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Nova

Samuel R. Delany

3.83 · Rating details · 6,258 ratings · 378 reviews

These are [at least some of] the ways you can read NOVA: as a fast-action farflung interstellar adventure; as archetypal mystical/mythical allegory (in which the Tarot and the Grail both figure prominently); as modern myth told in the S-F idiom... the reader observes, recollects, or participates in a range of personal experience including violent pain and disfigurement, ...more

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Paperback, 241 pages

Published June 11th 2002 by Vintage (first published 1968)

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Oct 16, 2014 mark monday rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: new-wave, scifi-60s-70s-80s

flawed but heroic space captain, on a mission that is part vengeance and part noble quest, assembles a disparate crew to fly through a nova. this is Samuel R. Delany so that synopsis just barely scratches the surface.

I'm going to copy & paste a post regarding this book that I just made in a group I moderate. hopefully the pasted post will eventually turn out to be notes for an actual review, but who knows, I'm whimsical. and lazy!

Delany's prose reminds me of a couple musicians I like, John flawed but heroic space captain, on a mission that is part vengeance and part noble quest, assembles a disparate crew to fly through a nova. this is Samuel R. Delany so that synopsis just barely scratches the surface.

I'm going to copy & paste a post regarding this book that I just made in a group I moderate. hopefully the pasted post will eventually turn out to be notes for an actual review, but who knows, I'm whimsical. and lazy!

Delany's prose reminds me of a couple musicians I like, John Cage and John Zorn. Cage because they both create strange, shimmering beauty out of disparate parts that I wouldn't expect to find beautiful. Zorn because I usually have no idea what is going to come next, what one part will turn into, and what that will turn into next. the music analogy occurred to me fairly early because the futuristic music that the highly endearing character Mouse creates is central to the story.

is there hard science in this book? I am not a science guy, not remotely, and a lot of what Delany was describing flew right over my head. so much so that I couldn't tell if it was actual science or if it was Delany using science in a fantastical way.

one of the things I often notice when reading science fiction from earlier eras is how much these authors can pack into such a short number of pages. just a bit over 200 pages! and yet Delany successfully develops multiple characters, an entire future society, a revenge narrative, and much else in those pages. very, very impressive. such a small package but so much within.

loved the use of tarot cards. I think the only other science fiction I've read that had such heavy use was Piers Anthony's Tarot series. and now I'm a little embarrassed that I've mentioned Piers Anthony. but he had some good novels!

I'm a bit shaky on the Grail Quest within this novel. it appears central but at the same time its use was somewhat obscure to me. I have to think on that a little bit, maybe do some research.

one of the things I like about New Wave science fiction authors is just how literary they can get. I have no problem with straightforward 'genre prose' but I just really, really love the artistry of more experimental writers who don't handhold readers from point A to B and who treat their prose with a combination of playfulness and seriousness, like it's a fun challenge for them to write what they intend to be a fun challenge to read. reading Delany and others of his ilk is the opposite of a passive experience. it is the kind of a writing that hits many different parts of me at different times and in different ways. exciting prose! ...more

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Oct 30, 2014 Lyn rated it liked it · review of another edition

NOVA! Queen sings Ahhh-Ahhhh!

Reading this, I could not help thinking about the 1980 Mike Hodges film Flash Gordon starring Max von Sydow and Sam Jones. Many critics and reviewers have used the term space opera to label and describe Samuel Delaneys imaginative Hugo nominated 1968 science fiction novel, and I think I will join those ranks.

Wikipedia defines space opera" as follows:

Space opera is a sub genre of science fiction that often emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set

...more

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Jan 14, 2015 Stuart rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: galaxy-spanning, new-wave-sf

Nova: A New-Wave Grail Quest space opera from the 1960s
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Nova is Samuel "Chip" Delany's 1968 space opera with mythic/Grail Quest overtones. It is packed with different themes, subtexts, allegorical and cultural references, and literary experiments, and the young author (just 25 years old) is clearly a very talented, intelligent, and passionate writer.

But I didn't enjoy it, sadly. While I thought Babel-17 was a very fast-paced, vivid and engaging space opera Nova: A New-Wave Grail Quest space opera from the 1960s
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Nova is Samuel "Chip" Delany's 1968 space opera with mythic/Grail Quest overtones. It is packed with different themes, subtexts, allegorical and cultural references, and literary experiments, and the young author (just 25 years old) is clearly a very talented, intelligent, and passionate writer.

But I didn't enjoy it, sadly. While I thought Babel-17 was a very fast-paced, vivid and engaging space opera that centered on language and identity, this book felt very turgid and forced. Why, you ask? Well, the author was determined to mold the story along the lines of a Grail Quest, Moby Dick, and Jason and the Argonauts, with the goal being a race to retrieve the super material Illyrion from the heart of a recently-exploded nova, in order to swing the balance of power in the universe between feuding aristocratic families. So events in the story have to conform to this format, and none of the actions of the characters rang true to me.

