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A, B, C: Three Short Novels
A, B, Three Short Novels contains the first three novels of Samuel R. Delany’s long and illustrious career. The Jewels of Aptor is a science-fantasy story about a seafaring quest that sets out to find powerful magic jewels on a mystical, forbidden island where unimaginable danger lies. The Ballad of Beta-2 is about a future academic searching for the true story behind an interstellar voyage, a journey over multiple generations that ended in tragedy. They Fly at Çiron is a fantasy about the clash between a marauding army and a peaceful village at the foot of a mountain from which a race of winged people oversees both sides. Presenting these three novels in this omnibus volume for the first time, along with a new foreword and afterword by the author, A, B, C showcases Delany’s masterful storytelling ability and deep devotion to his craft.
472 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 7, 2015
37 people are currently reading
279 people want to read
About the author
Samuel R. Delany
293 books2,189 followersSamuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.
Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.
Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.
Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.
In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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January 8, 2024
I urge anyone who is interested in Samuel R. Delany, now 81, to read the incredibly moving profile by Julian Lucas in the July 10 & 17 2023 issue of ‘The New Yorker’. Lucas begins his article with Delany describing what he called ‘the big drop’ of September 2023, which had all the symptoms of a mini stroke. Test results indicated a 15% decline in Delany’s capacity to form new memories – as a result of which he had to abandon his then novel-in-progress. After publishing over 40 books over several decades, Delany told Lucas it was both “a loss and a relief.”
For years, Delany has begun most days at four o’clock in the morning with a ritual. First, he spells out the name Dennis, for Dennis Rickett, his life partner. Next, he recites an atheist’s prayer, hailing faraway celestial bodies with a litany inspired by the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Natura Naturans, system of systems, system of fields, Kuiper belt, scattered disk, Oort cloud, thank you for dropping me here.” Finally, he prepares oatmeal, which he faithfully photographs for the friends and fans who follow him on Facebook. Every so often, when the milk foams, he sees Laniakea—the galactic supercluster that’s home to Earth.
‘a, b, c: three short novels’ comprises ‘The Jewels of Aptor’ (1962), ‘The Ballad of Beta-2’ (1965), and ‘They Fly at Çiron’ (1993). It is a bit of an eclectic collection that eschews the more well-known and award-winning titles from the 1960s. Taken together, though, it is a wonderful introduction to (if you are new to Delany) and reminder (if you are already a fan) of his particular brand of speculative fiction. ‘Jewels’ was the first SF novel I read as a teenager, attracted by the rather gaudy paperback cover, and it instilled a lifelong love in me of genre-bending fiction. It was also Delany’s first published novel.
SF has changed so much in recent years, especially with the increasing chorus of voices from the Global South, it is highly likely the latest generation of younger readers has never even heard of writers like Delany, Le Guin, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Simak, etc. (with Herbert being an exception, of course, given the latest ‘Dune’ adaptation by Denis Villeneuve.)
Not only was he a young prodigy who wrote his best SF in his 20s, Delany also penned one of the first, and one of the most influential, critical examinations of the genre in ‘The Jewel-Hinged Jaw’ (1977). While it has been overshadowed by Darko Suvin’s ‘Metamorphoses of Science Fiction’ (1979), I think Delany has emerged as the more important, and certainly durable, SF academic. ‘Occasional Views Volumes 1 and 2’ were published in quick succession in 2021.
Of course, Delany was an important member of the trio in Mark Dery’s 1994 ‘Black to the Future’ interview, in which Dery defined ‘afrofuturism’. Delany continues to be a significant contributor to the debate, as with ‘The Mirror of Afrofuturism’ (2020).
And then there are the gay / pornographic novels. I think for many readers, there has been a longtime schism between those who perhaps read his SF, those with an academic interest in the genre, and those who gravitate towards the latter gay works and essays. As Delany remarks in ‘Ash Wednesday’, the final essay in ‘Occasional Views Volume 2’: “As a writer, I’m known as a ‘sex radical, Afro-futurist, and grand master of science fiction.’”
Indeed. It is always a perilous undertaking rereading books you loved when younger. However, I have often found that age adds a patina of experience to the nostalgia. And great writing always withstands such a return and re-scrutinising in the light of one’s own life experience.
For completists, there is a new Foreword and Afterword written especially for this collection. The latter, in particular, is a sobering reflection on Delany’s 50-odd-year-long career.
Long may he continue to see the swirls of Laniakea in his morning oatmeal.
For years, Delany has begun most days at four o’clock in the morning with a ritual. First, he spells out the name Dennis, for Dennis Rickett, his life partner. Next, he recites an atheist’s prayer, hailing faraway celestial bodies with a litany inspired by the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Natura Naturans, system of systems, system of fields, Kuiper belt, scattered disk, Oort cloud, thank you for dropping me here.” Finally, he prepares oatmeal, which he faithfully photographs for the friends and fans who follow him on Facebook. Every so often, when the milk foams, he sees Laniakea—the galactic supercluster that’s home to Earth.
‘a, b, c: three short novels’ comprises ‘The Jewels of Aptor’ (1962), ‘The Ballad of Beta-2’ (1965), and ‘They Fly at Çiron’ (1993). It is a bit of an eclectic collection that eschews the more well-known and award-winning titles from the 1960s. Taken together, though, it is a wonderful introduction to (if you are new to Delany) and reminder (if you are already a fan) of his particular brand of speculative fiction. ‘Jewels’ was the first SF novel I read as a teenager, attracted by the rather gaudy paperback cover, and it instilled a lifelong love in me of genre-bending fiction. It was also Delany’s first published novel.
SF has changed so much in recent years, especially with the increasing chorus of voices from the Global South, it is highly likely the latest generation of younger readers has never even heard of writers like Delany, Le Guin, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Simak, etc. (with Herbert being an exception, of course, given the latest ‘Dune’ adaptation by Denis Villeneuve.)
Not only was he a young prodigy who wrote his best SF in his 20s, Delany also penned one of the first, and one of the most influential, critical examinations of the genre in ‘The Jewel-Hinged Jaw’ (1977). While it has been overshadowed by Darko Suvin’s ‘Metamorphoses of Science Fiction’ (1979), I think Delany has emerged as the more important, and certainly durable, SF academic. ‘Occasional Views Volumes 1 and 2’ were published in quick succession in 2021.
Of course, Delany was an important member of the trio in Mark Dery’s 1994 ‘Black to the Future’ interview, in which Dery defined ‘afrofuturism’. Delany continues to be a significant contributor to the debate, as with ‘The Mirror of Afrofuturism’ (2020).
And then there are the gay / pornographic novels. I think for many readers, there has been a longtime schism between those who perhaps read his SF, those with an academic interest in the genre, and those who gravitate towards the latter gay works and essays. As Delany remarks in ‘Ash Wednesday’, the final essay in ‘Occasional Views Volume 2’: “As a writer, I’m known as a ‘sex radical, Afro-futurist, and grand master of science fiction.’”
Indeed. It is always a perilous undertaking rereading books you loved when younger. However, I have often found that age adds a patina of experience to the nostalgia. And great writing always withstands such a return and re-scrutinising in the light of one’s own life experience.
For completists, there is a new Foreword and Afterword written especially for this collection. The latter, in particular, is a sobering reflection on Delany’s 50-odd-year-long career.
Long may he continue to see the swirls of Laniakea in his morning oatmeal.
January 2, 2020
Up and down with some flashes of brilliant writing, though mostly it made me wish I was reading Nova. It's still Delaney, so it's worth reading. But if you haven't read anything by him before, I'd recommend starting with something else. Maybe Babel-17 or Nova.
