Nova

This was my second Delany after the very underwhelming 'Jewels of Aptor' and I picked this up not only to see if his later works would grab me, but also with the desire for a quick slice of straightforward space opera to break up an omnibus I was reading. Instead I found a sluggish story of obsession which focuses a lot on world building, drawn out character backstory and a has a jarring lack of focus.

The story at its surface is about one man’s quest to find a nova and mine its heart for a precious energy source. Haunted by a previous attempt and followed by an even more determined and vengeful rival, Captain Lorq assembles his crew and prepares to change the balance of power across an entire galaxy.

All well and good, but at times it show more feels like the side plot to advance other objectives. There's a lot of well developed musings from each character about their own and their friends' place and motivations, but mostly the narrative gets drawn away on subjects like how to write a great novel (is the author validating themselves or advising through the fourth wall?), discussions on the varying perspectives of history and a whole chapter on the acceptance of tarot in a future enlightened society. Combined with a lot of repetitive scenes of playing music from an admittedly cool holographic instrument, alongside a lot of dialogue using words out of order (simulating dialect differences), it's just exhausting trying to get through to the story itself. The first half of the book alone is mostly a series of flashbacks and takes up considerable time for such a short novel.

Whilst the above would have worked better in succinction, there were glimmers of brilliance I enjoyed which made the effort worthwhile. I loved the technology; for example, we got cool ships which are intelligently designed for their function. We also see that everyone has cybernetic implants to jack into various technologies and a discussion about why anyone without them are pitied. I loved the worlds and strange buildings I got to visit. I particularly loved a fishing scene of a group sailing an ocean of fog on special nets attached to their body-sockets, in order to catch leviathans. And the surface story itself is daring as they plan to fly into a nova to mine an ultra rare element and change the balance of galactic civilisation forever. There's also an important level of seamless diversity between the characters which is very refreshing to see for a classic piece of science fiction.

However, by page 200 (out of about 240), so much time is spent on the subtext that we still haven't got to the 'nova' at the heart of the surface level plot and are still filling in gaps in the reader’s understanding of the civilisation Delany has crafted. And that is where my issue lies. Whilst the climactic chapter pulls no punchs and ties everything together satisfactorily, too much meandering meant my interest was hard to sustain. I acknowledge Delany is doing great things in brights bursts here, but this fell short of complete greatness for me, simply because it tries too hard to break out of established norms from earlier eras and raise itself as intelligent, allegory-rich literature. To mixed results where boredom and genius seem to co-exist. show less

What marks Delany as a cut above is that he doesn't go for the most obvious approach to a subject- though the first few chapters suggest it, this isn't a science-fiction take on Moby-Dick. Sure, that quintessential American classic is one point of reference for the nature of Captain Lorq Von Ray and his quest, and there are intentional parallels to that story, but Von Ray is more than just Ahab in a spaceship. Nor is this purely a science-fiction grail quest. Delany draws from these sources of inspiration and makes the story his own.

Nova gives us some interesting and developed characters: think how rare a character like Katin is, a protagonist that isn't liked very much by most of his crew-mates, but who isn't a martyr or unjustly show more persecuted or bullied, he's just a guy the rest of the crew find annoying. There may be a few more characters than necessary, however, as Lynceos, Idas, Sebastian, and Tyy weren't very developed. Prince may have been a one-note purely evil antagonist, but his sister Ruby was more developed and dynamic, and their relationship with each other was interesting as well. Despite the cast of characters being small, this didn't cause the universe of Nova to feel artificially small, in fact the universe was impressively developed considering how short the book is.

In a few hundred pages Delany gives us a world of different political factions, economic systems, rival families, and (more importantly for me) a host of interesting settings. From Istanbul of Earth to the City of Perpetual Night, from the largest museum in the universe to Hell^3, the quest of this story spans the universe, each location being memorable and interesting. It's reminiscent of globe-trotting adventure movies like Indiana Jones, exotic locale followed by exotic locale, but while reading the book it never felt like Delany was throwing in new settings just to entertain (not that I'd complain if that were his motivation). Instead the settings gave context to, and magnified the action of, the story.

I'm making this book sound like a pulp sci-fi adventure or space opera, and in many ways it truly is primarily an adventure novel, but what pulls it out of the category of pulp is that Delany can really write, and that Delany uses the story to speak to what it means to belong, the process of writing a novel, and what it means to live more generally. Nova has something to say about the human condition, something that us fans of the genre would like to think many works of science-fiction achieve, but that in reality few do. It's far from a perfect book, but it's a good one, and it makes me want to read more Delany in the future. That being said, I already dropped Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand for really not being my cup of tea, so I certainly don't expect to enjoy all of Delany's works. Likewise, even if you liked this book, don't assume Delany's other books will be at all similar to this one, or that you'll enjoy them. But really, I guess there's no way to know until you try plunging in just like a nova, har har bad reference/joke thing. show less

3.5/5

In this short little space opera, the colonized universe is separated into three political zones defined by their distance from Earth's sphere of influence. The cost of transportation within the zones and between them is immense, dominated by two elite families who have respective monopolies on spacecraft construction, and the rare fuel that is used to fuel them and all large scale machinery. In a bid for power, the heir to one of these families, Lorq Von Ray, discovers that this fuel (Illyrion) can be found and potentially collected in enormous quantities from the center of active supernovas. In his quest to do so, he assembles a group of ragtag swabbies who operate his spacecraft with neural jacks that are subdermally installed show more into their bodies. With the blood feud between these families reignited, it's a race against the clock and each other to hold the destiny of the known universe in their hands.

