiction, but Delany’s attempt at identifying it is both heroic and fascinating.

He does so by way of “reading protocols”, i.e. a certain (mostly implicit) set of rules and skills that is required to actually make sense of SFnal sentences. A phrase like (to quote one of his examples) “the door dilated”, used quite casually by Heinlein in one of his novels, just does not make any sense in a frame of reference that is not Science Fiction and that is not familiar with the concept of iris doors. Of course, one has to ask where this frame of reference comes from, as it needs to exist in some kind of contest; and when Delany finally describes Science Fiction as “What is possible” (as opposed to “what is” of realistic and “what is impossible” of fantastic fiction), he has moved away from strictly formal criteria back towards defining Sciene Fiction as a specific content again, as there is just no way to determine possibility without recourse to some kind of external, non-literary reality that would be independent of any specific form.

But then it is very doubtful whether Delany is interested in the merely formal anyway, for the essays collected in this volume also show him as someone with a keen interest not just in literary theory but also in politics, the politics of literature and even the politics of literary forms. This is at its most pronounced and its most detailed in his long essay on Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, which is in many ways the most remarkable and most important essay in this volume but also the one I had the most issues with. Most important because his examination of Le Guin’s work led Delany eventually to write his own novel Triton, most remarkable because it is such a close and fascinating reading, admiring even where it criticizes and raising many excellent points. But also the most problematic for the particular ad hominem argumentation of much of the criticism Delany levels against The Dispossessed – the homo in this case not being Le Guin but Delany himself, in so far as much of his argument consists simply of claiming that he has experienced things differently than Le Guin describes them and that therefore he must be right and the novel must be wrong.

Now, I agree that a depersonalized, absolutely objective point of view is at best an illusion, at worst an ideology that masks the most impoverished form of subjectivity, that the writing subject is always inextricably involved and engaged in any kind of debate and that therefore it is not automatically illegitimate to appeal to that subject’s experience. However, the simple referral to a subjective, individual experience does not constitute an argument - if it is not in some way mediated or refined through some degree of objectivity or generality, it remains a mere statement of opinion. And this is unfortunately where a large part of Delany’s essay on The Dispossessed remains stuck, a part that contrasts rather strangely with those bits where Delany’s criticism is solidly founded on a close reading of the novel’s text. The whole essay thus remains a somewhat uneven affair, but it is well worth reading – both for its insights on The Dispossessed and the snippets of Delany’s autobiography, as badly integrated as the two may be in this instance. I can’t help but suspect that Delany felt somewhat similarly, and that because of this, the essay might very well have been the starting point not just for Triton but for two of my favourite essays in this volume that explore precisely different ways of melding subjective experience with objective insight, the individual with the general.

The first one is the last piece in the collection, “A Fictional Architecture That Manages Only with Great Difficulty Not Once to Mention Harlan Ellison” - not really an essay, but a series of autobiographical sketches, a kaleidoscopic jumble of scenes where Science Fiction intersected with Delany’s life (or the other way round). As much as I enjoyed getting to Delany as a critic through the course of this volume, this final piece reminded that and why I like him most as a writer – it is dense, almost lyrical and dazzlingly brilliant and as far as I’m concerned, the high point of this collection. Also, you just have to love the title.

The second one is part of the appendix, the essay “Midcentury” which has as its subtitle “An Essay in Contextualization.” It undertakes an examination of the 1950s in the US by way of a parallel reading of some experiences from Delany’s youth and pictures from a contemporary exhibition, The Family of Man, showing both how young Delany’s preconceptions shaped his perceptions of the pictures, and how those in turn led to a certain shift in those very same preconceptions, and inscribing both into the context of their time. It is a brilliant and enlightening piece of work and I am a bit surprised that it was relegated to the appendix (which might have to do with the volume’s publishing history rather than with any perceived slightness of this and the other essay making up the appendix).

While The Jewel-Hinged Jaw is not Delany’s final word on Science Fiction and he apparently revised some of his views in later works, this still remains not only a groundbreaking collection, but also one that continues to excite and stimulate, with many thought-provoking essays not just on the theory of Science Fiction in general but also on individual authors (like Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Roger Zelazny) and works, as well as several particularly astringent observations on gender and race in the genre which sadly are almost as valid today as back in the seventies.

[Shaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's just something about the quality of Delany's writing, regardless of it being fiction or nonfiction or if I agree with what he's saying or not, I just enjoy reading what he writes. So on that level this collection of essays was great to read. Many of these essays are very specific to a particular time and some are about particular works, so I was not equally interested by all the topics, but I'm sure I'll be reminded of most of these from time to time.

[Sessily]

(I read the old edition, the new edition is structured slightly different and includes at least one new essay.)

Jewel Hinged Jaw is a collection of essays all centered around a discussion of science fiction. The collection was first published in the 70s and has aged quite well, despite including a few now-dated facts. The book is broken into two sections: the first centering around general theory, the second including a series of book reviews that Delany presents as examples of him applying his thoughts on science fiction to criticism. While all is interesting, the two essays that blew me away were "About Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Words" from the first section and "To Read The Dispossessed" in the second section.

Together, these two essays form a fascinating description of what it is that science fiction does at the word, sentence, and plot levels, as compared to realist or mundane (or whatever term you prefer) fiction.

The first of those essays is highly recommended for anyone who cares about literature (and who is either excited by, or at least can tolerate, linguistic/theory-based discussions of literature). The second essay can only be appreciated if you have read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. If you have, his essay is an excellent demonstration of how to criticize a novel based on whether it achieves the vision and goals it presents of itself. Or, as he says, "We shall read the novel against its own ideal form."

[GONZA · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best essay in this collection, in my opinion, is the one on the language of science fiction books (as little as I understood it) and, following that, the one in which criticism of U. K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" confirmed for me how some topics were treated rather superficially and had almost all to do with sex (polygamy, homosexuality, etc.). That aside, I still consider Delaney one of the greatest all-around writers I have ever read.

Il saggio migliore di questa raccolta, secondo me é quello sul linguaggio dei libri della fantascienza (per quel poco che ho capito) e, a seguire, quello in cui le critiche a "The Dispossessed" di U. K. LeGuin mi hanno confermato come alcuni argomeni fossero trattati in modo piuttosto superficiale ed avevano quasi tutti a che fare con il sesso (poligamia, omosessualitá, etc.). A parte questo, continuo a considerare Delaney uno dei piú grandi scrittori a 360° che abbia mai letto.

[Valerie]

I've never read any of Delaney's fiction, but I found much of his critical work absorbing and interesting. There were discussions on such divers topics as the grammar of ASL and the question of (numerically) equal representation of the sexes in stories.

I'm told LeGuin denies ever having read Delaney's critique on The Dispossed; I gather this is because she feared she'd become hypersensitized, as Oliver Sacks once complained that he'd become overconscious of his gestures after being accused of imitating Robin Williams in Awakenings. "HE was imitating ME" Sacks would protest, but to no avail.

Anyway, the book is worth reading, and after all, Delaney doesn't require or expect us to always agree: he's floating ideas for consideration, not trying to win converts.

[V. · Rating 1 out of 5]

A star for the sheer genius of "A Fictional Architecture ..." (It's truly a one, not a zero). As for a lot of the rest: I see how these essays have been important when they have been written. And they are still interesting in a historical sense. But I've read tumblr entries that were better, even and especially in a scholarly sense.

[Luke Dylan Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A-/A

This book is a must read for fans and writers of science fiction in my opinion. I found the essay on Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed to be the highlight of the collection, as it deconstructs the novel and its flaws in a way that really encapsulated a lot of my problems with Le Guin’s novel (though I struggled and would struggle with writing down my thoughts half as concisely or wisely as Delany does).

Though the Le Guin essay was my favorite, there really aren’t any weak essays, and I even bought a few of the books he mentions (the Disch and Russ ones) after reading his essays about them. The auto-biographical tone poem at the end of the book was also very good… probably one of finest pieces of travel writing I’ve ever come across, and it also helps contextualize some of Delany’s short stories from the Driftglass collection.

Overall I greatly enjoyed these essays. I didn’t understand everything Delany was getting at (I got maybe 80-90% of it), but that’s more of a problem with my own intellectual limitations than Delany’s. The book is a bit dated (especially (presumably) its discussions of the financial realities of writing SF (not that I would really know, but whatever)) but it makes a lot of really interesting points about sci-fi as a genre and is overall just super interesting and weirdly fun to read given that it’s more or less a book of literary criticism, with some aspects of memoir and writing advice.