Obsession, greed, revenge, vying for supremacy - I can understand those emotions. But the actions of the characters, both the principals and supporting cast, don't seem to make much sense. If this rag-tag group of misfits was really determined to retrieve this material, why the heck did Delany structure the story the way he did? The first 10-15% of the book has Captain Lorq Von Ray gathering together his crew, and then for the next 50% of the book there is an overlong flashback of Lorq's childhood and encounters with the rival Red family and his nemesis Prince Red and his beautiful but submissive sister.

It's good to build the backstory for why the characters have such animosity for each other, but this section goes on far too long. There is also a detailed side-story about a young gypsy musician named Mouse, a windbag intellectual named Katin who wants to try the long-lost art of writing a novel, a drawn-out episode involving Tarot cards and how scientific they are, and a seemingly-aimless pit-stop on a planet that results in a major confrontation that ends inconclusively. By the time the mission to find the nova gets underway, we're already 70% through the book! Finally in the last 10% of the book the long-awaited encounter with the nova develops into a thoroughly unbelievable standoff between the main characters. This part made no sense to me whatsoever.

Though the writing quality and language are consistently strong like Babel-17, I feel like this was wasted since the story's pacing was so interminable and the mythic undertones just didn't resonate with me. I've always felt that realistic character motivations and world-building are far more appealing than stories that try hard to be symbolic and archetypal. Even within the book this dynamic is debated between the impulsive, emotional Mouse and the dry, intellectual Katin. Unfortunately, it seems that Katin has had a greater influence on the story than Mouse, and I never trust a book where a character is writing a novel that doesn't yet have a subject. You can see where that is headed a mile away.

There are certainly some fascinating cyborg aspects of the book that have clearly been influential on the Cyberpunk movement, since characters have implants (plugs) that allow them to directly interface with sockets and operate all types of machinery. Neuromancer, anyone? Even in Babel-17, I liked the fact that there was a huge databank of stored personalities that could be revived as discorporates.

But as should be clear now, though Delany can spin off lots of neat SF ideas, his real interests lie much more in the literary direction. Speaking of which, his 1968 Hugo Award winner The Einstein Intersection is probably the most overtly allegorical of all his books, but at least it is short, which cannot be said of his massive (and reportedly unreadable) magnum opus Dhalgren. ...more

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Feb 13, 2009 Mark rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-by-friends

Finished a reread of Samuel R. Delany's Nova for my reading group. I'll post a longer review later, but for now...

Nova is considered by some critics as the last of Delany's early period, "lesser" novels. I think it is the first of his masterpieces insofar as he fully embraces what will become a trademark in the next several---Dhalgren, Trouble On Triton, and all the Neveryon books, ending with Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, namely the full use of metafiction. Many mainstream literary Finished a reread of Samuel R. Delany's Nova for my reading group. I'll post a longer review later, but for now...

Nova is considered by some critics as the last of Delany's early period, "lesser" novels. I think it is the first of his masterpieces insofar as he fully embraces what will become a trademark in the next several---Dhalgren, Trouble On Triton, and all the Neveryon books, ending with Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, namely the full use of metafiction. Many mainstream literary novelists employed it in roughly the same time period---Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, Fowles, even Vonnegut, and certain Atwood, Murdoch, Peircy, and Lessing---but one rarely encountered it in science fiction. Certainly it was never used to such effect until much later. In Nova we find it's first full deployment.

On the surface, this is a space opera-style adventure, a feud between two great families across the galaxy, high politics and finance, and a race for a treasure. It has all the classic tropes---an independently-owned starship, a motley crew, wild and vividly described planets, and at times nail-biting pacing---but it also steps back from itself to comment on what is happening in terms of history and myth, mostly via the character of Katin, a more or less aimless young man with an immense store of academic training and a finely-honed sense of process who has been taking notes for years on a novel he intends to write, which in this far flung time is a lost art. He joins the crew of the Roc almost by accident and quickly becomes invested in their quest as much for the relationships he makes among the varied members of the crew as for all the resonances he sees in the captain's self-imposed quest. It is a grail quest, it is a hunt for a white whale, it is spy-craft, and it is fate all rolled into one mission to an exploding star. Delany offers up the points of mythic resonance throughout for anyone who cares to find out more, tying the adventure to literary and cultural archetypes spanning millennia.

This raises the novel well above the level of simple adventure. Hints as to the nature of the crew---who is Jason, who is Argos, who is Medea, who is Ahab?---are sprinkled throughout.

As well, this book gives us a foretaste of the kind of evocative language Delany will hone in the next several novels.