April 15, 2016
In an Afterword to these novels, Delany speaks (among many other things) about people who come up to him on the street (or elsewhere) to tell him, "_X_ is my favorite of your books."
Confession: I don't _have_ a favorite Delany book. Or, rather, whichever I'm reading at any given moment (in those moments when I'm reading one) tends to be my "favorite" at that moment, because I am - sometimes to my amazement - discovering new pleasures in a given text. (Though there are some that I don't reread often, and one that disturbed me so badly I may _never_ reread it...which means it's a pretty powerful book...)
These three novels are, in some very broad sense, Delany's first three novels. They aren't the first he ever wrote (at least one or two from his teenage years, now lost, would fit that definition...); nor are they the first three he published. I suppose it would be accurate to say that these are the first three novels Delany wrote that, eventually, got published.
A, B, and C are the primary locations in which the novels take place:
A is for Aptor. _The Jewels of Aptor_ is, yes, Delany's first work, cut brutally to fit the short side of an Ace Double and later restored (and lightly reedited, revised, redacted ... choose your word but choose it carefully; he didn't change character or incident, just pruned and twiddled individual phrases). I've read this book at least six or seven times in my life, from that Ace Double to this shiny new edition.
It's a tale of four men of Leptar who, after a few harrowing incidents, find themselves on the forbidden island of Aptor, with a double mission: to retrieve the young priestess who is the current Argo Incarnate; and to steal the third of the three Eyes of Hama (the titular Jewels), baubles of great power that Argo's mother, Argo, wants for Leptar. On the level of plot, that's about it, though it may be noted that the book fools the reader with an anticlimax then whipsaws out a _real_ climax.
Aptor and its dangers (including people) are presented (read: the reader represents them to him/her self) with a hallucinatory intensity that makes this book still vivid after six or seven readings, and after fifty-plus years. (No, _I_ didn't read it that long ago; I was not yet four when it was published and, while I was beginning to read, it would be a _bit_ longer before I was ready to read something like this.) It can be read at a single sitting - I did - which, I think, adds to the impact.
(The subtitle is, after all, three _short_ novels.)
The book is laced with philosophical and pseudoscientific speculations, most of which stand up pretty well after ... well, you know. Some of them, like the "double impulse," stand up less well than others, but none come across as puerile or facile.
In fact, it's a heckuva promising first novel and we may hope to see more and better work from this young man.
B is for Beta-2. When he began to write _The Ballad of Beta-2_, Delany was in the middle of writing his _Fall of the Towers_ trilogy, and had indeed completed the first volume; but if you count _Fall_ as a single work, then this is the third of the three novels to be completed. It wasn't published until after the last volume of the trilogy, so it is his fifth-published book (or third-published work). But the last of these novels had, in some sense, been written before _Fall_, so go figure.
_Beta-2_ is a very short book, only eighty-six pages in this edition. It is also one of Delany's weakest, which is to say it's still a pretty good book.
Joneny Horatio T'waboga is a student of Galactic anthropology, who is assigned - against his will - to uncover the meaning of a ballad, the Ballad of Beta-2. Beta-2, you see, is one of twelve ships that were launched in a fleet before the discovery of FTL travel. Ten ships eventually arrived at the Laffer system in such a state of cultural and physical decay that those who had already taken possession of the system decided the best thing to do was to isolate them in their ships. Which they did.
The Ballad is evocative and weird, full of words that obviously don't mean what they seem to mean; and the surface plot concerns Joneny's discovery (with the help of a being called the Destroyer's Children) of what the proper referents of those words are. The plot is pretty much linear, taking place over, at most, a few days of Joneny's time.
The first time I read _Beta-2_, at fourteen or so, I found the secret meaning of the ballad shocking. If I read it today, I might not dismiss it as puerile, but it certainly would not be a shock: the losses and gains of fifty years of reading science fiction. It _is_ an imaginative and even charming short novel, but it doesn't have the gravitas of Delany's later work - or even the work immediately around it in this volume.
C is for Çiron. _They Fly at Çiron_ took a strange and laborious path to publication. It began as a series of linked stories, which was submitted to Donald Wollheim at Ace as the followup to _Aptor_. Wollheim rejected it, leading Delany (as his Foreword to this book details) to a new understanding of why _Aptor_ worked and _Çiron_ didn't. So he put it away and began writing _The Fall of the Towers_.
A while later, Delany gave _Çiron_ to James Sallis, who rewrote bits of it and sold it to _F&SF_, where I first read it. Twenty years later, Delany rewrote it himself, eliding Sallis's parts and expanding it greatly, adding a couple of related short stories, and published it through Incunabula Press. I read that too, for the first time since the magazine version (which hadn't _quite_ worked for me...) was new.
And here it is again, as brutal as ever.
Çiron is an idyllic, peaceful village that doesn't even have a word for "weapon." They are invaded by the conquering armies of Myetra who, frankly, don't give a rat's ass how peaceful the villagers are; they are there on a mission to create for Myetra a vast span of _lebensraum_, and the people of Çiron are just in the way.
The next place the Myetrans plan to devastate is Çiron's neighboring community, Hi-Vator. Hi-Vator is the home of the Winged Ones, whom the people of Çiron fear without knowing quite why.
A villager named Rahm, fleeing the Myetrans and his own emotions, accidentally saves the life of Vortcir, the Handsman of the Winged Ones, and is taken by him to Hi-Vator.
And a wandering singer named Naä teaches a few of the Çironians something about guerilla warfare.
There's a lot more than _that_ going on, but it will do to give you a sense of what kind of book this is. It's a very taut read; a great deal happens in a hundred fifty or so pages, and no easy answers are given. We see things through the eyes not only of Çironians but also of Myetrans, and, while it's fairly clear (_fairly_ clear: ambiguity remains) who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys," there's no moral polarity of good and evil -- one of the most attractive characters is a Myetran foot soldier.
In the end, _a, b, c_ brings three entertaining books back into print after twenty years or more; gives us more than fifty pages of new Delany in the Foreword and Afterword; and is generally a good thing in my estimation.
Confession: I don't _have_ a favorite Delany book. Or, rather, whichever I'm reading at any given moment (in those moments when I'm reading one) tends to be my "favorite" at that moment, because I am - sometimes to my amazement - discovering new pleasures in a given text. (Though there are some that I don't reread often, and one that disturbed me so badly I may _never_ reread it...which means it's a pretty powerful book...)
These three novels are, in some very broad sense, Delany's first three novels. They aren't the first he ever wrote (at least one or two from his teenage years, now lost, would fit that definition...); nor are they the first three he published. I suppose it would be accurate to say that these are the first three novels Delany wrote that, eventually, got published.
A, B, and C are the primary locations in which the novels take place:
A is for Aptor. _The Jewels of Aptor_ is, yes, Delany's first work, cut brutally to fit the short side of an Ace Double and later restored (and lightly reedited, revised, redacted ... choose your word but choose it carefully; he didn't change character or incident, just pruned and twiddled individual phrases). I've read this book at least six or seven times in my life, from that Ace Double to this shiny new edition.
It's a tale of four men of Leptar who, after a few harrowing incidents, find themselves on the forbidden island of Aptor, with a double mission: to retrieve the young priestess who is the current Argo Incarnate; and to steal the third of the three Eyes of Hama (the titular Jewels), baubles of great power that Argo's mother, Argo, wants for Leptar. On the level of plot, that's about it, though it may be noted that the book fools the reader with an anticlimax then whipsaws out a _real_ climax.
Aptor and its dangers (including people) are presented (read: the reader represents them to him/her self) with a hallucinatory intensity that makes this book still vivid after six or seven readings, and after fifty-plus years. (No, _I_ didn't read it that long ago; I was not yet four when it was published and, while I was beginning to read, it would be a _bit_ longer before I was ready to read something like this.) It can be read at a single sitting - I did - which, I think, adds to the impact.