[Elton Furlanetto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma escrita muito bem informada e um olhar analítico muito atento. Tão bom crítico quanto é escritor

[Tracy]

Overall he comes off as pretentious, name-droppy, and braggy, and I'm not inclined to read his fiction based on this. There were some extremely interesting bits and pieces, unfortunately buried in a lot of rambling.

Contents:

Introduction: Ethical Aesthetics by Matthew Cheney -- I highlighted a few things, including a referencial canon for this book (most of which I had not read) 

1. About 5,750 Words -- best of the lot, well worth reading -- clarifying how SF differs from literary works and fantasy -- most interestingly digging into the power of choosing each word, each word modifying the reader's understanding of what came before, so all words collectively tell the story

2. Critical Methods / Speculative Fiction -- utopia, dystopia, and escaping that binary -- the evolution of SF from interest in things to how those affect behavior 

3. Quarks -- fiction as models of reality -- aesthetic choices and structure can undermine the revolutionary power of story

4. Thickening the Plot -- on plot emerging through writing -- starts with a breakdown of writing a scene 

5. Faust and Archimedes -- first part is name droppy -- then gets to the meat: SF is "symbolistic in its basic conception" -- then more boring stuff about authors I haven't read -- skimmed a lot of this 

6. Alyx -- somewhat interesting -- the importance of language and style in prose -- what makes something SF versus fantasy -- women characters created to serve male readers' needs

7. Prisoners' Sleep -- skipped 

8. Letter to the Symposium on "Women In Science Fiction" -- ehhhhhhhh his heart's in the right place but this is not an effective piece of writing, more of a rant -- his thoughts on creating believable women characters -- commentary on sexism

9. To Read The Dispossessed -- skipped because I haven't read The Dispossessed

10. A Fictional Architecture That Manages Only with Great Difficulty Not Once to Mention Harlan Ellison -- DNF -- basically a travelogue

Appendixes;

A. Midcentury -- skipped

B. Letter to a Critic -- DNF -- unclear what his point is

[Anfenwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first half of this book of essays, despite the tendency of several of them to be a bit random. Delany's prose feels very unnecessarily dense at times but when he makes sense he makes lots of it. Perhaps the most interesting parts are his tendency to think about SF writing with the level of detail we often bring to poetry (he says he's into poetry, it shows) and his trotting out, in about 1970, of whole paragraphs on the subject of diversity and social justice which are almost verbatim what people are saying now, as if it were new. The failure of these movements to reach the mainstream and their need to re-invent the wheel generation after generation is a subject of its own (one he didn't address).

I couldn't really enjoy the second part because I hadn't read any of the books he discussed. Given the density of the writing, it was no real pleasure to read him on subjects I knew nothing about. I skimmed and decided to turn back to those essays if and when I've read the books in question.

[Nicole Luiken · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed several of the essays, skipped a few which pertained to SFF works I haven't read (or read so long ago I remember virtually nothing) and fought my way through some of the more arcane critical language (I don't know the different between diachronic and synchronic and frankly don't care). On the whole, worth the effort, but next time I'll try some of his fiction.

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

150330: formalist ideas of literature applied, thus sf is ultimately... poetry. myth-making in some ways, this has intelligent artists conscious of what they are doing and how sff is valuable, mature, engaging. this is trying to present possibilities of thought experiments in the essence of poetic sf language...

[k. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Largely went over my head. Some interesting notes on the errors and failures of Le Guin's The Dispossessed, though that essay mostly baffled me (with its eminent intelligence?). Kept reading mostly because I had heard the last essay was very good. It was definitely worth it.
helped me realise i am about 4o years behind the times, and also stupid.