As metafiction, Delany's novels are master classes on how science fiction is constructed and why the subtext connects so strongly to what on the surface appears to be a mere entertainment. He is as interested in how culture works as in what his characters go through. Nothing in a Delany novel happens in isolation from all of history and myth. ...more

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Jun 17, 2013 Mike rated it did not like it

Nova does not cease telling you how clever it is. It does this with plenty of the goobledigook that can mar any narrative, sci-fi or not. First: the neologisms meant to indicate that the writer really thought through his futuristic world ("sensory-syrynx" and "psychorama" are among the plenty). These are meant to broadcast the legitimacy of his imagined world and that, yes, he took care to note that language evolves with the times. Yet the dialogue and language otherwise has timeless problems: Nova does not cease telling you how clever it is. It does this with plenty of the goobledigook that can mar any narrative, sci-fi or not. First: the neologisms meant to indicate that the writer really thought through his futuristic world ("sensory-syrynx" and "psychorama" are among the plenty). These are meant to broadcast the legitimacy of his imagined world and that, yes, he took care to note that language evolves with the times. Yet the dialogue and language otherwise has timeless problems: stilted exposition, weirdly clunky, or just plain stale talk no matter how grandiose the stage. Second are assumptions about structure that are disregarded for the sake of caprice: in this case, ending the novel in the middle of a sentence in the most groaner-y fashion possible. It should not have been a surprise considering chapters begin and end in the middle of a conversation for no discernible motive other than to force a cliffhanger when one doesn't appear naturally. But it was one of those non-surprises that still yielded an "oh, come on" out loud from yours truly. Third is the author-surrogate character, the always-unwelcome Katin, a neurotic soapbox of half-baked truths about a half-baked reality. Half-baked truths about the current reality are unpalatable; imagine hearing fallacious arguments spouted at length about the state of existence in an already intangible other-world.

Let's see, what else: as a plot it's relatively paper-thin. It's, at base, a "space opera" as they call it. And the odor of triteness that comes with the territory is pungent, indeed: both the antagonist and protagonists are meant to look sympathetic not because of their actions, but because they are both marked by physical deformity. The seeds of their rivalry germinate in a childhood "traumatic event" that defines the rest of their lives. A man loves his rival's sister, or so one thinks. There's even a set of twins that finish each others' sentences. The protagonist and his rivals are identically maniacal. The book is melodramatic not just in its template, but in its "weighty" themes.

There are ways Nova is just dangling philosophical ideas from a form as tried-and-true as it can get, and in the meantime uses the form to speculate about a future universe. This means characters relay background information to one another at length. This means the writer-surrogate gets to opine at length about whatever topic fits the author's whims. And sometimes it does feel like it is "whatever topic." The various subjects covered don't cohere all that well, even with the nova metaphor of a major self-collapse leaving something behind to salvage and re-build from. Basically, when the book isn't shoehorning Delaney's viewpoints into every open nook-and-cranny, it is marching along the narrowest and thinnest of narrative arcs. Moby-Dick this is not. I am confounded by the comparison.

The sad thing is those viewpoints aren't very enlightening or provocative. Some just feel over-confident and inapplicable. There's a debate between fiction and music, music being "of the moment" and fiction being "of the past." There's a flourish about how future civilizations combat the problem of worker alienation that is fairly clever, but ultimately too romantic and hollow. So, truly, Nova is an unsuccessful balancing act between high-minded and unsuccessful ideas, and a broad-minded and unsuccessful plot-romance-template. Sure, The Brothers Karamazov was, in essence, a courtroom drama interspersed with Christian philosophy. But it was more, wasn't it? It was so much more. That mixture of form and invention leaves one with more than the sum of its parts sometimes. (This is something fiction and music can have in common.) Other times, it leaves one with less than. Nova is one of those times.

...more

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Jul 02, 2014 Leo Robertson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

For those of you unfamiliar with Delany, let me explain to you what it's like reading one of his novels. (And Delany is a clever PLUS, so I think there should be way more raving about him than there is- I don't quite hear enough!)

Here's the blurb they give you:
"The balance of galactic power in the 31st century revolves around Illyrion, the most precious energy source in the universe. The varied and exotic crew who sign up with Captain Lorq van Ray know their mission is dangerous, and they soon For those of you unfamiliar with Delany, let me explain to you what it's like reading one of his novels. (And Delany is a clever PLUS, so I think there should be way more raving about him than there is- I don't quite hear enough!)

Here's the blurb they give you:
"The balance of galactic power in the 31st century revolves around Illyrion, the most precious energy source in the universe. The varied and exotic crew who sign up with Captain Lorq van Ray know their mission is dangerous, and they soon learn that they are involved in a deadly race with the charismatic but vicious leader of an opposing space federation. But they have no idea of Lorq's secret obsession: to gather Illyrion at source by flying through the very heart of an imploding star."

So you're like, 'Oh! 240 pgs of ragtag interstellar fun! I'm in!' But you start to read and you're like:
- pg 1-50: intro to characters and recruitment for dangerous race with Lorq van Ray
- pgs 51-220: 'Of course, if we consider the 25th century's extrapolation of interdimensional sociocultural hegemony, Heidegger is, in retrospect, the 20th century's most important thinker. If- and it goes without saying- we couple this idea with Marx's Scientific Dialectics... the physicochemical structure Illyrion is better understood if we conduct a thought experiment to consider the properties of a substance not yet available on the 21st century's periodic table of elements...'
- pgs 220-240: 'Holy fuck: that van Ray guy's trying to gather Illyrion at source by flying through the very heart of an imploding star!'

