Neveryona (63 page)
Authors: Samuel R. Delany
For the communal aspects of both talent and tradition, then, I gratefully make these acknowledgments:
Frank Romeo’s film
Bye Bye Love
, about two small-town adolescents who journey to New York City and return, suggested a structure for the entire novel. But our almost daily conversations for four years, which covered the making of his second film,
The Aunts
(in which a present eye looks on a past moment), often touched on the encounters, the textures, the psychology, and the intimate details of life in upper New York State
vis-à-vis
life in New York City. They have left their imprint from first chapter to last.
Joanna Russ’s
Kittatinny: a tale of magic
(Daughters Publishing Co.; New York, 1978) supplied the image for
Gauine. To anyone who sees any mystery or resonance in the closing image of that fabulous beast. I commend the tale from which – with permission – I stole it.
Ihab Hassan, preparing his paper ‘Cities of Mind, Urban Words.’ was generous enough to ask me a question. The ensuing correspondence helped me develop some of the conceits herein.
Walter Abish’s paper ‘On the Familiar’ (with its side glance at the unbearable) helped me contour much of the material in Chapter Nine.
Charles Hoequist, Jr, has entered into the spirit of Nevèrÿon scholarship so good-heartedly that his contribution must be grateful acknowledged.
Teresa de Lauretis introduced me, among her many generosities, to Umberto Eco’s work in semiotics; his essay ‘On the Possibility of Generating an Aesthetic Message in an Edenic Language’ (in
The Role of the Reader
, Umberto Eco, Indiana University Press; Bloomington, 1979) was directly stimulating.
Camilla Decarnin read, reread, and criticized the text in a detail for which any writer must be grateful.
Loren MacGregor added some mechanical corrections to Decarnin’s list for which I am most thankful.
Bernard Kay took time in his convalescence from a bout with lung cancer to make copious and useful marginal notes for which I thank him sincerely, and in light of which I have tried to make intelligent repairs.
Robert S. Bravard, of the Stevenson Library at Lock Haven State College, most graciously sent me two pages of cogent comments, which have been the occasion for much thought and – hopefully – some meaningful changes.
Marilyn Hacker read the manuscript and offered a number of useful suggestions. Once again, I am grateful.
My copy editor, David Harris, besides the usual haggling
over commas and restrictive and non-restrictive modifiers, offered a number of suggestions for fine tuning to the content. I thank him for them.
Karen Haas, my Bantam editor, has been as supportive as an editor can be throughout the production of a long and often difficult book.
And Grafton Books’ Nick Austin is simply and wholly the hero of this corrected edition.
Thanks is also due to Frederic Reynolds. Pat Califia. Lavada June Roberts, Mischa Adams, Luise White, Sally Hassan, Gregory Renault, Catherine McClenahan, and, indeed, a number of others who escape memory this sitting, but all of whom, now and again, added a twist to the thread from which this text is woven.
Anne McCaffrey share a 1 April birthday with me. For years I have wanted to write something touching on dragons that could serve as a kind of joint birthday present to us both. Happy birthday, Annie.
As the beautiful Hispanic pop song, ‘Eres tu’, borrows the opening notes of Mozart’s
Zauberflöte
, Act II, this text may be read, by some readers, as borrowing not only from those sources directly acknowledged but also from Albee, Bédier, Kafka, Balzac, or Baudrillard. If such readings initiate dialogue, so much the better; if they close dialogue off, so much the worse. With that in mind. I must add that any reader who normally skips footnotes may skip the headnotes with which the various chapters begin with – certainly – no greater loss. (‘While we sit discussing the word,’ quoted Christine Brooke-Rose at an MLA meeting some years back, ‘power works in silence …’) They only attempt to begin, by assertion, what Diderot attempted to begin by denial when he entitled a story
Ceci n’est pas un conte
, or what Magrittie attempted when he entitled a picture of an upright brier
Ceci n’est pas une pipe
, or – indeed – what Guilden attempted when
he made a colored poster in which scarlet letters proclaimed across a rose held (after having made one in jade and kelly portraying the same text)
This is Not a Green Sign.
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SF and Fantasy
The Jewels of Aptor
(1962)
Captives of the Flame
(1963) (revised and expanded as
Out of the Dead City
)
The Towers of Toron
(1964)
City of a Thousand Suns
(1965)
The Ballad of Beta-2
(1965)
Empire Star
(1966)
Babel-17
(1966)
The Einstein Intersection
(1967)
Nova
(1968)
Dhalgren
(1975)
Triton
(1976)
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
(1984)
They Fly at Çiron
(1993)
Tales of Nevèrÿon
(1979)
Neveryóna
(1983)
Flight from Nevèrÿon
(1985)
The Bridge of Lost Desire
(1987) (revised as
Return to Nevèrÿon
, 1994)
Collections
Aye, and Gomorrah
(1993)
Non-Fiction
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw
(1977, revised 2009)
The American Shore
(1978)
DedicationStarboard Wine
(1984)
For Frank Romeo
Samuel R Delany (1942 – )
Samuel Ray ‘Chip’ Delany, Jr was born in Harlem in 1942, and published his first novel at the age of just 20. As author, critic and academic, his influence on the modern genre has been profound and he remains one of science fiction’s most important and discussed writers. He has won the Hugo Award twice and the Nebula Award four times, including consecutive wins for
Babel-17
and
The Einstein Intersection
. Since January 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Samuel R Delany 1983
All rights reserved.
The right of Samuel R Delany to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11924 6
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
