Samuel Delany (previously) is one of science fiction's titans, a pioneer who was the first openly gay writer in the field, as well as one of the first Black science fiction writers to attain prominence.
Samuel R "Chip" Delany is a science fiction pioneer: a brilliant literary stylist with dazzling ideas who was one of the field's first openly queer writers, and one of the first Black writers accepted into the field. He is one of the fathers of afrofuturism.
Here's a video of Samuel Delany reading from his latest, 2012's Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders.
Ann Matsuuchi's paper Wonder Woman Wears Pants: Wonder Woman, Feminism and the 1972 "Women's Lib" Issue [PDF], published in Monash University's journal Colloquy, looks at the weird history of the Wonder Woman arc that Samuel Delany wrote, which was meant to culminate with Wonder Woman confronting anti-abortion demonstrators, and which was killed by Gloria Steinem, who didn't know where things were headed, but hated the fact that Delany had taken away Wonder Woman's traditional costume. — Read the rest
Will sez, "I thought you'd be interested in this chapter from Samuel R. Delany's much-anticipated new book, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders the story of a decades-long interracial romance between two men on the Georgia coast."
Barbara said, "That's a lot of trouble."
— Read the rest
Leszek sez, "In 1967, WBAI produced a two-hour radio dramatization of Samuel R. Delany's first short piece of SF, 'The Star-Pit', with narration by Delany himself. The URL links to a website where you can download MP3s of the entire show, and also links to a personal history of the creation of the show by Delany." — Read the rest
Borders interviews Samuel Delany.
"Look at any part of your body (or anybody else's, for that matter), fixed and unwavering — your face in a mirror, your thigh, your forearm — and you begin to see the skeleton beneath the skin, the potential for decay and death that underlies all living flesh and sinew.
— Read the rest
In the early 2000s, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, managed an internal side project to create an online Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction that would, in part, be fueled by submissions from SF fans themselves. — Read the rest
The latest Humble Bundle features dozens of Nebula-winning and Nebula-nominated novels and short stories from past and present, everyone from Octavia Butler and Ursula K Leguin to Samuel Delany and John Brunner, to say nothing of Kate Wilhelm, Joanna Russ, and four titles from Serial Box.
Fantastic Fiction at KGB is a monthly reading series hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, held on the third Wednesday of every month at the famous KGB Bar in Manhattan. They are looking to fund several more years of their popular reading series via a Kickstarter fundraiser, running from May 17th through June 14th, 2017.
The Internet Archive's amazing Pulp Magazine Archive includes all 176 issues of If, a classic science fiction magazine that ran from 1952 to 1974.
NAACP founder WEB Du Bois wasn't just a committed, effective activist for the rights of black people in America: he was also a prolific author of early 20th century science fiction and fantasy stories.
We've projected our political and spiritual longings on the Moon since antiquity, and it's been a talismanic home to science fiction's most ambitious dreams for generations. But no one writes like Ian McDonald, and no one's Moon is nearly so beautiful and terrible as Luna: New Moon.
Science fiction titan Ian McDonald's forthcoming novel Luna: New Moon is the subject of the latest installment of the always-great Coode Street podcast (MP3).
We've gathered fresh video for you to surf and enjoy on the Boing Boing video page:
• Nine animated shorts about our relationship with cars during the Golden Age of the automobile.
• Police in England are seeking two Oompa Loompas who attacked a man leaving a kebab house. — Read the rest
Photo: Ceridwen (cc)
China Miéville is one of the most important writers working in Britain today. The author of ten novels of "weird fiction"—as well as short stories, comics, non-fiction, a roleplaying game, and academic writing on law and ideology—his 2011 science fiction novel Embassytown was acclaimed by Ursula K le Guin, among others, as "a fully achieved work of art" busy "bringing the craft of science fiction out of the backwaters". — Read the rest
Alex Wilson, a student at the legendary Clarion science fiction writers' workshop, has posted a roundup of the blogs of this year's Clarion and Clarion West workshops, who are currently at week five of their six-week programs. Clarion is an intensive, boot-camp style workshop, taught by leading professionals, with an excellent track-record of graduating talented, successful writers like Dale Bailey, Octavia Butler, Ben Rosenbaum, Bruce Sterling, Lucius Sheppard and many others. — Read the rest
Henry Jenkins of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program has posted a bunch of Octavia Butler related material in Ms Butler's memory. Octavia Butler was the first widely read African American woman science fiction writer, and her works wrapped up complex treatments of gender and race in palatable, fast-paced sf stories. — Read the rest