Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

by Samuel R. Delany, Matthew Cheney (Other)

Overview

In Starboard Wine, Samuel R. Delany explores the implications of his now-famous assertion that science fiction is not about the future. Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a text’s specific “difference,” we begin to see the quality of its particulars. Through riveting analyses of works by Joanna Russ, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Thomas M. Disch, Delany reveals critical strategies for reading that move beyond overwrought theorizing and formulaic thinking. Throughout, the author performs the kinds of careful inquiry and urgent speculation that he calls others to engage in.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819572943
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	07/11/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	565 KB

About the Author

SAMUEL R. DELANY is an acclaimed novelist and critic who teaches English and creative writing at Temple University and is the author of numerous works of fiction and criticism, most recently his novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. MATTHEW CHENEY is a columnist for Strange Horizons and writes regularly for his weblog, The Mumpsimus.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Starboard Wine, an Author’s Introduction
Science Fiction And Difference: An Introduction to Starboard Wine – Matthew Cheney
The Necessity of Tomorrow(s)
Heinlein
Some Presumptuous Approaches to Science Fiction
Sturgeon
Science Fiction and “Literature”—or, The Conscience of the King
Russ
An Experimental Talk
Disch, I
Disch, II
Dichtung und Science Fiction
Three Letters to Science Fiction Studies
A Letter from New York
Another Letter from New York
A Letter from Rome
Reflections on Historical Models
Index

What People are Saying About This

Carl Freedman

“After all the years since it was first published, Starboard Wine remains one of the three or four most important critical statements ever made about science fiction. No one with a serious interest in the field should be ignorant of it.”

David N. Samuelson

“As a fiction writer, reviewer, critic, analyst, and theorist, Delany has done more than anyone to expand how people read, as well as write, science fiction and fantasy. His essays are a seminal achievement by one of the field’s most innovative thinkers.”

Editorial Reviews

Samuel Delany is without doubt a fine writer and intellectual critic without equal.”—S. Raeschild, Choice

From the Publisher