To be able to travel any further than that edge, one has to be a “golden”, a person who is psychologically different in a specific way that enables them to cope with extensive space travel. In the present Vyme is a mechanic who fixes and maintains starships at the edge of the galaxy. And while we don’t stay with this opening image for very long, it informs the rest of the story. Inside this enclosed space are crystalline plants, small sloth-like creatures with suction-cup appendages and flying lizards that start out as larvae. The main character, Vyme, describes an “ecologarium” (a self-contained ecosystem) set up on a beach for the education of the children in his procreation group. The first story in the book, “The Star-Pit” opened with some serious VanderMeer vibes. Of the ten stories I have four firm favourites: “The Star-Pit”, “Corona”, “Driftglass” and “We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line” (say that ten times fast).
This last seemed appropriate to the stories he tells however, because Delany writes about the ordinary working people of the future: the mechanics, the people laying power cables, the spaceport workers, the people using their hands. Twice Delany talks about halving holograms, and twice about telepaths, in four of his stories he describes friendships between adults and prepubescent children or teenagers, and he seems to have a fascination with people’s hands – which he describes more often than any other aspect of his characters’ appearances. The awesome cover art is by Chris FossĪs with any collection of stories by a single author, there is some repetition of ideas and images, but not much. They are various – moving from the edge of the galaxy to a small Greek island to Mars to Brazil to Canada to some sort of dream world – beautifully written, and absolutely jam-packed with ideas. Driftglass is a collection of ten short stories, (full disclosure: I am dragging myself out of a reading slump by degrees and short stories were all I could face this week), all written in the mid-to-late sixties, including the Hugo and Nebula Award winning “Time considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones”. Too old to go on the shelves (the binding split in my hands when I opened it up), we put it into the booksale, from which I bought it.Īnd yeah, the talk is justified. So I felt pretty lucky when this copy of Driftglass was donated (along with a whole bunch of vintage scifi) to the library. He’s one of those names that crops up again and again when people are discussing the early really great scifi on which our current really great scifi is built. I’ve been meaning to read Delany for about ten years now. It’s that time of year again … it’s Vintage SciFi Month! (And a Happy New Year to you all, of course!) The brainchild of the Little Red Reviewer, Andrea, you can find out more about this not-a-challenge here, but in brief, January is the month to read any scifi written before you were born.