The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany

Something great, something possibly monumentous…

A polyphonic postmodern novel hiding within an almost-“normal” sci-fi fantasy…

An exploration of the post human and the gaping dangerous pit that is nostalgia and the risks of mythology and mythologising…

A beautiful, haunting, harrowing text about life and death and love and hate… About advertising and music, about urban/rural divide… About commerce and about self-mythologising… About storytelling and the history of storytelling and possibly, too, about the future of storytelling…

It is manifesto and the enaction of a manifesto simultaneously… It is promise and execution, it is a sketch and yet it is complete… It feels both an offer, an opportunity, a question, yet also an acceptance, a choice, an answer…

It’s in the future and an alien species has colonised the Earth after humans left it (to go who knows where?) and there are extra planets between here and the sun and there is the evidence of mass exodus intergalactically and there is nuclear waste and radiation everywhere everywhere everywhere and also just so much stuff, so much literal detritus left behind by humanity but also so much so much so much non-literal detritus that humanity, humanness, seeps into these creatures…

They have made themselves in our image, like the opposite of gods, and they have tried to live in our dead cities, look at our dead media, believe in our dead myths… But none of it clicks, because our skins, our bones, our lifespans and limits are not the same as theirs… They are frustrated by the world in which they are possibly trapped upon (it isn’t clear if they still have the technology to travel) and radiation plays havoc with their genes, especially spliced as they are with ours…

There is a narrative, a quest, a journey. There are villains to be slaughtered, victims to be revenged and quite possibly a lover to be rescued from the Underworld (or at least some form of death) a la Orpheus and Eurydice. This is the most recurring point of reference , mythwise, but many other Classical and Biblical texts are referenced in here, too, as are later narratives/histories (Billy the Kid and the “Old West”), as well as some slightly more contemporary references to the novel’s 1960s publication (e.g. Ringo Starr from Thomas Tank Engine).

Allusions and references abound, with many epigraphs offered to every chapter and – the key thing – some of these epigraphs are not from published texts, but are rather excerpts from Delany’s journals taken as he travelled the world as a hip young novelist and worked on the first draft of The Einstein Intersection.

These excerpts offer not just fun and deeply engaging moments of evocative travel writing, but also comments on the narrative of the novel, on the topics and themes and intentions. These notes, though, in being part of the final collage that is the text are all the more important… This is the text commenting on itself, not a commentary that is separate from the text.

The epigraphs speak to the text, the travel diary excerpts speak to the text and the text speaks to itself.

It could feel self-indulgent if it didn’t work. It could seem gimmicky if it wasn’t actually a still rarely-used literary device (albeit one that I almost always love when it happens), but it doesn’t.

It all just works.

Having read four of Delany’s earlier novels – also all set in the far future on a radiation-ravaged Earth but with the majority of characters theoretically human – I can also see how he has honed and worked to get to this point.

The complex inventiveness of those earlier texts (which did, alas, often fall a little short of their promise or their intention) remains here; this is in no way less ambitious, it’s much much more ambitious, but everything here just works.

This is not only a fun riff on a myth and a fun riff on a typical depiction of a post-apocalyptic Earth, it’s also a complex, articulate and serious exploration of the nature of narrative and storytelling and myth building.

It can also be seen as an analogy about the dangers of people trying to force themselves into patterns of life and behaviours that don’t suit them or their natures, merely because [they believe that] “it’s what people living on Earth do”.

I think it’s brilliant. I think. Maybe I’m wrong. I have been before.

But I read this and felt slapped about, intellectually (tbf I haven’t been challenging myself since the baby was born); I felt energised and excited… Awake and connected and engaged and… Yes. Pro-Delany.

Highly recommended.

I think it’s very excellent. But, again, what do I know?