Nova by Samuel R. Delany

It’s been a little while since I read a Delany. Not compared to the gaps between reading my most recent Virginia Woolf and the one before that, but given that Delany is one of the writers I’ve been steadily ploughing through since first encountering his oeuvre, a gap of a few months feels conspicuous.

I return, then, from my play with Delany’s 1980s “sword-and-sorcery” [and critical theory] series, Return to Nevèrÿon, back to my chronological walk through the writer’s books.

Nova (1968) was Delany’s final novel of the 1960s and his last one for several years – he didn’t publish another book length work of fiction (save a volume of erotica, The Tides of Lust (1973)) until 1975, with his highly acclaimed (and commercially successful) tome, Dhalgren, which will be accompanying me (in order to be read) if I end up being able to take a holiday this Summer.

Nova was published immediately after Delany’s two-year-in-a-row Nebula winning streak, with The Einstein Intersection and Babel-17 (in the other order). He had also been winning (and nearly winning) prizes year-on-year for his short fiction, so the world was as hungry for Samuel R. Delany when Nova came out as I am now.

So, then, as I’m sure you’re all raring to find out: what’s it about? And is it any good?

Although I haven’t yet read Dhalgren, I know enough vaguely about it (and have seen the copy I own enough times) to feel that Nova is thus somewhere between those previous novels and the one that is to come.

Not only is this a science fiction adventure quest novel riffing on ancient mythologies (like The Einstein Intersection), and not only is it a close character study about a tightknit crew scouring the universe while getting to know themselves and each other, like Babel-17… It’s both of these things, but it is also seeking to evoke and describe an entire interplanetary and intergalactic space society, the economics and the politics of it, and function, too, as a vast allegorical commentary on global political systems and the ways in which literature (and other arts) can be used to influence and control, but also as essential vectors of human need…

In this distant future, everyone (bar the increasingly rare hold-outs living outside of most societies) has multiple sockets on their body, which are attached to any and all machines that they may operate. This technology was invented in order to connect humans, directly, with their labour, and resulted in happier and more content populations, ultimately permitting the collaboration and cohesion needed to colonise the stars (within the context of the novel).

Our cast of characters are the crew of a spaceship which is flying towards an imminent supernova in order to harvest from the centre of its explosion the high atomic weight element which is used to fuel the spaceships of interstellar, beyond light speed, flight. They are led by the heir of a huge – but upstart and space-provincial, and with shady origins – space conglomerate, who is essentially in a race against the heirs of a different – and Earth-based, old money, very respectable – space conglomerate to figure out how to source infinite energy and remake interstellar society.

One of the rival heirs has a hyper strong bionic arm, but that also means he is missing one of the sockets mentioned above and is therefore treated like a freak (or at least behaves like he expects to be treated like a freak. He is not Delany’s most complex villain…)

One of the crew wants to bring novels back from extinction, which permits lots of dialogue around creativity and literature and the myths and narratives he would like to retell (essentially various versions of the Grail story (pre Indiana Jones 3), which Nova is self-consciously playing with).

Some members of the crew share some seemingly magical pets, but these are without a doubt the worst feature of the novel – the ambiguity and shifting physical descriptions of these alien animals feel less like cool, kooky mysteriousness and more like a procrastinated decision on what these animals are actually meant to be…

There’s lots about Tarot, which in this space future is seen to be a true and reliable augury… there’s lots of travel and many different locations and planets described, but ultimately Nova just doesn’t quite feel as electric, as surprising and as knock-out fucking perfect as did the two novels (mentioned above) and the two novellas (Empire Star and The Ballad of Beta-2) that preceded this in Delany’s oeuvre.

Buuuutttttt:

Is it good? Yes.

Is it fun? Yes.

Is it exciting? Yes.

Is it life changing and mind blowing? No.

But I’m holding this to Delany standards, not to general ones. I’ve read some books I haven’t loved recently (please note that books are not necessarily read in the order the posts about them arrive and not 100% of all things I read get blogged about) and I intentionally picked this hoping for a best-in-show palate cleanser. It wasn’t that. (But when one goes from an ivory spoon of crap to an ivory spoon of caviar, it’s probably hard to enjoy the better taste there, too…)

Recommended, and far better than his debut (The Jewels of Aptor) and early trilogy The Fall of the Towers, but not as spectacular as I’ve come to expect.

I liked it. Yes I did. But I had hoped to fall in love again…