Left in the hands of a lesser writer I could see the conventional premise being downright boring, but thankfully Delany is able to do a lot which what is at its heart a pulp adventure flick. Delany's modernist prose style is married with a mythical, theatrical tone that gives the novel both some chewy density as well as a classical flare that I wasn't necessarily expecting but most of the time found myself enjoying. He also created a really memorable cast of characters outside of the captain himself. There's the Romani kid from Earth with a gravelly voice who play an instrument called a Syrnx, a representation of Pan's Flute that evokes the sounds, sights, and smells of ancient Earth that entertains the crew and connects them to their shared history. There's the wandering academic searching for legitimacy to write a novel of his own, a now archaic way of telling a story. There's the tarot-reading ace pilot and her creature keeping partner, and the twins from the outer colonies who crave an inhaled hallucinogenic known as Bliss. The members of the crew are downright interesting and believable, complete with their own flaws, ticks, and traits.

Delany takes time to explicitly use some of the technology and political landscape he invents to comment on real-world affairs. The subdermal studs or jacks that the working class have allow them to be much more connected tangibly to their work, creates an ease of employment no matter the location, and prevents them from being disenfranchised by changes in technology or market force. Despite a perceived cultural black hole that is commented on throughout the novel, workers in Nova are more connected to the means of production than they were at any other time in history. Here, Delany has created a technology that doesn't strip the workers of their labor rights, but actually empowers them from a Marxist perspective. Delany also uses the difference between the crew and their billionaire captain to explicitly discuss race and class, both of which play a tangible role in people's lives even in the future

Now, none of this is to say that Nova is without its flaws. There are certainly sections of the novel that are slow in pace and style, hardly the high action that was promised on the back cover, and plenty of cultural references that date it back to the 1960's, the Mamas and the Papas reference in particular. While I loved most of the characterization work, I would've liked if Von Ray's antagonistic foil, the Red Shift heir, referred to as Prince, weren't quite so monochromatic and unsympathetic. I'm also not sold on the ending of the novel, which is tied up in a literary conceit that felt to me as inorganic and forced in comparison to the rest of the narrative. I had the feeling that Delany is better than this, that he's capable of more, but then again he wrote this when he was 25 so I'm sure that he was still coming into form.

Nova is an overly intellectual and sometimes stymieing work that despite all of its blessing felt directionless in the end. There are so many different promising threads here that Delany starts to weave together, I'm just not sure he was able to finish tying them into a purposeful conclusion. That being said, despite its complexity, it's a very approachable work in comparison to Triton, and if read for the prose and characters first I think you can find a lot here to enjoy. An oddball to be sure. show less

Delany's Nova is nearly exactly as old as me (written in 1966-7, first published in August 1968), and I am stunned at how well it has aged. Although it is a short novel, it is a sprawling space opera set in the 32nd century, and its optimistic forecast for a technologically accomplished galactic humanity is still one that seems believable today (as long as one can imagine our species surviving its several impending comeuppances). This is a book that's been on my radar as a vague "to be read someday" for many, many years. In a way, I'm glad I didn't read it any earlier, because it's all the more impressive for its sustained integrity.

There's no way that anyone would have considered making this a movie when it was published in the 1960s. show more But in the 21st century we have both the effects technology and the audience sophistication to make it worthwhile. The Wachowskis could totally pull it off. Still, Delany is resolutely literary in this book, with the character Katin serving as a metafictionally reflexive anchor: he aspires to write a novel, an anachronistic impossibility in his star-spanning culture.

The story has a fine central ensemble of characters in the crew of the starship Roc: gypsy musician, moonish intellectual, soft-spoken cartomancer, scarred quester, and so on. The villains are detestable enough, although they have their justifications, and the heroes are interestingly flawed. There are exotic and inspiring landscapes, architecture, and space vistas. It's got grittiness and high sentiment, social philosophy and action-adventure. There's even a metafictional brag that it contains some sort of "mystical symbolism." In any case, it's a worthwhile read. show less

More Energy Than a Nova

Lorq Von Ray is a man on a quest, driven by his desire to defeat his nemesis Prince Red, wrest away the primacy of the Draco system, Earth and its immediate colonies, controlled by the Red family, and establish the supremacy of the Pleiades Federation, Lorq’s home system. With worlds separated by light years, the principal industry is transportation, both the building of ships, controlled by the Red family, and the mining of fuel, a major Von Ray business, to propel them. The fuel is Illyrion, a precious substance because only small quantities can be extracted by mining it in the Outer Colonies. However, at the moment a star goes nova, tons of the stuff are created. Lorq has tried before to capture Illyrion and show more failed, but discovered that he can pilot straight through a nova and scoop of vast amounts of the stuff, seven tons to be exact, and thereby accomplish his twin goals. His quest and the various adventures it entails comprise the overarching narrative of the novel. And as a rip-roaring adventure novel, it in itself is a great yarn. In addition, though, Samuel R. Delany, who wrote this at age 25, jams quite a bit of sharp and witty observations on life grounded in the mundanity of good old Earth of 1968, not to mention current times. And it’s these layers that add immensely to the novel’s enjoyment.