(The subtitle is, after all, three _short_ novels.)
The book is laced with philosophical and pseudoscientific speculations, most of which stand up pretty well after ... well, you know. Some of them, like the "double impulse," stand up less well than others, but none come across as puerile or facile.
In fact, it's a heckuva promising first novel and we may hope to see more and better work from this young man.
B is for Beta-2. When he began to write _The Ballad of Beta-2_, Delany was in the middle of writing his _Fall of the Towers_ trilogy, and had indeed completed the first volume; but if you count _Fall_ as a single work, then this is the third of the three novels to be completed. It wasn't published until after the last volume of the trilogy, so it is his fifth-published book (or third-published work). But the last of these novels had, in some sense, been written before _Fall_, so go figure.
_Beta-2_ is a very short book, only eighty-six pages in this edition. It is also one of Delany's weakest, which is to say it's still a pretty good book.
Joneny Horatio T'waboga is a student of Galactic anthropology, who is assigned - against his will - to uncover the meaning of a ballad, the Ballad of Beta-2. Beta-2, you see, is one of twelve ships that were launched in a fleet before the discovery of FTL travel. Ten ships eventually arrived at the Laffer system in such a state of cultural and physical decay that those who had already taken possession of the system decided the best thing to do was to isolate them in their ships. Which they did.
The Ballad is evocative and weird, full of words that obviously don't mean what they seem to mean; and the surface plot concerns Joneny's discovery (with the help of a being called the Destroyer's Children) of what the proper referents of those words are. The plot is pretty much linear, taking place over, at most, a few days of Joneny's time.
The first time I read _Beta-2_, at fourteen or so, I found the secret meaning of the ballad shocking. If I read it today, I might not dismiss it as puerile, but it certainly would not be a shock: the losses and gains of fifty years of reading science fiction. It _is_ an imaginative and even charming short novel, but it doesn't have the gravitas of Delany's later work - or even the work immediately around it in this volume.
C is for Çiron. _They Fly at Çiron_ took a strange and laborious path to publication. It began as a series of linked stories, which was submitted to Donald Wollheim at Ace as the followup to _Aptor_. Wollheim rejected it, leading Delany (as his Foreword to this book details) to a new understanding of why _Aptor_ worked and _Çiron_ didn't. So he put it away and began writing _The Fall of the Towers_.
A while later, Delany gave _Çiron_ to James Sallis, who rewrote bits of it and sold it to _F&SF_, where I first read it. Twenty years later, Delany rewrote it himself, eliding Sallis's parts and expanding it greatly, adding a couple of related short stories, and published it through Incunabula Press. I read that too, for the first time since the magazine version (which hadn't _quite_ worked for me...) was new.
And here it is again, as brutal as ever.
Çiron is an idyllic, peaceful village that doesn't even have a word for "weapon." They are invaded by the conquering armies of Myetra who, frankly, don't give a rat's ass how peaceful the villagers are; they are there on a mission to create for Myetra a vast span of _lebensraum_, and the people of Çiron are just in the way.
The next place the Myetrans plan to devastate is Çiron's neighboring community, Hi-Vator. Hi-Vator is the home of the Winged Ones, whom the people of Çiron fear without knowing quite why.
A villager named Rahm, fleeing the Myetrans and his own emotions, accidentally saves the life of Vortcir, the Handsman of the Winged Ones, and is taken by him to Hi-Vator.
And a wandering singer named Naä teaches a few of the Çironians something about guerilla warfare.
There's a lot more than _that_ going on, but it will do to give you a sense of what kind of book this is. It's a very taut read; a great deal happens in a hundred fifty or so pages, and no easy answers are given. We see things through the eyes not only of Çironians but also of Myetrans, and, while it's fairly clear (_fairly_ clear: ambiguity remains) who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys," there's no moral polarity of good and evil -- one of the most attractive characters is a Myetran foot soldier.
In the end, _a, b, c_ brings three entertaining books back into print after twenty years or more; gives us more than fifty pages of new Delany in the Foreword and Afterword; and is generally a good thing in my estimation.
June 5, 2021
(See the blog version of this review here: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...)
This is a nice collection of three early short novels of SF genius Samuel Delany (originally written in the early 1960's with some revision of Çircon in the 90's). There's quite a bit in the way of forward and afterword written in 2014. The Afterword gets a bit academic, which may not be to everyone's taste, but then I suspect most serious Delany fans aren't scared by citations of Derrida and Wittgenstein and lengthy footnotes.
Like most of Delany's early work (e.g., Nova), the novels are well written with hints of the depth of his later genius. The Ballad of Beta-2 was my favorite, but I enjoyed the others more than I was expecting. Sticking with the alphabetic contrivance of the title, I'll review them in order.
The Jewels of Aptor is billed as "science fantasy," which means, I guess, that it's basically a fantasy-style plot that has no actual magic in it (and has other science fictional elements, which I won't spoil). It's the story of a rag tag group of sailors (somewhat reminiscent of the rag tag crew in Nova) who take on a quest to recover some jewels for a priestess of a mysterious religion. They eventually make it to the island of Aptor and some surprisingly creepy scenes ensue (there's a lot more of a horror element here than I was expecting, which was cool). The characters are a diverse lot in terms of size, color, ability, shape, and arm number, which is odd for American SF in 1962, but not odd for Delany. There are also some thoughts to be had on topics like the arc of history, magic, and technology, although this one is pretty meager, philosophically speaking, compared to much of Delany's other work.
The Ballad of Beta-2, my favorite of the three, is one of the best dramatizations of the joys (and dangers) of academic research I've ever read (in this single way it sort of reminds me of The Name of the Rose). A professor directs a reluctant student to look into an ill-fated pre-FTL interstellar journey, starting with a mysterious and seemingly nonsensical poem. Through some good textual research and a bizarre site visit, the student discovers some mind-bending truths that he had no idea he even wanted to know. The most rewarding research, in my opinion, involves those discoveries you didn't even know you were looking for. In this world of targeted marketing based on Facebook likes, sociopolitical bubbles, narrow Google searches, and effortlessly relying on GPS or Uber to get directly to your destination, I think we're fast forgetting the value of wandering in both literal and intellectual dimensions. If you're already convinced you know what you're looking for, you'll never find anything new; there's no point in inquiry if you think you already know (this is half of the paradox of inquiry, which arises in ancient Greek and Indian philosophy). I'm glad at least one professor in the world of Beta-2 hasn't forgotten the value of open-minded inquiry!
I admit I was least excited about They Fly at Çiron. It sounded much more fantasy-oriented than the others, which turned out to be true, but I enjoyed it, anyway. The peaceful people of Çiron (they lack even a word for "weapon"!) are under attack by the brutal imperialist army of Myetra. And into this mix there are the Winged Ones, mysterious flying people who the Çironians have feared since time immemorial. The story turns out to be more complex than it first appears. Even the Myetra soldiers are almost sympathetic. And the descriptions of the three cultures and the individuals within them are really interesting, especially the ways in which individuals are both shaped by and able to challenge their respective cultures.
This is a nice collection of three early short novels of SF genius Samuel Delany (originally written in the early 1960's with some revision of Çircon in the 90's). There's quite a bit in the way of forward and afterword written in 2014. The Afterword gets a bit academic, which may not be to everyone's taste, but then I suspect most serious Delany fans aren't scared by citations of Derrida and Wittgenstein and lengthy footnotes.
Like most of Delany's early work (e.g., Nova), the novels are well written with hints of the depth of his later genius. The Ballad of Beta-2 was my favorite, but I enjoyed the others more than I was expecting. Sticking with the alphabetic contrivance of the title, I'll review them in order.
