A press release from Fantastic Books:
Fantastic Books is honored to be publishing On Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, edited by Bill Wood, put together with a great deal of assistance from Delany himself.
Samuel R. Delany is the winner of two Hugos and four Nebula Awards. He has been honored with lifetime achievement awards, including SFWA’s Grand Master, the Eaton Award, the Lambda Pilgrim Award, and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Dhalgren, his most popular and most controversial novel, was first published in 1975. It was nominated for the Nebula Award, remains in print to this day, and has sold close to two million copies in a variety of editions.
This book—full of reviews, critical essays, and in-depth analyses of Dhalgren as a novel, and as commentary on life and the world—is an excellent companion to the novel itself. There are also discussions of how to read the novel, and clues to unraveling some of the mysteries hidden therein. Dhalgren is a difficult novel to read—playing with the reader’s perception through the use of circular text, interior echoes, multistable perception, and repeated imagery—but it is a worthwhile read. The book includes nine full-color illustrations (and more spot black-and-white illos), as well as an essay on “The Making of Hogg,” Delany’s infamous and nearly unpublishable novel.
Contributing authors include Douglas Barbour, Mary Kay Bray, Rudi Dornemann, Harlan Ellison, Robert Elliot Fox, Jean Marc Gawron, Kenneth R. James, Gerald Jonas, John Nizalowski, Steven Paley, Darrell Schweitzer, Steven Shaviro, K. Leslie Steiner, Theodore Sturgeon, and, of course, Samuel R. Delany himself.
Fantastic Books will publish On Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren on September 9, 2021, in simultaneous trade paperback and case laminate hardcover editions.
Trade Paperback
ISBN 978-1-5154-2419-2
272 pages, $21.99
Case Laminate Hardcover
ISBN 978-1-5154-4772-6
272 pages, $31.99
On Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren—and all Fantastic Books publications—are distributed through Ingram, and available through all major online retailers and specialty sf shops via direct order from the publisher.
Contents:
“Only One Hundred Years Till Death of Harlow!” by Steven Paley
“S. F.” by Gerald Jonas
“Breakdown of a Breakthrough Novel” by Harlan Ellison
“Galaxy Bookshelf” by Theodore Sturgeon
“The Autumnal City” by Douglas Barbour
“Dully Grinning Delany Descends to Disaster” by Darrell Schweitzer
“Words: And Now Tomorrow” by Gerald Jonas
“Now Read This” by John Nizalowski
“Dhalgren” by Rudi Dornemann
“Of Sex, Objects, Signs, Systems, Sales, Sf, And Other Things” by Samuel R. Delany
“Some Remarks Toward A Reading of Dhalgren” by K. Leslie Steiner
“From ‘The Semiology of Silence,’ an interview with Samuel R. Delany”
“Looking Back at the Autumnal City” by Samuel R. Delany
“The Instruction Manual” by John Ashbery
“Amnesia” by Steven Shaviro
“An ‘Introduction’” by Jean Marc Gawron
“Rites of Reversal: Double Consciousness in Delany’s Dhalgren” by Mary Kay Bray
“This You-Shaped Hole of Insight and Fire” by Robert Elliot Fox
“Subverted Equations G. Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form and Samuel R. Delany’s
Analytics of Attention” by Kenneth R. James
“The Making of Hogg”
How would the Miracle on Ice 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team been different if it included Billie Jean King, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Rosalind Franklin? If you think you’ve got an interesting idea, it might fit in Three Time Travelers Walk Into…, a nifty time travel anthology Fantastic Books will be publishing if the Kickstarter campaign is successful. And we’re into the home stretch: we’ve got six days left, and a scant $1,400 to go. Check it out! Tell your friends! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/667435382/three-time-travelers-walk-into
And in other news, today is publication day for On Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, a collection that Publishers Weekly called “immersive and comprehensive.” The book is the #1 New Release in Amazon’s 20th Century Literary Criticism category, and we’re thrilled.
Ian Randal Strock 