Very much enjoyed this book. Truly improved an otherwise daunting cross-country bus trip. ( )

Dude. Like, wooah. I mean far out man.

Yes it is 1967 and, seemingly, everyone is a bell-end. This book is so steeped in the utter dross of the nineteen sixties that it is almost impossible to have any sort of objective opinion on it. It is a time piece. A fragment of a best forgotten time. Like so many books that try for the cutting edge it hasn't aged well.

That said though, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Sometimes it is interesting to read things like this. To see a fragment of a new thought before it collapses under it's own silliness. The book can be forgiven many crimes because it is so slim. This means it can be read through in a couple of hours. It is laughable as science but has it's moments as fiction and surely as a work of the imagination that is the real truth.

It is hard to be mean about such a lovable preposterous train wreck of a thing. At the end you are willing it to all come together, and it tries, but when it fails you don't get too cross about it. I'm not sure it's position as a mini-classic is safe but it is quite a fun read.

Delany was 25 when this book won the 1968 Nebula for best novel (his third!). It is a strange, yet compelling read. It's kind of a fantasy/horror story set in a science fiction universe, with a strong thread of mythology running throughout. Add to this a collection of quotes both from other authors and from Delany's notes that he was keeping as he was writing this book (he was touring Italy and Greece), and you have a thoroughly confusing, genre-hopping, yet oddly poetic quick read. The book is populated with archetypal characters who explore difference vs. sameness, reality vs. perception, observation vs. action. I'm not sure that I understood what happened at the end, and I'm not sure that repeated readings would make it any clearer, but I think it would be worth repeated readings to find out. ( )

A tale, by the young Delany, of a strange far future. With lovely epigraphs on each chapter.

This book is crap. There was no through story line and there was no closure at the end of the book either. I'm angry that I wasted time reading it. Lobey (Lo Lobey) is a pathetic excuse for a main character and to me it seemed that Delany's world was not fully thought out.

http://iamagirldork.livejournal.com/1... ( )