So you can see why I like it! Delany delves beyond shallow-novel dilettantism to make fearsome polymathic connections between disciplines. (And clearly his intellectual exuberance is infectious!) In fact, I'm convinced if this novel was really written in the 31st century, you'd barely have to change a goddamn thing- which is a ridiculous statement to make, but such is the power of Delany's sci-fi :)

Given my little primer on Delany above, there's way too much to capture in a single reading, and that's why I'm delighted to be following this one up with Dhalgren, which I WTF-ed over years ago (it's sci-fi Ulysses.) But much like any WTF dense piece of showboatery (Camus, Joyce, Pynchon, Gass, DFW, Gibson?), the first reading is the breathless anxious "Will I even get through this?" investment that allows for the second reading's reaping of gold.

So I see this is a 2015 version of this novel! And Delany's first three novels were recently reissued in a single compendium, so almost all his stuff is back in print, I believe. Let SF Masterworks know they've done the right thing and buy a paperback of this asap! (If indeed that does signal publishers- who ever knows :D) Because Delany's words thrive on a printed page and you'll judge yourself less for all the flicking back and forth :P ...more

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Nov 13, 2019 Jamie rated it liked it

Sprung from pirates, reeling blind in fire, I am called pirate, murderer, thief.

Kudos to Delany for writing, in 1968, one of the first space opera stories with real substance and serious cultural and sociological underpinnings, as well as some interesting mythological overtones. It is also considered a major cyberpunk forerunner, introducing the concept of direct interfacing between man and machine. Clearly this can be viewed as groundbreaking sci-fi. However, perhaps because of it's age and New ...more

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Jun 10, 2009 Kara Babcock rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, science-fiction, space-opera, 2010-read, hugo-nominee

Ah, classic space opera: futuristic setting, oddball characters with oddball philosophies, and ships and science well beyond what we ken. Unlike a good deal of space opera, Nova is not a doorstopper. It is more modest in length and in focus, though not in scope. The cast of characters is small, but the events have large repercussion. Captain Lorq von Ray certainly has much in common with Captain Ahab, and obsession is an important motif in Nova. I hesitate to compare it to Moby-Dicknot because I ...more

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Feb 21, 2019 S̶e̶a̶n̶ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: your spinal socket

Recommended to S̶e̶a̶n̶ by: the beating of black wings overhead

Shelves: science-fiction, 2019

Direct-seeming in the mythic way, Nova still belies its modest page count, bursting at its seams with Delany's muscular world-building prowess. How could it come to an end so quickly, I thought, with how full it is growing. And Delany's world! Constructed with an innate faith in the ability of his readers to keep up, or perhaps simply not caring if they do. Having only read Dhalgren prior to this, I wasn't sure what to expect. More of the same? And that I did find in certain ways. How he only ...more

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Feb 07, 2019 Chris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

There's so much one can say about this book, but I'm not nearly smart or eloquent enough for all that. So here's my sad attempt:

I think Nova is my favorite book by Delany - and that's saying a lot given how much I love Dhalgren. Being the fourth time I read it, I realized that it's really quite a short, quick book if you let it be. There's not so much to the plot itself; rather, most of what's in the book is devoted to scene or world(s)-building. But in the prose there's so much richness: Nearly ...more

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Feb 28, 2020 Juho Pohjalainen rated it it was ok

A grizzled young captain and his ragtag crew go on the biggest and deadliest refueling trip in history. Stakes: entire galactic economy, massive inflation should they succeed. It starts out promising, introduces the main characters effectively, gets us to hate the bad guys properly, and outlines enough of the life in the early fourth millennium to give us a good stage of where we are now. And it ends well, too, with a great climactic finish, triumph attained with sacrifice, and lessons learned.

A grizzled young captain and his ragtag crew go on the biggest and deadliest refueling trip in history. Stakes: entire galactic economy, massive inflation should they succeed. It starts out promising, introduces the main characters effectively, gets us to hate the bad guys properly, and outlines enough of the life in the early fourth millennium to give us a good stage of where we are now. And it ends well, too, with a great climactic finish, triumph attained with sacrifice, and lessons learned.

Should be great, right? Well, there has to be a middle point between the beginning and the end - and here there's a problem.

Here the story shifts away into an almost-half-book tangent about other matters, things that are largely irrelevant for the narrative, yet not sufficiently fleshed out in their own right to be worthwhile. It gives glimpses to the future society in the form of a few worlds visited, but each world is so superficially described and detailed - the visits so short and fairly uneventful - that there's not much to them on their own. The trips between largely consist of philosophical ramblings, especially from the aspiring author Katin who is still looking for a subject for his book (a common malady even in our time), creating a bit of a backdrop for this whole thing but giving it too much direct focus. There's an extended scene - fired up by Tarot reading of all things - that goes into greater detail of the modern technology and the few Luddite gypsies that have chosen to stay out of it, but it would have needed to give us more spotlight of them for it to be worth our while, as the bits about the computer plugs had already become clear elsewhere... and yet at the same time the whole thing with Tarot feels almost the opposite, and completely out of place with the rest of the story. And as for the history of the setting, the book talks a lot about things that happened in our time, many millennia before the present of the book, as if there was nothing worthwhile that had happened since: it feels lazy, to be honest, a massive missed opportunity in worldbuilding.

