Almost everything in this book is included in the collection Aye, and Gomorrah. Even the introduction is included there as an afterward. This book also includes illustrations, which don't add very much. And the novella Empire Star, which is great. Aye, and Gomorroh has a bunch of stories that aren't in this collection though, so I'd still start there for Delany's short stories. You can also find Empire Star in some other volumes. ( )

My reaction to reading this collection in 1998. Spoilers follow.

“Of Doubts and Dreams: An Introduction” -- An interesting essay on the process of writing. First, it showed how much doubt and rewriting even a prolific writer like Delany can go through. Thinking about stories, conceiving stories, Delany says, is a process nearly everyone does. What separates the writer from everyone else is the doubts that creep in when you sit down to write the story out. Then doubt creeps in, clichés and clutter and thinness show through. A manuscript, says Delany, should be more than just documentation that verifies an act. It should be the summation of many doubts about the worthiness of the story acknowledged and answered. Writing is answering the doubts of your mind about your expression and then taking your answer and using it to answer other doubts. Delany mentions three rules of writing he follows which can be expressed in positive at negative terms. Envision as much of a scene as possible but only mention the aspects of it that “impinge on your character’s consciousness” while in it. That will not only describe but detail your characters’ emotional states. (Don’t overwrite.) When a story bogs down ask yourself what’s “really going on it”. You must look deeper into the characters motivations and psychologists to interest yourself. (Don’t write thin or superficially.) While preparing a story, think about the troops and shortfalls other authors fell into when doing similar material and how to avoid them. (Avoid clichés.) Writing an “endless process of doubts”, of things not done”.

“Prismatica” -- A rather charming fantasy (due to its language and not is plot) written in the style, a beginning note says, of James Thurber. The plot features a “grim grey” man who cheats people and cons a man into helping him find a wife fit for a prince. Along the way, we meet a colorful (literally) prince who wants to marry a woman to be found behind the combined shards of a broken mirror. I liked that the strange creature in the grey man’s trunk simply turned out to be one of those entities that befriends difficult people like the grey man and tries to change them.

“Corona” -- A well told story that involves that old notion of telepaths (the other is that it would bring people closer together a la George R. R. Martin’s “A Song for Lya”): that peoples’ thoughts would be too horrible to listen into. Here, Delany refines the notion in that Lee, a telepathic nine year old black girl finds the fears she picks up in others’ minds horrible enough to motivate constant suicide attempts. (It’s understandable that Delany, the first major sf writer, would actually include blacks and other nonwhites in his sf, especially since, before the sixties, blacks were rare as sf characters.) There are elements here that I’ve found in most of the other sf works of Delany I’ve read (two novels and three novellas): music (here musician Bryan Faust and his transforming song “Corona”) and the combination of high and low life types, here somewhat muted with ex-con, half literate Buddy and the clever (innately smart with additions of telepathically gleamed experience) Lee. Basically, this is a friendship born of a brief encounter between Lee and Buddy where they talk of the power of “Corona” and where Lee expresses sympathy for the brutality Buddy has suffered in prison – she also wants him to stop thinking about it so she stops feeling his fear. Buddy, when released from the hospital where Lee is incarcerated, goes to see Faust perform so Lee can have the experience.

Empire Star -- This is another Delany novel I read since it was mentioned in the dedication to Damien Broderick’s The White Abacus. Apart from a plot involving time paradoxes and lifelines folding in on themselves in the life of not only protagonist Comet Jo but also San Severina, I can see much of a similarity between the two. I enjoyed most of this novel. There are the usual Delany elements of music and spacemen (though not modified spacemen like his Nova and Babel-17) and a bit on racial matters. Actually, the alien L11 are bring up the matter of prejudice a lot by their presence. They are expert builders kept as slaves,slaves with a catch. Their presence not only costs their owner more, in a geometric fashion, the more he has. They also have some protection – and Delany never states how this is achieved, only that “the Empire protects them, this way” so it seems to be created and not a natural part of their being which makes their owners very sad and depressed – in a similar geometric fashion. The semi-space opera plot involving an offstage war that kills billions may have inspired Broderick too. Even at this early point in his career, Delany’s prose is fairly simple but dense with complex ideas and allusions. There are many things I liked as elements. I liked the notion of simplexty, complexity, and multiplicity in cultures. I liked the education of Comet Jo. (Delany’s ruminations on the origins of profane and taboo words made little sense.) I liked Lump’s observation about the Geodesic Survey Station: “To need to learn all one wants to know” is absurd. I liked the irritating character of poet Ni Ty Lee who seems to have experienced everything. Comet Jo finds this very annoying, thinks someone describing his personal experiences diminishes his individuality, that his experiences are not unique but part of general human history and experience. A rare writer, Lump says, has this ability, and he explicitly mentions Theodore Sturgeon who Delany mentions in the collection’s introduction so he must admire him. Lump makes a oh-so Delany statement that only the artistic and the criminal elements of a society can, by questioning a society’s value, change it. There’s some truth to this notion, but it’s an incomplete truth. The bourgeoisie and others in a society have to want to change. Artists and criminals can’t do it by themselves. While the notion that criminals can valuably question a society’s value is uncomfortably close to romanticizing crime, it is true that not every thing that is a crime should be thus not every criminal should be. (Delany often links artists and criminals in his stories.) Even this early in his career, Delany liked to play with narrative and its convention (Thus he’s probably beloved by “post moderns” like Broderick.) The book is told on the narrative of an alien who narrates in the third person but who infrequently reminds you that he plays a vital role in events – until the end. At novel’s end, in the last three pages, narrator Jewel describes a complex plot of time paradox and recursive lifelines where Jo, Jo as an older man, tutors young San Severina who tutors, in her older form, Jo and, in her younger form, is tutored by young Jo and latter he switches bodies to become Norm who crashes on Jo’s home planet Rhys with narrator Jewel. Also summarized is a war which kills billions and for which San Severina must enslave L11 to rebuild worlds (The act of enslavement drives her mad.). Unfortunately, Delany is vague as to how this time paradox is effected. Empire Star is said to be “the gravitational center of that vast multiplex of matter”. It joins temporal present with special past with the possible future. But Delany’s self referential narrative with vague allusions to time travel or, possibly, alternate universes (there is talk of “many worlds called Rhys”). It’s almost as if Delany is saying only a sophisticated “multiplex” reader will appreciate his playful narrative incompletely rationalized. In the last sentence, we are invited to the “ordering” of “perceptions”. The novel is composed of interesting elements not properly rationalized into a credible sf narrative. It’s a failed literary experiment.

“Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” -- When I read this story about 20 years ago in a Hugo winners' anthology, I found it incomprehensible and vastly overrated. Now I understand the story (even if not thinking it deserving of an award) and some of its appeal. I suspect the same people who voted for this story probably also voted for William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Gibson has said he was influenced by Delany, and I noticed a similarity in the openings of Neuromancer and Delany’s Babel-17. This story also, like the cyberpunks’ works, features criminals in a celebrity and media saturated world though there is little in the way of technological extrapolation apart from clothing fashions. (Delany again links the artist to the criminal in a couple of interesting. Singer Hawk hangs out with the Hawk, an underworld figure. Both are linked in name, of course, and Delany initially invites a confused identity between the two.) The notion of Singers, performers who can mold public opinion and emotions (I have no idea if the first Singer, El Posado in Rio de Janeiro, is an historical personage). They may represent a “spontaneous reaction” to a mass media in that alienates us from first hand experience. (I thought of James Tiptree, Jr’s later “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” in regards to media surrogates for our seemingly inadequate lives.). Their performances are forbidden to be mechanically reproduced. Unfortunately, Delany doesn’t build his story around the Singer institution but an unsatisfying autobiography of the professional development of a criminal and, I suppose, a rumination on his resulting paranoia. I, however, did like the narrator’s observation that the basic rule of life is “observe carefully, imitate effectively”.

“Omegahelm” -- Some probably find Delany’s prose full of subtleties of allusion and characterization. I don’t think his stories always work, that some of his stories go nowhere or don’t integrate their ideas, scenes, and dialogue well enough to make a point. This story is like that and confirms the impression I had of Delany’s work before reading a bunch of it. This story seems to be a half baked rumination on the nature of power. The bit where Gylda creates a genetically engineered daughter, an artist with a heightened metabolism, growth rate, and intelligence and a seven minute life span. Delany seems to argue, in this story, for alternate family structures. Gylda makes the unconvincing observation that a family is a “mother, a father, and a son” and then adds a remark which renders any definition of family: that any sex can substitute for any part or that any part can be replicated.

“Ruins” -- A rather pointless fantasy that seems to be about how we can be confronted – and sometimes unknowingly denied – with what we most want and need in the most ordinary surroundings while the exotic can offer no solace and sometimes danger.

“We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line” -- While this is probably my favorite sf title (perhaps my favorite all time title), it’s definitely not one of my favorite stories. This is the second time I’ve read it, and I noticed more things this time. First, the story is dedicated to Roger Zelazny and a couple of story elements and the general poetic style reminded me of Zelazny. The notion of constructing a giant planetary grid for electrical power and communication reminded me of the construction projects (worldwide datanets and underwater cities) of Zelazny’s Home is the Hangman. The Angels are reminiscent of the Hells Angel protagonist in Zelazny’s “Damnation Alley”. The wonderful title – and the story’s final paragraph – are poetic; the story is punning in that it concerns a struggle for dominance between ultimately victorious Blacky, who literally has vast power not only personally and politically but in the electric line he lays and uses to defeat Angel Roger. The story is interesting for its relation to the time it was written. It is very sixtyish in its depiction of casual (this is implicit) and quick sexual relations between co-workers, mentions of race riots in 1969 Detroit (a prediction unfulfilled), and Hells Angels. Yet some unintended irony has crept in during the years since the Baby Boomers who applauded Delany applauded sexual harassment laws which would render the Gila Monster a “hostile work environment” now. Some of these Baby Boomers view western civilization as evil, applaud the primitive. And it’s the generation that produced the Unabomber with his hatred of the sort of civilization that is Global Power Line. This may be unintended irony produced by history, but Delany may have tapped into these attitudes to produce the conflict between Devil Mabel, who insists on pacifying the Angels via installing outlets and Devil Blacky who wants to leave their primitive society to wither away. Delany seems to have tapped into Boomer ambivalence about technology. I even got Delany’s ruminations on power with Blacky’s struggle with Roger. It is somewhat unclear (too subtle for me?) as to why he kills Roger or why Fidessa despises him (he killed the Angels’ culture?) or the symbolic importance (totem of power?) or, more precisely, the space given to, Rogers’ ring later taken by Blacky. If I correctly interpreted his points, I don’t think Delany adequately developed his theme and that he still took too much space to fail. ( )

The first Samuel Delany book I ever bought. He is an amazing writer. ( )

This is a very nice collection of stories: essential Delany. 'Empire Star' is one of my favorite pieces, though there isn't a story in the collection that I don't find entertaining. ( )