Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
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| Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand | |
 Dust-jacket from the first edition |
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| Author | Samuel R. Delany |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
| Publication date | 1984 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 368 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-05053-2 |
| Followed by | The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities (unfinished) |
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (November 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. It was part of a planned diptych whose second half, The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities, remains unfinished; in September 1996 the Review of Contemporary Fiction printed an excerpt.
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[edit] Plot summary
The novel takes place in a far future in which human societies have developed divergently on many planets. They are beginning to coalesce into two broad factions, one generally permissive (the Sygn) and one generally conservative (the Family) by today's standards, in an attempt to find a stable defense against the planet destroying phenomenon known as "cultural fugue". On one of the Sygn worlds, where sexual relationships take many forms—monogamous, promiscuous, anonymous, and interspecies—Marq Dyeth, an "industrial diplomat" who liaises with alien cultures, has a romantic affair with Rat Korga, a freed slave from a destroyed world who is the only known survivor of cultural fugue.
[edit] Major themes
As in Trouble on Triton, the novel explores conflicting ideas about personal freedom and desire (Korga has voluntarily opted for a form of psychosurgery making him incapable of anxiety or independent thought), and definitions of gender (the novel invents an alternate use of grammatical gender, in which the pronouns he and she reveal the speaker's sexual interest in the subject rather than the subject's biological sex or social gender). Like several of Delany's other works, it portrays a relationship between an intellectual and a disadvantaged person. It also includes extended digressions by Dyeth as the narrator, speaking to the reader about history, art, sex, politics and civilization.
[edit] Editions
- Bantam, 1984, 368 pp, hardcover. ISBN 0-553-05053-2
- Bantam Spectra, 1985, 368 pp, paperback. ISBN 0-553-25149-X
- QPB/Bantam, 1985, 368 pp, paperback. no ISBN
- Grafton/Panther, 1986, 464 pp, paperback, ISBN 0-586-06749-3
- Bantam Spectra, 1990, 385 pp, paperback, ISBN 0-553-25149-X, adds a 10 page afterword on postmodernism
- Wesleyan University Press, 2004, 356 pp, paperback. ISBN 0-8195-6714-0, adds a foreword by Carl Freedman
[edit] Reviews
- Negative Review: http://www.goldkeys.com/ScienceFiction/reviews/999976472X.html
- Positive Review: http://www.sfreviews.com/docs/Samuel%20R.%20Delaney_1984_Stars%20In%20My%20Pocket%20Like%20Grains%20Of%20Sand.htm
[edit] External links
- "From The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities". The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XVI, no. 3, 1996.
[edit] References
- Brown, Charles N.; William G. Contento. The Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984-1998). Retrieved on 2008-01-01.