All these aspects feel transient, ephemeral, like tiny bubbles of potential interest floating in the void, separate from one another, doing nothing on their own, yet still taking up precious space and attention from the actually plot-relevant stuff. Very little of actual consequence to the story takes place in them.

It compares itself to the Arthurian legends, towards the end, but it really would have needed more epic space adventures to qualify as such. And it started out so well, too. A bit of a shame. ...more

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Aug 27, 2007 Adam rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: fans of 60's Lit and Sci Fi

Bizarre psychedelic jewel of novel that sometimes reads like prose poetry. Allusions to Bester, Holy Grail, Moby Dick, tarot, City of the Dreadful Night add to the enjoyment all with interesting thoughts on film and music, the future of the novel, humanity and technology, work and other weird thoughts.This book has an especially chilling finale alleviated by the humurous last line and an unsuspected conclusion. First Delaney I've made it through but maybe this will give the urge to tackle more(I ...more

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Sep 01, 2007 Punk rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction, spaceships

SF. Space miners! Space ships! Weird syntax! Sadly, it's the weird syntax that stuck with me after reading this.

Most of the action is set in the year 3172, in a universe where most of the galaxy is colonized by humans. In the Pleiades Federation, natives speak a dialect that always puts the verb at the end of the sentence. It gave us a lot of dialogue like: "I if his advisory meeting over is will see." The entire time I was reading I was wondering what kind of a culture puts its verbs last, and ...more

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May 24, 2010 Nate D rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, read-in-2010

This was fun. Samuel R. Delany is a talented writer with a lot of ideas and a good sense of character and social context. He's certainly not reaching here like he did in his masterpiece, Dhalgren, and a lot of this boils down to a drama cast in archetypes: bold, vaguely Ahab-esque captain, back from previous failed expedition plans next. Semi-amoral rival with a beautiful sister. Street-smart orphan who tries to live in the present without introspection. Etc. Except Delaney manages to make most ...more

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Jun 22, 2011 Maggie K rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, sci-fi-masterworks

wow-a very charismatic space captain somehow gets a crew to take on a near-suicide type mission that's both greed and vengeance oriented...and it is so believable you will think its possible to fly into a nova!

I find it so awe-inspiring that Delany stuffed all this into a 200 page book, but there you are. The most content per word book ever!

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Dec 24, 2013 Jedediah Smith rated it really liked it

This novel might be off-putting to readers of current SF or fantasy novels. Its approach to prose and plot is very different from contemporary works, and I note that SF novels of the 50s and 60s often approached plot as an exploration of ideas. It's not that they weren't often entertaining and well structured. But novels by Delaney, Spinrad, Dick, LeGuin and many others seemed to develop their characters and setting and plots in the service of theme, developing and testing ideas, and This novel might be off-putting to readers of current SF or fantasy novels. Its approach to prose and plot is very different from contemporary works, and I note that SF novels of the 50s and 60s often approached plot as an exploration of ideas. It's not that they weren't often entertaining and well structured. But novels by Delaney, Spinrad, Dick, LeGuin and many others seemed to develop their characters and setting and plots in the service of theme, developing and testing ideas, and extrapolating social changes from technological inventions or scientific discoveries. And once a hypothesis had been established and tried and evaluated, the novel would end. Often around the 250 page mark.

Today, the focus is on immersion into story and setting. Readers want long-term escapism for their money. So the prose is clear and simple, there is an emphasis on long changing relationships and fortunes of characters, and the page counts are massive, often stretching into a series of novels (trilogies? not a chance! why drop an established and successful brand) or "world" novels without end.

Delany not only allowed his prose to be difficult, he delighted in it. He loved to throw the reader into a new world with new rules and new meanings, while providing them with few road signs. He often described his love for work by authors who would challenge readers to put together hints and make inferences in order to make sense of this new creation. Long exposition and explanation would make it too easy and rob the reader of the joy of discovery, of making connections and leaps on their own, of inference, which is really the process of making love to literature. Nova weaves a tapestry of its influences and creates an organic whole.

Of course, Delany, Brunner, Pynchon, and Spinrad all had at least one magnum opus that pushed the page count well beyond the 500 page mark. But these were not SF soap operas following long character arcs. In each case, these were the authors' most challenging, experimental, and difficult works. ...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Tina rated it really liked it

Shelves: space-opera-good, serious-sci-fi, almost-thought-provoking, author-i-love

When reading/reviewing this novel, you need to ignore the "science" parts of science fiction, as this was published in 1968, before the moon landing, let alone feasible space mining or colonization. Yet, Delany's ideas are not so out there to be considered improbable (or at least distracting to the story). Illyrion is quite properly described not as a substance, but as a superheavy material - that is, something more akin to particles than something you can hold in your hand (worst explanation When reading/reviewing this novel, you need to ignore the "science" parts of science fiction, as this was published in 1968, before the moon landing, let alone feasible space mining or colonization. Yet, Delany's ideas are not so out there to be considered improbable (or at least distracting to the story). Illyrion is quite properly described not as a substance, but as a superheavy material - that is, something more akin to particles than something you can hold in your hand (worst explanation ever, but you get my point, I hope), and the concept of people having cybernetic implants in their bodies to allow them to operate machinery using their nerves was a fascinating concept. The story itself is very simple but I wish Delany would have expanded a little more on the characters. Mouse, Katin and Von Ray are fleshed out pretty nicely, but the others we don't learn enough about - especially Ruby. Price's motivations make sense (he's a psycho with an inferiority complex) but Ruby... quite frankly, she's the most fascinating character in the novel, because she isn't given a perspective, and her motives/actions aren't clear. It's obvious she has some weird obsession with her brother, but why? And is she also attracted to Von Ray? And why? I'm convinced these lingering questions aren't an oversight on Delany's part, but intentional.

