Book Review: Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

Hardcover, 368 pages

Published December 1984 by Bantam Dell Publ. Group (NY) (first published 1984)

Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee for Best Novel (1987)

James Tiptree Jr. Award Nominee for Special Mention - 20th Anniversary Republication (2004)

Oh boy, where to start here. Let me start by saying that I think this is a masterpiece but I am not entirely sure. This is the kinda science fiction novel that you just have to accept that you are not going to get every single aspect of it and just go along for the ride either way. On our best days that is what the women and men behind the genre should reach for. This experience was mind and universe expanding. Absolutely what you want in a Science Fiction epic.

Samuel "Chip" Delany is one of the most important genre authors of the 20th century who is thankfully still with us in his late 70's. I believe he was the first openly gay major sci-fi writer made more poignant by the fact that he was a black man before the civil reforms of the late '60s. With lots of award nominations, his classics NOVA and BABEL-17 won him early acclaim before his classic novel Dhalgren explored themes of sexual freedom.

In this novel, his last outright work of space opera SD explores those themes in a book that is a very serious gay romance. Inspired by the relationship the author was in at the time, and sadly he never wrote the planned sequel. The word is that when the inspiring relationship ended SD lost the drive to finish it. The sad thing the author believes his long-time publisher Bantam lost the nerve to complete the story when the AIDS crisis exploded. We know fellow Bantam sci-fi author Norman Spinrad struggled to publish the Journal of the Plague Years a novel directly about AIDS. (That novel is reviewed here on this blog and a special episode of the Dickheads Podcast)

This novel has many levels and provides empathic readers with many feelings. There were times I thought I was reading a straight romance, other times it felt like the gay Dune. This novel, however, has the same kinda cultural and anthropological feeling that Leguin is best known for. Entire sections of the novel address macro issues of how gender and culture interface with information and I think that is the main heart of the novel.

“...in a universe where both information and misinformation are constantly suspect, reviewed and drifting, as they must be (constantly) by and between the two, a moment when either information or misinformation turns out to be harmless, must bloom, when surrounded by the workings of desire and terror, into the offered sign of all about it, making and marking all about it innocent by contamination.”

Consider that this novel was written in the early 80s. Far in the future humanity is spread through thousands of stars and interacting with a wild universe. In the longest prologue ever we are introduced to Rat Korga a pock-marked slave who was genetically engineered to accept his role as a slave. At the moment his world dies he is rescued by Marq Dyeth who is heir a high data fortune. Marq essentially frees his mind and the reason why is simple. Korga might seem uneducated and ugly but the web informed Marq that Korga is his perfect match.

Through the lens of their travels to various worlds and romance, we are introduced a variety of planets and cultures. SD has a lot to say the themes of globalization, sexuality, gender, and information. All these themes are thrown at the reader in massive handfuls. I don't think it was possible for me to catch them all. If you get 50% of it you are probably having a deeper experience than many of the science fiction novels out there.

That said it is easy to get confused take gender issues...

“In Arachnia as it is spoken on Nepiy, ‘she’ is the pronoun for all sentient individuals of whatever species who have achieved the legal status of ‘woman’. The ancient, dimorphic form ‘he’, once used exclusively for the general indication of males (cf. the archaic term man, pl. men), for more than a hundred-twenty years now, has been reserved for the general sexual object of ‘she’, during the period of excitation, regardless of the gender of the woman speaking or the gender of the woman referred to.”

Who is a man or who is a woman in this novel? Does it matter? It is not really supposed in the way you are cultured to believe and less you are able to leave that stuff behind the harder reading this book will be. I am sure entire essays could have or have been written on the fascinating gender issues in the book. Much like Leguin's Left Hand of Darkness this novel is ahead of the times exploring these important issues.

One other theme that really hit me were the themes of Cultural fugues. This novel is set in a far future when humanity is so stretched out that old few kinda sorta remember the Earth. Many diverse and widespread cultures exist on many worlds some mixed very alien species. It is not that unusual for worlds to rise and fall like empires. When Rat Korga is talking to others about the destruction of his world the first question is often "was it natural or cultural?" The novel certainly seems to suggest that many self-destructive human cultures have wiped out more than one world.

Themes aside how is the writing? SD is a fantastic writer but his style is dense. It is not for everyone Dhalgren, for example, is a challenging read. This starts off challenging as well. The first 60 pages is basically one of the longest prologues I have ever read. For me this part was a slog compared to the rest of the novel. After that first chunk, the rest of the narrative is more breezy and exciting with shorter chapters. I am glad I stuck it out.

This book has some really fun sci-fi elements like the aliens called XiV. They are from a gas giant and on one page SD does some really fun world-building. Later in the novel Korga goes on a dragon hunt that has a high fantasy feel. There is a lot to enjoy in this novel. I think in many ways it is a masterpiece I just can't give a full five out of five because the prologue didn't work for me personally.

Samuel Delany is an important voice in the history of the genre and this is a towering achievement that deserves to read by anyone who takes either LBGTQ genre fiction or diverse sci-fi seriously.