The Mumpsimus

Kenneth James is editing the journals of Samuel Delany for publication. Volume 1 is coming out from Wesleyan University Press in December. For the future volumes, Ken needs help with funding. If you already know how valuable this project is, don't read on. Just go donate. But if you need some convincing, please read on...

Now available for pre-order. Here's the Wesleyan University Press page for it. Here's an excerpt from the introduction, should your appetite need whetting: It may, on a quick glance, appear to be a book about a short story. On further examination, it may appear to be a book about how science fiction works, or a contribution to the literary and cultural theory of its day. It is those things, but not only those things. Like so much of Delany’s writing, its strategies and concerns nudge our view wider. Much as the best science fiction’s trivalent discourse easily lures us into considering the meaning produced by the intersections of world and text, and thus provides a powerful space for reflection on both, so Delany’s dive over and between the lines of “Angouleme” stands as a model for and instigator of various levels of thought about all the signs and languages that produce and obscure our lives. No great text ever ends if there are still readers to read it and re-read it,...

I've told the story of how I came to write the introductions to the revised editions of Samuel Delany's The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine (the latter due to be published, last I knew, this fall [update 8/25/09: Now postponed till sometime next year]). The intro for JHJ that appears in the book, though, is very different from the first one I wrote, because from conversations with the editor at Wesleyan University Press, I got the impression that I should write a light, accessible, personal introduction for a general audience, something similar to Neil Gaiman's intro to The Einstein Intersection . No big deal. I had a sort of funny story about first encountering JHJ at much too young an age, so I built the introduction around that. Chip Delany's reply was something to the effect of, "Great intro! Wrong audience!" Oops. (And, he asked, is JHJ really that difficult? No, certainly -- but I do tend to like to be dramatic...) It turned out that Ch...

I haven't seen a copy yet, but the new edition of Samuel Delany's The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction , for which I wrote the introduction, seems to now be shipping from all of the various online booksellers. Thus, you can buy it from... An independent bookstore near you! Powells! Wesleyan University Press! Amazon.com! Somewhere else! I'll be posting some out-takes from my introduction to the book here within the next week.

You can now pre-order Wesleyan University Press's reissue of Samuel Delany's first collection of essays, The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction , from Amazon. My contacts at Wesleyan have confirmed that the book is, indeed, due to be released in June. Aside from my excitement at having these essays back in print (including "To Read The Dispossessed ", which alone is more than worth the price of the book), I'm particularly excited for this edition because I got the opportunity to write the introduction. I owe Justine Larbalestier more than I could ever offer her, because she put Chip in touch with me, and one day I returned home from work to a message on my answering machine: "Hello, Matthew Cheney, this is Samuel Delany..." I almost fell over. Then he asked if I'd do him the tremendous favor of writing the introduction to a book of his. And I think I did fall over. Since then, I not only wrote the intro to Jewel-Hinged ...