Nebula Award questions for Samuel Delany

[Tom, Supreme Laser]

We'll hopefully be sitting down to chat with Samuel R. Delany at the Nebula Awards May 17th.

If we get the chance, what should we ask him?

[Tamahome]

Will you ever write another 'rated PG or even R' science fiction novel? (He's been fascinated with pornography in his latter career. He probably gets asked that a lot, but I've never quite seen that question in print or heard it on a podcast.) Will you ever write traditional science fiction again? I guess.

[Tamahome]

Other probably terrible questions. Your novel Dhalgren, what does it mean? Why the fascination with porn (Check out the kindle sample of Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, after the nose picking)? Good luck. Something always interested me about him, or the promise of him.

[Rob]

I absolutely loved The Einstein Intersection when we read it, it's quickly become one of my favorite novels eve ever read. Two of the major creative sources of that book seemed to be Finnegans Wake and the city of Venice-- what I'd like to now is if your relation with these two things, or your opinion of them, has changed since you wrote the novel, and in what way.

Alternate question: what would you consider to be the most important non-genre novel for a person to read? I ask because it seems like genre fans today tend to stay inside very closed genre boxes.

[Tamahome]

Well, Dhalgren has the same circular story where the end jumps to the beginning like Finnegans Wake, so you're right on the money there.

Look, even Samuel Delany doesn't know what Dhalgren means: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014...