Nebula Award Finalist: Reality unravels in a Midwestern town in this sci-fi epic by the acclaimed author of Babel-17. Includes a foreword by William Gibson. A young half–Native American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellona—only something is wrong there . . . In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate … unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-sharp knives, to write, to love, to wound.
So begins Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany’s masterwork, which in 1975 opened a new door for what science fiction could mean. A labyrinth of a novel, it raises questions about race, sexuality, identity, and art, but gives no easy answers, in a city that reshapes itself with each step you take . . .
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.
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Difficult reading, especially when the text divides into two or three parallel columns. Not your typical dystopia, but a dystopia nonetheless. I slogged through it because I usually like Delaney, but this will never be my favorite.
Dhalgren is one of those books that was an amazing read, but one I have never been able to revisit. It requires a mindset and an immersion that few books do.
I probably read this 40 yrs ago and liked it so much, I had the first line of the book printed on a t-shirt. It is hard to remember why I liked it so much, and now I’ll have to read it again to justify this review, but, I will happily break out the hard bound book I purchased back then to commemorate the event and read an actual book to remember!
Yes, I suppose that when this humungous tome first came out, some people dived in, searching for the skinny sections with amazingly written, explicit sex scenes. They were, rightly, legendary for their time. But the other thousand pages are brilliant, too — recursive, non-linear, a haunting future city populated by as eccentric an assemblage of …
My favorite book of all time.
The tale of a wrecked city in the Midwest, Bellona, so wrecked that it is no longer wrecked, never was wrecked, always will have been wrecked, and both is and is not fictional: a penumbral city.
This is a counterculture SF book from the mid-Seventies, and, as such, is very divisive. Finding out who hated the book, and who loved it, is surprising …
One of the most original SF books I’ve read. It led me to read all of Delaneys work. They just kept getting better and better
I’ve read hundreds of SF books. This was one of the worst. No plot and hard to plow through.
It’s not for everybody.
This book is Loooong, very long. Entertaining, tragic and twisted. Worth the read, if you are a fan of Samuel Delany.
best science fiction and world building