There is just so much packed into this tiny novel you could extrapolate on. Race relations, humans and their relationships with machines, politics, power, alienation (Katin, Mouse, and Von Ray are very strange men - loners and vagrants), and various others.

The book has a very distinct style - somewhere between post-modern and modernism, as if Delany wanted to experiment with the format (like in Dhalgren) but decided not to.

Either way, upon reflection, I enjoyed this book more in thinking about it than actually reading it (though it was a very quick and definitely interesting). I wish the characters were a little deeper though, as I said before, but Delaney's wordplay and concepts make this a great novel.

Some wonderful Delany lines:
"A moon’s beauty is in variations of sameness."
"Katin tried to look reservedly doubtful. The expression was too complicated and came out blank." ...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Tudor Ciocarlie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: jo-waltons-rec

Wow! Nova is one of the greatest pieces of art that I've encountered in my life!

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Jul 10, 2015 sologdin rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: burns-like-cold-iron

Nutshell: always already dashing petit bourgeois outsider seeks to break interstellar monopoly of Old Money aristocrat via innovative stellar semiotics.

Text is kickass in its presentation of celestial objects and outer space, where night means forever and mornings a recollection (18). Space itself: the vermillion rush, in which hung the charred stars (90). Each star is similarly a furnace where the very worlds of empire are smelted (86). One planets inhabitants speak with a dicked-up Yodaesque ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Griffin Alexander rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-is-non-f, chip, the-future

This is Delany at the height of his genre-writing game, after he momentarily returned from his obfuscatory break-out with the very strange The Einstein Intersection. This is a fun read, truly a space opera of interfamilial feuds and political power in a proto-cyberpunk cyborgish future. Other reviewers seem to find the dialogue stilted (it's genre, so it is largely expository--this isn't Gaddis, and the people complaining wouldn't like it even if it were), but it works fine for me. Is it campy? ...more

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Jul 07, 2016 Meredith Anne rated it it was amazing

I first read Nova when I was a teenager. I just decided to start reading it again, almost 40 years later. Unlike many "vintage" Sci-fi books, nothing feels dated; it reads as fresh and original as it did decades ago. I rated it "amazing" because it amazed me. To not have forgotten it after one read for 4 decades says it all.

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Jun 04, 2007 Craig rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I still believe that this may be Delany's best novel, his other (far) more acclaimed works notwithstanding. I've always been impressed with the number of levels it works on; as a space-opera, as a grail-quest, an an introduction to Tarot, as a character study using sf as an exploration of myth and/or the drug culture... Mouse rocks.

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Jul 09, 2017 Nikki rated it liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction

Ive meant to read this for so long, because its a total classic and everyone seemed to expect me to love Delanys work. Although the writing is clever, the way some of the characters speak (verb last) just got infuriating, and I dont think any of the characters are really there to be liked. As for the grail story narrative thats supposed to be there, well; knowing the grail story as well as I do (clue: very well, thanks to Cardiff Universitys medieval lit tutors) it didnt really feel like a grail ...more

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Nov 20, 2016 Rob rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: random-comments-review

...If I had to pick a favourite I would probably pick Babel-17, simply because the subject appealed to me more. Nova is a superb example of what the new wave accomplished in the genre however. It's a story that on the surface connects with much of what has gone before in the genre. If you look under the surface however, new ideas, elements and themes enter into the narrative. Add to that Delany's distinct voice and you have a novel that is bound to attract attention. It's easy to see how this ...more

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Sep 30, 2019 Eric rated it it was amazing

Trippy, poetic, swashbuckling, full of ideas. All the things great science fiction aspires to be.

Sometimes, even great science fiction can seem to be outside the world of Literature and more akin to technical writing. Not so with Delaney. His work bristles with allusion to the greater literary universe and not just to the insular world of science fiction.

The final unfinished sentence gave me chills of enjoyment.

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Feb 23, 2020 Simon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: america-north, science-fiction, 1960s, reviewed, action-adventure

Out of the four novels by Samuel Delany that I have read so far, this is by far the most accessible one but still an unusual reading experience even today. How often do you read a space opera novel that's also a forerunner to cyberpunk, a futuristic take on 18th/19th century seafaring novels and Arthurian grail quest myth at the same time?

You can definitely see how "Nova" has been an inspiration for William Gibson style cyberpunk: Delany depicts a future where megacorporations have more Out of the four novels by Samuel Delany that I have read so far, this is by far the most accessible one but still an unusual reading experience even today. How often do you read a space opera novel that's also a forerunner to cyberpunk, a futuristic take on 18th/19th century seafaring novels and Arthurian grail quest myth at the same time?

