Talk:Samuel R. Delany

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[edit] Delany's name?

Should the name of this article be "Samuel R. Delany" instead of "Samuel Delany"? That is how the author is named on all his published work.

Seems fair enough, and consistent with other authors here. I say be bold and move it. Matthew Woodcraft
His nickname, by which he is generally addressed, is Chip. Apparently he chose it himself.
Nuttyskin 04:15, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] extreme aspects of human sexuality

Does anyone else think the phrase "extreme aspects of human sexuality" is POV? --MJ

Not really. Do you know someone who doesn't think that's an accurate description of, say, 'The Mad Man'? Matthew Woodcraft
Right, but the way it's written it denotes that he's also written *autobiographical* work with "extreme aspects of human sexuality," which is a more troubling assertion. --MJ (sorry, I'll get an account etc set up soon!)
Uh, yeah. I wouldn't want to edit it myself, but "most of his work" seems an overstatement. Unless you consider gay or a gay/bi subtext to be "extreme", it really only applies to his self-described pornographic works: The Tides of Lust (aka Equinox), The Mad Man, and Hogg.
I am familiar with the contents of his works, an old friend of his, and married to one of his editors. I would say that "extreme aspects of human sexuality" is precisely and factually accurate. Applied to another body of work, it might be POV; but here the truth of the statement overwhems its subjectivity. Kathryn Cramer Pleasantville 23:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, it's something of a moot point, now. That phrase is long gone from the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kdring (talk • contribs) 17:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC).
Oooh! Bad boy! Sign your statements! I was actually coming back to add my sig, but the 'bot was faster.--Kdring 17:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biographical stuff

To be consistent with other wiki articles about writers, should the biographical material be a section "below the line," and perhaps filled out a bit, with a more general "who is SRD?" statement "above the line?" [User:Sturgeonslawyer|Sturgeonslawyer]

I strongly disagree with this statement. It is untrue, trivial, and misleading:

"Delany vaulted onto the literary stage when he was included in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions. Harlan gave a short introduction that ironically pointed out how Delany was one of the last straight science fiction authors. "

Dangerous Visions was published in 1967. Delany did not 'vault' onto any 'literary stage' at that point; he was a published science fiction author of six science fiction novels and one novella, all published by Ace. 'Literary stage' is misleading and hackneyed.

The stuff about the short introduction to him in Dangerous Visions is at best irrelevant. It's not an important milestone in his life or the science fiction field.

If I don't hear some comments for keeping it, I'd like to take it out.

ZviGilbert 20:24, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I fixed it and moved it under 'Other Facts' where it belongs. ZviGilbert 20:36, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neveryon

Probably the Neveryon books should not be under "novels" in the bibliography - three of the four are collections of novellas and short stories. Does anyone have any strong objection to moving them? [User:Sturgeonslawyer|Sturgeonslawyer]

Well, nobody's said anything, so I'm going to go ahead. [User:Sturgeonslawyer|Sturgeonslawyer] 2005Ap22 10:51PDST

[edit] Misspelled name

The pop-up text on the image has his first name misspelled "Sauel", but I don't know how to fix that. (Ironically, part of the article mentions his name being frequently misspelled!)

Thanks for pointing that out. Its fixed now. -Seth Mahoney 04:02, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ellison quote

How to rephrase this? Given SRD's orientation, the quote "Delany was one of the last straight science fiction authors" acquires an unintentional ambiguity. Tearlach 7 July 2005 01:50 (UTC)

I'd say just remove the wikilink to straight. The ambiguity isn't really that ambiguous, and its entirely fitting. -Seth Mahoney July 7, 2005 04:00 (UTC)
And while you're at it, please remove the link to gay writers. Samuel R Delany is bisexual - not only behaviourally, but avowedly so.
Nuttyskin 04:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Huh? Delany is gay and has said so in print countless times. He is not bisexual. Many gay men have had at least some sex with women. --SethTisue 20:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
  • The so-called Ellison quote is not in the intro to "Aye, and Gomorrah" in the edition put out by the SF Book Club. I've removed it, but if someone can prove that Ellison said Delany was straight in a revised version of the intro to a another printing of the book, I'll relent. Sir Rhosis 03:24, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing work?

They Fly At Ciron [1] is missing, but I'm only familiar with the 1996 reprint [2]. Given the disparity in page lengths (171 vs 256) I'm uncertain of differences.