The Jewels of Aptor is billed as "science fantasy," which means, I guess, that it's basically a fantasy-style plot that has no actual magic in it (and has other science fictional elements, which I won't spoil). It's the story of a rag tag group of sailors (somewhat reminiscent of the rag tag crew in Nova) who take on a quest to recover some jewels for a priestess of a mysterious religion. They eventually make it to the island of Aptor and some surprisingly creepy scenes ensue (there's a lot more of a horror element here than I was expecting, which was cool). The characters are a diverse lot in terms of size, color, ability, shape, and arm number, which is odd for American SF in 1962, but not odd for Delany. There are also some thoughts to be had on topics like the arc of history, magic, and technology, although this one is pretty meager, philosophically speaking, compared to much of Delany's other work.
The Ballad of Beta-2, my favorite of the three, is one of the best dramatizations of the joys (and dangers) of academic research I've ever read (in this single way it sort of reminds me of The Name of the Rose). A professor directs a reluctant student to look into an ill-fated pre-FTL interstellar journey, starting with a mysterious and seemingly nonsensical poem. Through some good textual research and a bizarre site visit, the student discovers some mind-bending truths that he had no idea he even wanted to know. The most rewarding research, in my opinion, involves those discoveries you didn't even know you were looking for. In this world of targeted marketing based on Facebook likes, sociopolitical bubbles, narrow Google searches, and effortlessly relying on GPS or Uber to get directly to your destination, I think we're fast forgetting the value of wandering in both literal and intellectual dimensions. If you're already convinced you know what you're looking for, you'll never find anything new; there's no point in inquiry if you think you already know (this is half of the paradox of inquiry, which arises in ancient Greek and Indian philosophy). I'm glad at least one professor in the world of Beta-2 hasn't forgotten the value of open-minded inquiry!
I admit I was least excited about They Fly at Çiron. It sounded much more fantasy-oriented than the others, which turned out to be true, but I enjoyed it, anyway. The peaceful people of Çiron (they lack even a word for "weapon"!) are under attack by the brutal imperialist army of Myetra. And into this mix there are the Winged Ones, mysterious flying people who the Çironians have feared since time immemorial. The story turns out to be more complex than it first appears. Even the Myetra soldiers are almost sympathetic. And the descriptions of the three cultures and the individuals within them are really interesting, especially the ways in which individuals are both shaped by and able to challenge their respective cultures.
July 29, 2015
All early Delany—one is literally his first published book (age 20)—and you can tell. Very approachable, full of good observations and fun settings but also very rough and ragged, both in narrative and technique. You can, however, see the seeds that later would blossom into the brilliance of his other works, particularly the Nevèrÿon series. Specifically: Aptor, a rather clunky story full of unsubstantiated twists but fueled by endearing and captivating characters; Ballad, a beautiful world-building and divine setup marred by a cheap, too convenient deus ex machina; Ciron, the most successful of the three (as it was reworked in the 90s) although it never really “takes flight” to anywhere, rather remaining story-as-meditation; and finally, an Afterword—alone worth the price of admission—that is magical and dense (so dense) and bursting with musings on the metaphysical nature of communication, the purpose of writing and reading and the relationship between writers and readers. Altogether, extremely valuable and inspiring for any writer/reader to look at and study as Delany’s stops along the way as he learned his craft and developed his genius; these are a chance to see him solve the math problem, and his later works are just more complex problems and the answers far more elegant. Cheers to Delany (as always) and cheers to Vintage for bringing these early novels back into print in this new edition.
March 17, 2016
Although I would give The Ballad of Beta-2 5 stars and the other two 4.
For a long time I've been intimidated by Delany's reputation and so I hadn't read any of his stuff. I finally decided I'd try with something early and my library had a copy of this book.
Delany: as good as they say he is. These books at least are nothing to be intimidated about! Although I did have to make the adjustment to the conventions of 60s SFF (it helped that I had read a lot of 60s/70s SFF as a kid, but I don't think it's necessary), they were nowhere near as difficult as I had worried they might be. In fact, they're pretty accessible. I was struck how fresh they still felt to me, like they were a road of SFF that not too many people have traveled down and done over and over (to death).
The Ballad of Beta 2 is haunting. I think I'm going to remember it for a long time to come. It's about language and how it changes and learning and preconceptions and space ships. It feels almost YA, though I think the protagonist is actually too old for YA.
The Jewels of Aptor for me had a bit of a Heart of Darkness feel to it. You're wondering about this one thing (most of all) through the majority of the book, and I enjoyed the revelation of what it was. Also girl character doing science -- in 60s SFF no less. Don't try to tell me there have never been any girls in SFF.
They Fly at Ciron was my least favorite, I think because I understood it most on the surface and least underneath. I felt a bit like I wasn't getting what Delany was doing with Rahm and Qualt, mostly because I didn't realize he was doing something with them until the very end. And I was perplexed by the parts after the main novel.
For a long time I've been intimidated by Delany's reputation and so I hadn't read any of his stuff. I finally decided I'd try with something early and my library had a copy of this book.
Delany: as good as they say he is. These books at least are nothing to be intimidated about! Although I did have to make the adjustment to the conventions of 60s SFF (it helped that I had read a lot of 60s/70s SFF as a kid, but I don't think it's necessary), they were nowhere near as difficult as I had worried they might be. In fact, they're pretty accessible. I was struck how fresh they still felt to me, like they were a road of SFF that not too many people have traveled down and done over and over (to death).
The Ballad of Beta 2 is haunting. I think I'm going to remember it for a long time to come. It's about language and how it changes and learning and preconceptions and space ships. It feels almost YA, though I think the protagonist is actually too old for YA.
The Jewels of Aptor for me had a bit of a Heart of Darkness feel to it. You're wondering about this one thing (most of all) through the majority of the book, and I enjoyed the revelation of what it was. Also girl character doing science -- in 60s SFF no less. Don't try to tell me there have never been any girls in SFF.
They Fly at Ciron was my least favorite, I think because I understood it most on the surface and least underneath. I felt a bit like I wasn't getting what Delany was doing with Rahm and Qualt, mostly because I didn't realize he was doing something with them until the very end. And I was perplexed by the parts after the main novel.
July 7, 2021
Aptor -
It was exciting for me to finally visit The Jewels of Aptor after reading some about his time writing it (at age nineteen!) in his memoir, The Motion of Light in Water. Plus, it’s always great to start with a favorite author’s beginnings. I’m a huge fan of Delany’s writing, but I’ve still just scratched the surface on his tremendous body of work, and I love that I have so much more to go.
The Jewels of Aptor is a science-fantasy adventure story, which follows the crew of a ship enlisted by a priestess/incarnate goddess to go to the feared island of Aptor to steal a jewel and rescue her kidnapped daughter. It’s sort of a post-post-apocalyptic novel, set on Earth after civilization has been destroyed and rebuilt to some degree, and the primary protagonist is a poet and student of lost writing and rituals. Telepathy makes an appearance again, and forms the primary means of communication for one of the book’s most enigmatic characters, a four-armed thief whose tongue has been removed.
Delany’s work has this quality that’s just so uniquely his, and what I enjoyed most about reading this book was simply being immersed again in his words. Overall I found the ideas entertaining, but less thought-provoking than in some of my favorites (see Babel-17, Nova, Empire Star). The introduction was particularly spectacular though, and I loved the way Delany ultimately circled back to it. Well worth reading, but it’s understandable why this isn’t one of the books he’s best known for (and honestly wouldn’t that be a bummer to peak at nineteen with one’s first published work?)