You can definitely see how "Nova" has been an inspiration for William Gibson style cyberpunk: Delany depicts a future where megacorporations have more influence than governments, mercenaries are more worth worrying about than state military forces, and where most humans in the story are partially cyborgised with brain/computer interfaces being commonplace and the villain's "red right hand" being that one of his arms is robotic. One interesting bit of worldbuilding is that Delany throws in a Roma character to show how the Roma people's refusal to cyborgise has become yet another excuse to discriminate against them! There are some scenes of "jacking in" into shipboard computers that are reminiscent of similar scenes in Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy, and several plot points Gibson outright borrowed for "Neuromancer". Said Roma character, a travelling musician and soldier of fortune named "Mouse" who functions as a viewpoint character starts out down-on-his luck far away from home where he gets a chance to get his life in order by signing up for a bizarre mission among other eccentric members of a ragtag crew in similar ways as the "cybercowboy" Henry Dorsett Case is in "Neuromancer". The villains are also a decadent and dysfunctional upper-class family that Gibson must have in part modelled the Tessier-Ashpool clan on.

At the same time, "Nova" feels more like a 19th century seafaring novel set in space than anything else. The main characters are space pirates or perhaps more accurately space privateers, spaceships are powered by solar sails, future society has regressed to 18th/19th century mercantilist economic systems with the megacorps being equivalent to the East India Company, the future architectural styles and fashion trends described even mimic those of the 19th century. There are also some obvious callbacks in the story and characters to Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", with the captain of the starship Lorq van Ray being very much a futuristic Captain Ahab figure. On a personal level, I noticed the "Moby Dick" analogues more than the Grail Quest parallels that the characters actively point out - in particular a character who goes on to write a novel about his experiences.

"Nova" might technically have a conventional action-adventure plot at its core, but it's an unusual book to read because the whole thing is bristling with mad ideas. Delany puts a lot of work into creating several different future cultures with distinctive styles of art and craftsmanship, lifestyles adapted to life on the surrealistic exoplanets described that results in future societies that feel genuinely alien- or at least not as literal "Age of Sail in space" as a more conventionel SF author than Delany would have ended up creating out of the same ingredients. This results in some convincing worldbuilding where the fictional cultures feel real in-universe, even though Delany's signature style does not use anywhere as much exposition as most SF writers of his generation. We also have most of the characters using the Tarot as a tool for divination and genuinely believing in it, as well as the travelling warrior-bard protagonist's futuristic music instrument that can also project holograms to illustrate the notes played - I strongly suspect Delany has synesthesia - which is actually used as a weapon in the book's very memorable climax.

The closest analogy I can think of among other SF works is probably Alfred Bester's "The Stars, My Destination", which was explicitly written as a futuristic take on a 19th century adventure novel, but with a weird hippyish sense of tripped out surrealism that is the product of a different Zeitgeist than Bester. That atmosphere I've only really seen in Moebius' science-fiction comic books from the 1970s and 1980s (The Incal, The World of Edena, Major Grubert etc), to the point I'd be surprised if Moebius wasn't a fan of "Nova" or Delany's writing in general.

"Nova" is probably the best place to start with Delany out of the four books of his I've read so far, and definitely recommended for people who want something different in their space opera. ...more

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Jan 20, 2019 Yanique Gillana rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned-books, sci-fi, 2019-january

This excites me! I read this (or should I say devoured) in one sitting.

This is the first I've read by Delany and I'm now excited to dive into more of his work. Nova is an interesting little nugget of a book. It is hard sci-fi and set on a huge stage (the galaxy), but the story is based on a very personal and very human story of revenge. I always worry about shorter SFF novels, because I fear that the author will attempt to fit too much information into too small a package. Delany managed to fit ...more

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Jun 08, 2014 Michael rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Sci fi fans, Delany fans, literati

Recommended to Michael by: Serendipity

Shelves: science-fiction

This is probably my least favorite novel by Samuel R. Delany, which is to say that its excellent, but not perfect. Its actually more ambitious than The Fall of the Towers, but, perhaps because of that, winds up not having as many interesting digressions or memorable characters. On the whole, it is classic Galactic Space Opera, though it tries at times to be something more.

The central story wants to be a kind of Grail Quest, but its actually more of a Moby Dick revenge tale. We have the driven, This is probably my least favorite novel by Samuel R. Delany, which is to say that it’s excellent, but not perfect. It’s actually more ambitious than The Fall of the Towers, but, perhaps because of that, winds up not having as many interesting digressions or memorable characters. On the whole, it is classic Galactic Space Opera, though it tries at times to be something more.