[Riversue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel Delany is a genius when it comes to science fiction. But this book could have used a good edit. The spelling was atrocious sometimes making it hard to read.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel Delany quotes Damon Knight’s definition of science fiction as, “Science fiction is what I point to and say, ‘That’s science fiction.’” If that’s the case, then, the lint in Mr. Delany’s navel is definitely science fiction.
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw features some flashes of brilliance and insight on the subject of science fiction, its history, future, and what separates it from what Delany pejoratively names “mundane.”
Mostly, though, the book is a series of journal entries, meandering recollections of conversations Delany had with other SF writers while drunk, and childhood reminiscences. He also demonstrates a rigorous adherence to a structuralist and parametrical view of everything, relying especially on Lacan to taxonomize each word and concept that crosses his ken. For someone who says he sees the mystic in the scientific—a la Clarke’s invocation about science being indistinguishable from magic—he’s a little too eager to reduce things to a manageable dialectic that leaves little room for mystery. Sometimes, though, he switches from Lacan to Roland Barthes, and things get even worse. If none of what I’ve just written here rings a bell with you, dear reader, consider yourself lucky. You didn’t waste those four, six, or (god forbid) eight years-plus you spent in one of those adult daycare centers we call the college campus.
There is also an overlong and somewhat churlish review of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed included after the main essay (re: journal entries). Imagine giving The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy another couple standard deviations of IQ then letting him read and review LeGuin’s “ambiguous utopia” and you have a good idea of what to expect. Worst...worldbuilding...ever! Several times Delany stresses there is nothing personal in his review, and that he is (very) happy for Ms. LeGuin’s success. After a while, though, it starts to feel like the lady doth protest to much. Or rather, that the man doth protest too much about the lady and her success. Not to be too mean, but considering the agony I just put myself through by slogging my way to the end, I have to say it: Time has dimmed Delany’s star, while only further brightening LeGuin’s.
Delany was no doubt brilliant, but he has a bit of the addlepated professor about him. He reminds me of the professor who could cover a wall-length chalkboard with inscrutable math sigils but leaves his fly open so the shirtfront sneaks through. Certain languages—like German—lend themselves to his way of thinking, with their multiple relative clauses and double infinitives. Delany spoke at least three languages, but German unfortunately wasn’t one of them. How the heck, then, did he end up thinking in such a Germanic fashion?
Maybe, I might have had a better experience with this work if I had read it in translation, auf Deutsch?
Warum nicht!
Es gibt noch Zeit, das zu tun, und es ist auch verfügbar auf Amazon.de.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having worked my way through most of his fiction and memoir, I've started in on more of Delany's essays.

At the end of the day, I do just like his narrative stuff better, and the bits of personal story in these essays were some of my favorite parts.

Lots of other good stuff too though. A bit about how every word in a piece revises the reader's understanding of the piece up until that point. A bit about the realities of selling science fiction. Lots of bits that offered various insight into Delany's fiction. And a critique of The Dispossessed that read it so closely that it felt both loving and scathing.

At times some of his essays felt pretty obscure. I felt like I wasn't smart or patient enough to really follow his line of reasoning or get what he was getting at.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, it is such a joy to read a book of criticism who is smarter than I am, and is constantly teaching me new authors to read, and new perspectives on things I already read. I'd try to deliver some of the key insights of this collection of essays, but there are just too many of them. Delany, among other arguments, grounds his thinking here in the idea that Science Fiction is a specialized form of language, rather like what I have always thought about, say, "Poetry." For him, it offers opportunities that other forms of writing do not. But that's just the beginning of where he goes from there. Such a nice book to stumble on. It restores my faith in reading.

[Lisajean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would not recommend this to the general science-fiction enthusiast. They would likely be dismayed by the rambling, opinionated abstruseness of these strange essays. However, any fan of Delany’s is sure to appreciate those very qualities in this odd book. Every time I read him, I’m struck by how awesome he is.

[Evan Streeby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve heard from numerous people that they like Mr. Delany’s essays as much or more than his fiction. I thought “About 5750 Words” and “Faust and Archimedes” were excellent; but I didn’t read his famous analysis of The Dispossessed (because I haven’t read the book yet).
All in all some good, some a bit confused.

[Crow]

I still don't understand subjunctivity but whatever. Really interesting series of critical essays about science fiction! Le Guin is one of my favorite authors but I thought he brought up some really good points about the Dispossessed. I loveeeed the essay from the women in science fiction conference

[Whtvrs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delanys also his generations best sci-fi critic