Beta-2 -
AHHHH the Ballad of Beta-2 by Samuel Delany was pure perfection, my exact taste in books all packed into less than 100 pages. This novella follows Joneny, a human studying galactic anthropology who’d rather not waste time on the lackluster literary contributions of the Star Folk, a “bunch of chauvinistic, degenerate morons'' who undertook a generations-long journey from Earth through interstellar space just decades before the invention of the hyperspace drive made their means of travel obsolete. Unfortunately for Joneny, his professor disagrees with his disinterest and assigns him a complete historical analysis of ‘The Ballad of Beta-2’, a folk song about one of the fleet’s ships that arrived in the system mysteriously empty. Joneny's understanding of the ballad’s meaning blossoms as he reads previously undiscovered ship logs and journals and pieces together what really caused the fleet’s partial destruction. This novella is a delicious love letter to language and a meditation on the unfathomable dangers of open space. It gets a bit weird, as Delany’s books tend to do, but reading this book was such a complete joy for me, returning to that fascination with linguistics in a sci-fi setting that first got me excited about Delany’s writing. Definitely one that’s instantly risen to join the ranks of my favorites, highly recommended.
Çiron -
Rounded out this trio of Delany novels with They Fly at Çiron and a long and fascinating afterword by Delany. It was neat to learn the history of this novel, which was the second that Delany submitted to his editor (after The Jewels of Aptor) but which was rejected. He later rewrote it a couple different times and it’s appeared in publication in two different versions since, the one included in this volume being the 1993 revision.
They Fly at Çiron tells the story of a blissfully peaceful village that comes under attack from vicious technologically advanced colonizers, and how they ally with the bat-like (?) people of their neighboring mountains against this unprecedented threat. One of the most interesting aspects of this novel was Delany’s creation of these three different cultures, and especially the interaction between the Çironian and Hi-Vator people as they puzzle at their similarities and differences.
I’m at least as enamored with Delany’s nonfiction as with his sci-fi, so it was a joy also to read this collection’s foreword and afterword, both written in 2014. One of the things Delany discusses in the afterword is his experiences with folks telling him their favorite of his novels, digging into how everyone has their own relationship to a piece of work that informs their preferences, so it’s especially neat to ponder my relationship to these novels in that context. The Ballad of Beta-2 was an easy instant favorite, while Aptor and Çiron were more passing curiosities for me. Which is all to say your experience may be completely reversed if you pick up this collection too, and I’d certainly recommend it overall!
Cw for torture, attempted rape
It was exciting for me to finally visit The Jewels of Aptor after reading some about his time writing it (at age nineteen!) in his memoir, The Motion of Light in Water. Plus, it’s always great to start with a favorite author’s beginnings. I’m a huge fan of Delany’s writing, but I’ve still just scratched the surface on his tremendous body of work, and I love that I have so much more to go.
The Jewels of Aptor is a science-fantasy adventure story, which follows the crew of a ship enlisted by a priestess/incarnate goddess to go to the feared island of Aptor to steal a jewel and rescue her kidnapped daughter. It’s sort of a post-post-apocalyptic novel, set on Earth after civilization has been destroyed and rebuilt to some degree, and the primary protagonist is a poet and student of lost writing and rituals. Telepathy makes an appearance again, and forms the primary means of communication for one of the book’s most enigmatic characters, a four-armed thief whose tongue has been removed.
Delany’s work has this quality that’s just so uniquely his, and what I enjoyed most about reading this book was simply being immersed again in his words. Overall I found the ideas entertaining, but less thought-provoking than in some of my favorites (see Babel-17, Nova, Empire Star). The introduction was particularly spectacular though, and I loved the way Delany ultimately circled back to it. Well worth reading, but it’s understandable why this isn’t one of the books he’s best known for (and honestly wouldn’t that be a bummer to peak at nineteen with one’s first published work?)
Beta-2 -
AHHHH the Ballad of Beta-2 by Samuel Delany was pure perfection, my exact taste in books all packed into less than 100 pages. This novella follows Joneny, a human studying galactic anthropology who’d rather not waste time on the lackluster literary contributions of the Star Folk, a “bunch of chauvinistic, degenerate morons'' who undertook a generations-long journey from Earth through interstellar space just decades before the invention of the hyperspace drive made their means of travel obsolete. Unfortunately for Joneny, his professor disagrees with his disinterest and assigns him a complete historical analysis of ‘The Ballad of Beta-2’, a folk song about one of the fleet’s ships that arrived in the system mysteriously empty. Joneny's understanding of the ballad’s meaning blossoms as he reads previously undiscovered ship logs and journals and pieces together what really caused the fleet’s partial destruction. This novella is a delicious love letter to language and a meditation on the unfathomable dangers of open space. It gets a bit weird, as Delany’s books tend to do, but reading this book was such a complete joy for me, returning to that fascination with linguistics in a sci-fi setting that first got me excited about Delany’s writing. Definitely one that’s instantly risen to join the ranks of my favorites, highly recommended.
Çiron -
Rounded out this trio of Delany novels with They Fly at Çiron and a long and fascinating afterword by Delany. It was neat to learn the history of this novel, which was the second that Delany submitted to his editor (after The Jewels of Aptor) but which was rejected. He later rewrote it a couple different times and it’s appeared in publication in two different versions since, the one included in this volume being the 1993 revision.
They Fly at Çiron tells the story of a blissfully peaceful village that comes under attack from vicious technologically advanced colonizers, and how they ally with the bat-like (?) people of their neighboring mountains against this unprecedented threat. One of the most interesting aspects of this novel was Delany’s creation of these three different cultures, and especially the interaction between the Çironian and Hi-Vator people as they puzzle at their similarities and differences.
I’m at least as enamored with Delany’s nonfiction as with his sci-fi, so it was a joy also to read this collection’s foreword and afterword, both written in 2014. One of the things Delany discusses in the afterword is his experiences with folks telling him their favorite of his novels, digging into how everyone has their own relationship to a piece of work that informs their preferences, so it’s especially neat to ponder my relationship to these novels in that context. The Ballad of Beta-2 was an easy instant favorite, while Aptor and Çiron were more passing curiosities for me. Which is all to say your experience may be completely reversed if you pick up this collection too, and I’d certainly recommend it overall!
Cw for torture, attempted rape
May 16, 2017
Finished: The Jewels of Aptor
I love Samuel Delany's writing, and in this — his first novel — you can see his uniquely poetic style germinating without becoming terribly overwrought. You can also see him working with one of his favorite devices: setting his stories on a distantly post-human earth where our seemingly immutable history has been clouded, distorted and extant only as myth. Just as time has deteriorated the archival evidence of human civilization, evolution has garbled the embodied history of humanity, and Delany makes good use of these temporal and anatomical displacements to alienate his readers from the characters. By erecting these boundaries, Delany forces you to engage with the story from an historical perspective.
Held back at times by clunky and contrived dialogue framing, the characters are otherwise lots of fun to accompany on their adventure. A poet, a sailor, and a four-armed mut(e)ant are sent to steal the last of the three powerful jewels from the dark god Hama's temple on Aptor, where the Goddess incarnate of their own faith has been kidnapped. A lot of the plot ends up resting on a falsely dualistic pseudopsychology, but the moral lessons are less Manichean. A warning against absolute power delivered on most fronts by more self-aware beings than ourselves.
I love Samuel Delany's writing, and in this — his first novel — you can see his uniquely poetic style germinating without becoming terribly overwrought. You can also see him working with one of his favorite devices: setting his stories on a distantly post-human earth where our seemingly immutable history has been clouded, distorted and extant only as myth. Just as time has deteriorated the archival evidence of human civilization, evolution has garbled the embodied history of humanity, and Delany makes good use of these temporal and anatomical displacements to alienate his readers from the characters. By erecting these boundaries, Delany forces you to engage with the story from an historical perspective.