The central story wants to be a kind of Grail Quest, but it’s actually more of a Moby Dick revenge tale. We have the driven, disfigured captain, and even the monster whale in the shape of a nova, but a nova is a rather placid enemy (leave it alone, it leaves you alone), so there are human-demigod-like foes in the form of competing star-fliers, whom the captain has known since childhood, and with whom his family has a traditional feud. The structure wants to be an ensemble, focusing on the crew of the Roc, but Delany doesn’t give much depth to most of the characters, and I couldn’t keep them straight. Only two of them, Katin and the Mouse, had enough personality to be seen as the protagonists, and they essentially watch the demigods dueling from ground-level. I assume that Delany was either in the closet or had been told that only heterosexual sci fi was publishable at the time, because the female characters are presented as love/sex objects, but the only physiques he ever describes well are those of the men.

I said that there were less interesting digressions in this book; that’s not to say that there were none. In imagining a society 1000+ years in the future, Delany winds up creating some very interesting socio-technological conceptions. One, which appears to have influenced the Cyberpunk genre, is the existence of “ports” in humans which allow them to control machines cybernetically. Delany even explains that this is a case of deliberate inefficiency: making the machines dependent on their human users gives humans something useful to do in life, safeguarding high employment levels and psychological well-being. I don’t know whether this novel was the first to suggest that in the future complex machines would be physically connected to human nervous systems, but it’s the earliest example I know of. He also explores a bit of the entertainment technology of the period: first, “Psycho-ramas,” which are essentially dramas experienced by the audience as through the eyes of one or more performers, and, in far more detail, the “syrinx,” an instrument that creates holograms and scents as well as melodic sounds for the player.

Ever a self-reflexive writer, Delany uses the character of Katin for expository purposes. He is an intellectual with a fascination with history, and is constantly saying things like “you know, a person from the past would be confused about what you just did” or “this aspect of our society is only about 400 years old.” It’s all a bit heavy-handed, if a bit endearing as well. Katin is interested in writing a novel in a society that has forgotten what they are, and this gives Delany an opportunity to reflect out-loud on his own writing process, and also to end on a joke.
...more

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Jul 07, 2013 Ethan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

I've enjoyed some of Delany's later, more experimental books (such as Dhalgren and Triton), but I had yet to read one of his earlier works. Nova's greatness lies in the fact that you can see Delany's literary genius at work, but you also get a more conventional plot that sits within and yet expands many space opera tropes. It's all the more impressive that Delany wrote this in his mid-20's.

There's an eccentric star ship captain, Lorq, with grudge and a plan as well as his rag tag crew of misfits I've enjoyed some of Delany's later, more experimental books (such as Dhalgren and Triton), but I had yet to read one of his earlier works. Nova's greatness lies in the fact that you can see Delany's literary genius at work, but you also get a more conventional plot that sits within and yet expands many space opera tropes. It's all the more impressive that Delany wrote this in his mid-20's.

There's an eccentric star ship captain, Lorq, with grudge and a plan as well as his rag tag crew of misfits (my favorites are Katin and the Mouse, who have lots of amusing and fascinating conversations). My only real complaint is that the book is too short, so that it's a little lean on character development and world building. However, this was written in the 60's when science fiction authors tended to keep under 300 pages as opposed to the sense many authors today seem to have that they are required to write long series of door-stopping tomes.

In addition to space opera shenanigans, Delany gives us a lot to think about in terms of human modification (most humans have cyborg implants), race (the world of Nova is diverse, which is important in science fiction: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...), alienation, and the scope of history. The novel takes place in 3172, with several flashbacks in the decades before, so Delany gets to indulge in a lot of one of my favorite science fiction pastimes: writing the history of the future. But he does so without Hegelian/Marxist narratives of inevitability or Star Trek-style attempts to fit the galaxy into the mold of Western European history. For instance, I find it interesting that almost everyone in the 32nd century consults Tarot cards, but without thinking it's superstitious. I find such things superstitious and didn't really understand the arguments given by the characters in the book to the contrary, but who knows what our descendants 1100 years from now will think? (I've written more about Delany's future history in my blog: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...).

Also, the Wikipedia entry for this novel is helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(no... ...more

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Jul 12, 2019 Diego González rated it it was amazing

Outstanding book. It may sounds odd to say, given Delany's status as a writer, but I was caught off-guard by how great this book was, and came away surprised he isn't hailed even more than he is.

This is a compact novel (from 1968!!), but a deeply intricate plot and a delicate use of tropes create a highly immersive world. This is a book about frontiers, resources, economies, and fortune hunting. Larger than life characters race to collect a prize that will change the order of the colonized solar ...more

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About Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany

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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 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. ...more

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“You can be bored with anything if you try hard enough.” — 8 likes

“But the point is, when the writer turns to address the reader, he or she must not only speak to me—naively dazzled and wholly enchanted by the complexities of the trickery, and thus all but incapable of any criticism, so that, indeed, he can claim, if he likes, priestly contact with the greater powers that, hurled at him by the muse, travel the parsecs from the Universe’s furthest shoals, cleaving stars on the way, to shatter the specific moment and sizzle his brains in their pan, rattle his teeth in their sockets, make his muscles howl against his bones, and to galvanize his pen so the ink bubbles and blisters on the nib (nor would I hear her claim to such as other than a metaphor for the most profound truths of skill, craft, or mathematical and historical conjuration)—but she or he must also speak to my student, for whom it was an okay story, with just so much description.” — 6 likes

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