[edit] Repeated imagery

Should there be a discussion of the repeated imagery woven into Delany's works? Perhaps as a part of the Themes section? Some examples would be a character missing one shoe or biting his nails. Or the name of the city in both Dhalgren and Trouble on Triton being "Bellona."

Is this worth expanding upon? --Kdring 23:30, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a trivia section? or in Other facts, just because I don't know if such things would qualify as themes, but they could I suppose. Anyway, I'm for their inclusion. I always found such idiosyncrasies interesting. Jseipel 03:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Or perhaps major and minor themes? I do feel the current themes section is inadequate. Or at the very least it is stuck on but one of the many major themes that pervade his work. It really shouldn't focus only on sex. His work is about so much more than that.
I decided to just go ahead and do it. I made changes to the beginning and ending of the existing paragraph, took a chunk out of it to use as a closing paragraph, and added an opening paragraph that expanded on the other major themes in Delany's work.

[edit] nickname

Besides the "The Dartmouth" cite, Google returns over 100,000 hits for "samuel chip delany", most of which refer to the subject of this article. I'd move it back to the lead, but there was at least a little resistance to that. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

My only objection is to putting in the bolded name. I wouldn't object to moving the mention to the lead, though I'm not sure there is a great need for it there. I wanted to add The Dartmouth and the date of issue to the citation, but I'm not sure how those cite tags work. Are there fields for those things? IPSOS (talk) 02:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I guess I've heard and read enough of him as "Chip" that it's more than a nickname. Anyway, I've expanded the citation. I need to go through and clean up some of the other refs as well. Thanks for your help! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:08, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
And thanks for yours. I just looked at the diff expanding the reference so now I know how to do that at least. :-) (I'm not sure I like the cite tags as much as simply formatting it myself...) IPSOS (talk) 03:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I think it's a matter of what works for the page. The cite tags are very useful on pages like the Dhalgren article, where some works are cited repeatedly. For this page, another method is just fine. --Kdring 17:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it can be "more than a nickname" if it's not on his passport or license, no matter how many people use it. Hmmm, would it be more appropriate to cite The Motion of Light in Water" here? He actually discusses his nickname in the book. --Kdring 17:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citing references

I've removed the "more sources" template from the article because I don't see anything that particularly needs a citation. If there are facts that you think ought to be referenced, please indicate them within the body of the text so I can supply a reference for them. Jd4v15 06:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Out of Print/Banished from Amazon??

I was startled to find (on a search on 28 aug 07) that Amazon lists just ONE title by Delaney, and B&N.com only ONE (a different one). None of the novels or critical works cited are listed for current purchase. Can it be true that all of this author's works are so out of print as not to merit listing? Or is something more nefarious going on?

It helps if you spell his name right. It's "Delany" not "Delaney". I get 12 currently in-print books for sale and several pages of used and out-of-print books. IPSOS (talk) 02:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
If you talk to Chip at conventions, though, you'll soon learn that he's had trouble for years keeping his books in print. He's not a "safe" writer like Robert Jordan or Misty Lackey (both nice people, but less edgy). --Orange Mike | Talk 15:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Order

Shouldn't information about his work come before his biography? The main reason we are interested is his stories. Life.temp (talk) 23:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies), there doesn't seem to be an "official" order. But in my experience, bio-before-work is pretty common in biographical articles (William Shakespeare, Goethe, Stephen King...). Jd4v15 (talk) 01:00, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
What makes the most sense to the editors here? I vote for a profile of his writing before details of personal history. Life.temp (talk) 12:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

However it is ordered, shouldn't it be Life and Works rather than Biography/Themes? The word 'Themes' in particular seems to make too little of Delany as a writer. His work is so much more than a collection of thematic preoccupations.

While I share the dislike of criticism that makes the work secondary to the life, the following points could be made: 1] Life seems to precede Works in major author articles on Wikipedia. (though I'm sure there are exceptions) 2] Delany has (at times) made books out of his own life, both in writing memoirs and in explicitly introducing topics related to his times and experiences into his fiction. 3] Perhaps the introduction paragraph should emphasise his work in order to solve the problem identified by Life.temp? I'm not a regular editor at all, so please forgive me if these points aren't helpful.Millichip (talk) 12:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that as it's an entry about the person, a biography should come first. As to Themes vs. Works, that would only be appropriate if someone actually wrote a section on his works (which are also, of course, discussed in differing lengths on their individual pages). Right now, all there is is a discussion of the themes that run throughout his body of work, so the title is appropriate. It would be VERY nice if someone were to expand the article, though! Kdring (talk) 17:11, 16 April 2008 (UTC)