Held back at times by clunky and contrived dialogue framing, the characters are otherwise lots of fun to accompany on their adventure. A poet, a sailor, and a four-armed mut(e)ant are sent to steal the last of the three powerful jewels from the dark god Hama's temple on Aptor, where the Goddess incarnate of their own faith has been kidnapped. A lot of the plot ends up resting on a falsely dualistic pseudopsychology, but the moral lessons are less Manichean. A warning against absolute power delivered on most fronts by more self-aware beings than ourselves.
February 22, 2024
This is a collection of reprints of early works by Samuel R. Delany, one of which has been extensively revised (comparably recently). The title of these three stories include the letters “a,” “b,” and “c” at the head of prominent words (“Aptor,” “Beta,” and “Ciron”), though none of them technically begin with the words so honored. They vary greatly in terms of setting and style, but all are worth a read for Delany fans, and may be good starting places for someone curious about him. Not his best work, to my mind, but not at all his worst either.
The first tale, “The Jewels of Aptor” is a fantasy quest set in a post-apocalyptic world in which mutations and technology stand in for magic. The protagonist, Geo, is a poet who signs aboard a ship which is bound for Aptor under the command of a woman called Argo, who claims to be the avatar of a goddess. Along the way, we meet two other avatars of Argo (which makes naming conventions a bit tricky) and one of Hama, who is either Argo’s adversary or her partner, depending who you ask and when you ask it. Geo teams up with Urson, a large, bear-like sailor, the Snake, a four-armed mute telepathic mutant, and Iimmi, another educated sailor who seems to be there mostly so Geo has someone smart to talk to. Delany makes a point of telling us Iimmi is ”a negro,” but is not forthcoming about how to pronounce his name. Anyway, the adventure they go on involves retrieving three jewels with mysterious powers, and the best thing to do with them is either to give them to one of the avatars (but which one?) or throw them in the sea. Along the way they meet mutant vampires, werewolves, and ghouls and face the horrors of a highly irradiated area and its amorphous guardian. It’s fairly straightforward, for Delany, and probably reflects his experimenting with genre and form early in his career. Fun, if not especially deep.
The second story seems much more ambitious to me, and quite successful as well. This is “The Ballad of Beta-2,” and it is a much more straightforward science fiction story, dealing with the challenges of multi-generational space colonization. In a time after some sort of instantaneous space-warp technology exists, an anthropology student travels to a world colonized by a surprisingly sluggish culture that endured the hardships of earlier slower-than-lightspeed travel and which has written an enigmatic epic poem, or ballad, about that experience. He discovers that simple metaphors often have hidden meanings and that people who seem not to have much investment in the mundane world may have surprising depths. I quite enjoyed the way he peeled back the layers of this particular onion, and I found the story worked as an effectively creepy horror/dystopian tale as well as a sci fi adventure. Delaney has a lot to say about conformity and regimented religion as well as star-crossed love, here.
The third story, “They Fly at Ciron,” is something of a blended sci-fi/fantasy story, possibly taking place on an alien world colonized by humans but cut off from the homeworld or any kind of space travel (this is speculation on my part – the characters have no sense of being anywhere but “home”). Delany says in the introduction that the story is considerably revised from its original version, and the final page is dated both 1962 and 1992, so in many ways this represents more mature authorship than the previous stories. It tells of a small peaceful village attacked by a legionary army with considerable similarity to the Romans but whose officers carry ray guns (foot soldiers use shields). The rescue of this society comes a group of intelligent bat-winged creatures that live in the nearby mountains and who have concepts like money and a taboo on sex that the villagers do not share. What is especially interesting is the development of the characters that Delany engages here – he surprises us by creating a seemingly amiable barbarian who turns into a vicious killer and a lonely, somewhat neurotic garbage collector who turns out to be more of a hero. There is also a wandering bard who learns guerrilla warfare and a Myetran officer who joins the rebels. Delany keeps each person’s motivations carefully in mind and develops story arcs for all of these and even a couple of the bat-creatures, though these are only seen from “outside” as it were. Some of the action scenes are pretty bloody and brutal, but they serve the story he is telling in their rawness. I’d be interested to see the original, unedited version some day to see how it developed.
There are two sort-of postscripts included as part of “They Fly at Ciron.” The first is called “Ruins,” and was included as a stand-alone story in “Aye, and Gomorrah.” I briefly commented on its similarity to Lovecraft there, and all I will add to that for now is that, while it mentions the Empire of Myetra and the goddess Kirke, it seems to have nothing at all to do with the rest of this story. I read it as a semi-abortive attempt to expand on the world of “Ciron.” The other section, called “Return to Ciron” is more of an epilogue to the first story, but it doesn’t really add or clarify much of anything. It is told from the perspective of the Myetran officer who chose to side with the Cironians, and tells of his one opportunity to “fly” with the Winged Ones, and I think to some degree its ambiguity is a deliberate comment on our desire for some kind of resolution in a world where such things never happen, really.
Finally, there is an afterword, in which Delany addresses his audience directly, in nonfiction form. The unifying theme of this essay is how much he appreciates it when fans stop him and tell him how much they love his work, even if they often can’t communicate exactly what it was they got out of it. He uses this to lead into an impressive segue into how “meaning” is created, or discovered, and how communication works, that synchronistically tied in to the section of Douglas Hofastadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach” that I happened to be reading at the same time.
The first tale, “The Jewels of Aptor” is a fantasy quest set in a post-apocalyptic world in which mutations and technology stand in for magic. The protagonist, Geo, is a poet who signs aboard a ship which is bound for Aptor under the command of a woman called Argo, who claims to be the avatar of a goddess. Along the way, we meet two other avatars of Argo (which makes naming conventions a bit tricky) and one of Hama, who is either Argo’s adversary or her partner, depending who you ask and when you ask it. Geo teams up with Urson, a large, bear-like sailor, the Snake, a four-armed mute telepathic mutant, and Iimmi, another educated sailor who seems to be there mostly so Geo has someone smart to talk to. Delany makes a point of telling us Iimmi is ”a negro,” but is not forthcoming about how to pronounce his name. Anyway, the adventure they go on involves retrieving three jewels with mysterious powers, and the best thing to do with them is either to give them to one of the avatars (but which one?) or throw them in the sea. Along the way they meet mutant vampires, werewolves, and ghouls and face the horrors of a highly irradiated area and its amorphous guardian. It’s fairly straightforward, for Delany, and probably reflects his experimenting with genre and form early in his career. Fun, if not especially deep.
The second story seems much more ambitious to me, and quite successful as well. This is “The Ballad of Beta-2,” and it is a much more straightforward science fiction story, dealing with the challenges of multi-generational space colonization. In a time after some sort of instantaneous space-warp technology exists, an anthropology student travels to a world colonized by a surprisingly sluggish culture that endured the hardships of earlier slower-than-lightspeed travel and which has written an enigmatic epic poem, or ballad, about that experience. He discovers that simple metaphors often have hidden meanings and that people who seem not to have much investment in the mundane world may have surprising depths. I quite enjoyed the way he peeled back the layers of this particular onion, and I found the story worked as an effectively creepy horror/dystopian tale as well as a sci fi adventure. Delaney has a lot to say about conformity and regimented religion as well as star-crossed love, here.
The third story, “They Fly at Ciron,” is something of a blended sci-fi/fantasy story, possibly taking place on an alien world colonized by humans but cut off from the homeworld or any kind of space travel (this is speculation on my part – the characters have no sense of being anywhere but “home”). Delany says in the introduction that the story is considerably revised from its original version, and the final page is dated both 1962 and 1992, so in many ways this represents more mature authorship than the previous stories. It tells of a small peaceful village attacked by a legionary army with considerable similarity to the Romans but whose officers carry ray guns (foot soldiers use shields). The rescue of this society comes a group of intelligent bat-winged creatures that live in the nearby mountains and who have concepts like money and a taboo on sex that the villagers do not share. What is especially interesting is the development of the characters that Delany engages here – he surprises us by creating a seemingly amiable barbarian who turns into a vicious killer and a lonely, somewhat neurotic garbage collector who turns out to be more of a hero. There is also a wandering bard who learns guerrilla warfare and a Myetran officer who joins the rebels. Delany keeps each person’s motivations carefully in mind and develops story arcs for all of these and even a couple of the bat-creatures, though these are only seen from “outside” as it were. Some of the action scenes are pretty bloody and brutal, but they serve the story he is telling in their rawness. I’d be interested to see the original, unedited version some day to see how it developed.
There are two sort-of postscripts included as part of “They Fly at Ciron.” The first is called “Ruins,” and was included as a stand-alone story in “Aye, and Gomorrah.” I briefly commented on its similarity to Lovecraft there, and all I will add to that for now is that, while it mentions the Empire of Myetra and the goddess Kirke, it seems to have nothing at all to do with the rest of this story. I read it as a semi-abortive attempt to expand on the world of “Ciron.” The other section, called “Return to Ciron” is more of an epilogue to the first story, but it doesn’t really add or clarify much of anything. It is told from the perspective of the Myetran officer who chose to side with the Cironians, and tells of his one opportunity to “fly” with the Winged Ones, and I think to some degree its ambiguity is a deliberate comment on our desire for some kind of resolution in a world where such things never happen, really.
Finally, there is an afterword, in which Delany addresses his audience directly, in nonfiction form. The unifying theme of this essay is how much he appreciates it when fans stop him and tell him how much they love his work, even if they often can’t communicate exactly what it was they got out of it. He uses this to lead into an impressive segue into how “meaning” is created, or discovered, and how communication works, that synchronistically tied in to the section of Douglas Hofastadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach” that I happened to be reading at the same time.
August 5, 2016
Quite good; also, the circa-2014 passages that bookend this omnibus in which Delany writes about his early career are excellent.
January 29, 2017
A: acceptable
B: brilliant
C: crap
B: brilliant
C: crap
September 11, 2022
Great! Great, and makes you realize a lot of cyberpunk came from here, and this guy — a lot of A Song Called YOUTH seems presaged here, both in the sense that the music filters into the vibe of the prose and the sexual awareness of behavior is not-ungermane to the proceedings . . . don't know what bloodlust is, you don't know why war happens . . .
"To kill?" Rahm asked.
"Yes, there have been stories of such things before." Ienbar nodded.
"To frighten a Winged One, yes. But why to kill—and another man? Human beings do not kill each other. Thou killest a goat to roast it, an ox to butcher it. But not a human being."
Delany knows he's working in science fiction, and makes the most it — he's seen nations rise and fall, and puts it in his fiction. On other worlds.
When the attack sounded, you pulled out your sword, moved forward, and began to swing. You tried not to remember who or what you hit. A lot of blood spurted on your armor and got in the cracks, so that you got sticky at knees and elbows and shoulders; otherwise it was pretty easy. The villagers were naked—most of them—and scared and not expecting it.
This is the other side, the soldier's point-of-view, right there: the mode of it. People render this, and they are considered great geniuses — if they are heeded at all. Tolstoy comes to mind, the general's wavering in their attention and dispositions as they get through the days' meeting, to decide how the carnage will go tomorrow. (They're human!) Or the recent The GREAT , I don't know — speaking of Russia.
Perhaps some of that devotion came from the knowledge both shared, that their time in the Myetran army had taught them: life in the midst of battle was on another plane entirely from that in which relationships could be parsed (a concept Uk would understand) or parceled out (an idea Mrowky might follow), analyzed, or made rational.
One wonders how much the effect of Andei RUBLEV had on this novel, and the other two — released in 1962, 1965, and 1971, they seem to come from the same era/wake of the battle scenes in the Tarkovsky picture, particularly the Mongol saying "Sorry we saw a small town we just needed to ravage — we didn't mean to be late!" like it's a business meeting, or him asking "How is it there was a virgin birth?" looking at the icons in the building they're savaging — "You Russians sure are strange!" and chuckling, good-naturedly, like it's a way of beating your mistress, or riding your horse backwards . . . heightening the unreality of it all . . .
(We all live in strange worlds . . . until they encounter each other!)
A word to the wise . . . —William S. Burroughs
"To kill?" Rahm asked.
"Yes, there have been stories of such things before." Ienbar nodded.
"To frighten a Winged One, yes. But why to kill—and another man? Human beings do not kill each other. Thou killest a goat to roast it, an ox to butcher it. But not a human being."
Delany knows he's working in science fiction, and makes the most it — he's seen nations rise and fall, and puts it in his fiction. On other worlds.
When the attack sounded, you pulled out your sword, moved forward, and began to swing. You tried not to remember who or what you hit. A lot of blood spurted on your armor and got in the cracks, so that you got sticky at knees and elbows and shoulders; otherwise it was pretty easy. The villagers were naked—most of them—and scared and not expecting it.
This is the other side, the soldier's point-of-view, right there: the mode of it. People render this, and they are considered great geniuses — if they are heeded at all. Tolstoy comes to mind, the general's wavering in their attention and dispositions as they get through the days' meeting, to decide how the carnage will go tomorrow. (They're human!) Or the recent The GREAT , I don't know — speaking of Russia.
Perhaps some of that devotion came from the knowledge both shared, that their time in the Myetran army had taught them: life in the midst of battle was on another plane entirely from that in which relationships could be parsed (a concept Uk would understand) or parceled out (an idea Mrowky might follow), analyzed, or made rational.
One wonders how much the effect of Andei RUBLEV had on this novel, and the other two — released in 1962, 1965, and 1971, they seem to come from the same era/wake of the battle scenes in the Tarkovsky picture, particularly the Mongol saying "Sorry we saw a small town we just needed to ravage — we didn't mean to be late!" like it's a business meeting, or him asking "How is it there was a virgin birth?" looking at the icons in the building they're savaging — "You Russians sure are strange!" and chuckling, good-naturedly, like it's a way of beating your mistress, or riding your horse backwards . . . heightening the unreality of it all . . .
(We all live in strange worlds . . . until they encounter each other!)
A word to the wise . . . —William S. Burroughs
September 22, 2017
These three early novels show the development of Delany as a writer (the last was significantly rewritten late in his career and shows the biggsest changes). Combined with the very entertaining and illuminating foreword and afterword you really get a picture of his growth over time and how the writing process changes (even while, as the author points out, the actual mental work that must be done to write a good book stays the same and will brook no substitutions). This isn't really the place to start, because as entertaining as these stories are, his other works are just so great, but if you're read most of those this collection is worth it for the foreword and afterword alone.
August 12, 2017
Jewels - 2* Each character is the good guy, no, the bad guy, no, both good & bad, wait, they are neither, in solving the mystery of? Nothing. You figure it out.
Ballad - 4.5* Excellent
Ciron - dnf fantasy with looming blood thirsty killer about to attack peaceful village. THAT story is unique. Sarcasm intended.
Ballad - 4.5* Excellent
Ciron - dnf fantasy with looming blood thirsty killer about to attack peaceful village. THAT story is unique. Sarcasm intended.
October 10, 2021
Hard to rate/review a book that is actually 3 separate books, but if you are into Delany like I am then this is a good read regardless. There's plenty of other Delany to read before this if you are just starting out though.
July 13, 2017
The Novels are very good. The afterward is pretty tedious.
November 12, 2017
Not the best of Delany's work, but certainly good and worth reading if you enjoy his style.
August 4, 2020
This was my intro to Delany. There was a fresh perspective to these stories from most of the scifi that I read. I am looking forward to reading more.
October 7, 2024
B > A > C
September 11, 2022
I really liked all three of these short Novels. My favourite is the Ballad of Beta-2 because it’s absolutely terrifying and sad and hopeful all at the same time. In 100 pages Delaney wrote a story I won’t ever be able to forget how it made me feel.
May 29, 2020
A was not good, B was good, C was not good.
August 29, 2022
"Evil likes to cloak itself as good." (The Jewels of Aptor)
...break the earth with singing. (The Jewels of Aptor)
I suddenly felt the heaviness of the responsibility to these born and unborn thousands hurtling between stars, lost somewhere in timelessness, sea and desert, life and catastrophe, spinning around one another like dots on dice. (The Ballad of Beta-2)
"I understand... It would be hard to discover that you were all alone. You discover that as soon as you meet somebody." (The Ballad of Beta-2)
"If you love your own home, can't you love the idea of home that other people have? That's what a sense of justice is, isn't it? And the plan you talk of, it's not a just one at all. I've looked your men in the face. I've heard your superiors talking. Your men have forgotten all plans and are only faithful to following orders. And all your superiors are after is the power and privilege the plan has most accidentally ceded them! So without justice behind it or real commitment to support it, what is your plan after that?" (They Fly at Çiron)
Qualt was in love with Rimgia.
We've written it; it was true.
Thus it would be silly to believe that in the course of all Qualt's enterprises, she was never once in his mind. But it would be equally simplistic to think she formed some sort of focus for him -- that somehow all his acts were envisioned, performed, and evaluated with her image bright before him; that they were done for her. Rather, the sort of social catastrophe that Çiron had undergone takes selves already shattered by the simple exigencies of the everyday and drives the fragments even farther apart, so that the separate selves of love and bravery, misery and despair, run on apace, influencing one another certainly, but not in any way one.
As such catastrophes occasionally evoke extraordinary acts of selflessness or bravery, they sometimes evoke extraordinary efforts to make on part of what is too easily called the self confront another part. (They Fly at Çiron)
...break the earth with singing. (The Jewels of Aptor)
I suddenly felt the heaviness of the responsibility to these born and unborn thousands hurtling between stars, lost somewhere in timelessness, sea and desert, life and catastrophe, spinning around one another like dots on dice. (The Ballad of Beta-2)
"I understand... It would be hard to discover that you were all alone. You discover that as soon as you meet somebody." (The Ballad of Beta-2)
"If you love your own home, can't you love the idea of home that other people have? That's what a sense of justice is, isn't it? And the plan you talk of, it's not a just one at all. I've looked your men in the face. I've heard your superiors talking. Your men have forgotten all plans and are only faithful to following orders. And all your superiors are after is the power and privilege the plan has most accidentally ceded them! So without justice behind it or real commitment to support it, what is your plan after that?" (They Fly at Çiron)
Qualt was in love with Rimgia.
We've written it; it was true.
Thus it would be silly to believe that in the course of all Qualt's enterprises, she was never once in his mind. But it would be equally simplistic to think she formed some sort of focus for him -- that somehow all his acts were envisioned, performed, and evaluated with her image bright before him; that they were done for her. Rather, the sort of social catastrophe that Çiron had undergone takes selves already shattered by the simple exigencies of the everyday and drives the fragments even farther apart, so that the separate selves of love and bravery, misery and despair, run on apace, influencing one another certainly, but not in any way one.
As such catastrophes occasionally evoke extraordinary acts of selflessness or bravery, they sometimes evoke extraordinary efforts to make on part of what is too easily called the self confront another part. (They Fly at Çiron)
July 29, 2015
Aptor is clearly a first novel, an attempt more at fantasy than SF. It's a meandering story about a journey to recover precious stones which are the source of unimaginable power, as well as a story about the insidiousness of ideology and belief. The social commentary is much less apparent and much less pointed in Delany's other work.
On that note, Beta-2 can much more easily be read as social commentary. This is an SF novella about an anthropologist attempting to uncover the secret of a race's disappearance en route from earth to its destination in the stars. What he learns is that a fascistic and genocidal adherence to "the Norm" led one faction of the ship's population to wipe out the other.
Ciron is somewhat similar, and was by far my favorite of the three. This novella is a fantasy about marauding imperialists who have arrived at a backwater and technologically non-developed village to plunder the wealth and assimilate the population found there. What was so engrossing about Delany's portrayal of imperialism and chauvinism is his attention to the motivations of the villains. He makes them real people, not mere caricatures of mindless evil. My most serious complaint is that Delany may err on the side of using the archetype of the "noble savage" in his portrayal of the conquered villagers of Ciron.
On that note, Beta-2 can much more easily be read as social commentary. This is an SF novella about an anthropologist attempting to uncover the secret of a race's disappearance en route from earth to its destination in the stars. What he learns is that a fascistic and genocidal adherence to "the Norm" led one faction of the ship's population to wipe out the other.
Ciron is somewhat similar, and was by far my favorite of the three. This novella is a fantasy about marauding imperialists who have arrived at a backwater and technologically non-developed village to plunder the wealth and assimilate the population found there. What was so engrossing about Delany's portrayal of imperialism and chauvinism is his attention to the motivations of the villains. He makes them real people, not mere caricatures of mindless evil. My most serious complaint is that Delany may err on the side of using the archetype of the "noble savage" in his portrayal of the conquered villagers of Ciron.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 17, 2016
Jewels of Aptor is good post-apocalyptic science fantasy adventure with very Delany characters: diverse homosociality plus female savants, and a deconstruction of cultural binaries. The Ballad of Beta-2 is actually my favorite and I should probably read more Generation Ship stories - I like how the text-within-text is revealed to be a gospel, and the implication that something as meaningful as first contact might be dismissed as culturally or aesthetically boring from a distance. Ciron I, uh, couldn't finish, because despite the rayguns it didn't toe the Clarke's Law line as well as the others.
October 8, 2015
Samuel R. Delany is a living master of the Science Fiction genre. I wish Goodreads allowed us to give half stars, I would have given this book three and a half stars. All three stories were full of interesting ideas and concepts, but we're slowly paced. I had little emotional reaction to the stories. Neither the forward nor the afterward provided me with any new insights into the stories.
April 6, 2016
Worth reading, and possibly buying, for "The Ballad of Beta-2," which is brilliant, and the foreword and afterword, which like all of Delany's critical (in this case self-critical) writing, will enlarge your mind. I also liked "The Jewels of Aptor," though it had a bit of pulp cliché in it. (Not surprising given that it was his first novel!) The third should have been left in his trunk.
July 18, 2015
Two perfect short novels, The Jewels Of Aptor and The Ballad Of Beta-2, and an unfortunate third, They Fly At Çiron. The first two are cutting edge, mind-bending, and the third is tiresome, for characterization, language, science, set, and setting; best forgotten.
October 28, 2016
First story wasn't to my tastes but 5 stars for both the remaining two (they fly at ciron started out as a bit of a slog for me but by the end I ADORED it; ballad of beta-2 is exactly my type of sf) and the lovely accompanying essays that form the prologue and afterward.
June 7, 2016
Finished the first 2 novellas, but I couldn't get into They Fly at Ciron. I really enjoyed Jewels of Aptor and The Ballad of Beta-2, so I might revisit some day.
March 26, 2016
Pretty good! I haven't read Delany before and picked this out on a whim. _They Fly at Ciron_ is the best of the three.
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