Science fiction readers like to see authors create substantial worlds, both as backdrops to the action and as places removed the confines of this world. Delany’s worlds span light years in our galaxy, with some, like the planet Vorpis, at once alien, inhospitable, beautiful, and testament to human ingenuity. Those weaned on the likes of Star Trek and Star Wars like characters to traverse vast distances in the blink of an eye, and Delany doesn’t disappoint. Too, many want their protagonists larger than life, stronger, wittier, prettier, and humbly flawed. Here Delany provides a host of fatally flawed characters, like Prince Red, blind with revenge, Ruby Red, magnetically beautiful but unalterably attached to Red, and Lorq, who can’t see beyond an ambition that could destroy him. This, combined with the idea of power, how to get it, how to hold onto it, should satisfy a majority of readers.

Delany notches things up by expanding on other subjects very much on the minds of humans stuck here on Earth for the foreseeable future. In Delany’s distant future, race and nationality are still dividers, as crew member Mouse’s origin story reveals, not to mention the contrasted appearances of twins Lynceos and Idas. Too, Caucasians predominate in the Draco sphere, while both Pleiades and the Outer Colonies feature a racial mix, as Lorq himself exemplifies. Like our world of today, where we find ourselves not only attached to devices that determine to an increasing degree whether or not we will be successful, in Delany’s world, human and machine fuse via plug-in sockets that make flesh and metal one, and employment and acceptance accrue to those who accept this merging. Delany also ventures into philosophy as it involves creativity, with Mouse an accomplished musician able to conjure moods and worlds on his syrynx that incorporates a sort of hologram projector driven more by spontaneity vs. fellow crew member Katin, highly educated, given to long expositions on a variety of topics, and obsessed to the point of inaction by intellectualizing and planning the novel he wishes to write.

In short, then, Delany’s Nova can be read on a variety of levels, from fast-paced space opera to exploration of societal issues to metaphysics, enough to satisfy all types of sci-fi readers, as well as those who only occasionally read the genre. show less

More Energy Than a Nova

Lorq Von Ray is a man on a quest, driven by his desire to defeat his nemesis Prince Red, wrest away the primacy of the Draco system, Earth and its immediate colonies, controlled by the Red family, and establish the supremacy of the Pleiades Federation, Lorq’s home system. With worlds separated by light years, the principal industry is transportation, both the building of ships, controlled by the Red family, and the mining of fuel, a major Von Ray business, to propel them. The fuel is Illyrion, a precious substance because only small quantities can be extracted by mining it in the Outer Colonies. However, at the moment a star goes nova, tons of the stuff are created. Lorq has tried before to capture Illyrion and show more failed, but discovered that he can pilot straight through a nova and scoop of vast amounts of the stuff, seven tons to be exact, and thereby accomplish his twin goals. His quest and the various adventures it entails comprise the overarching narrative of the novel. And as a rip-roaring adventure novel, it in itself is a great yarn. In addition, though, Samuel R. Delany, who wrote this at age 25, jams quite a bit of sharp and witty observations on life grounded in the mundanity of good old Earth of 1968, not to mention current times. And it’s these layers that add immensely to the novel’s enjoyment.

Science fiction readers like to see authors create substantial worlds, both as backdrops to the action and as places removed the confines of this world. Delany’s worlds span light years in our galaxy, with some, like the planet Vorpis, at once alien, inhospitable, beautiful, and testament to human ingenuity. Those weaned on the likes of Star Trek and Star Wars like characters to traverse vast distances in the blink of an eye, and Delany doesn’t disappoint. Too, many want their protagonists larger than life, stronger, wittier, prettier, and humbly flawed. Here Delany provides a host of fatally flawed characters, like Prince Red, blind with revenge, Ruby Red, magnetically beautiful but unalterably attached to Red, and Lorq, who can’t see beyond an ambition that could destroy him. This, combined with the idea of power, how to get it, how to hold onto it, should satisfy a majority of readers.

Delany notches things up by expanding on other subjects very much on the minds of humans stuck here on Earth for the foreseeable future. In Delany’s distant future, race and nationality are still dividers, as crew member Mouse’s origin story reveals, not to mention the contrasted appearances of twins Lynceos and Idas. Too, Caucasians predominate in the Draco sphere, while both Pleiades and the Outer Colonies feature a racial mix, as Lorq himself exemplifies. Like our world of today, where we find ourselves not only attached to devices that determine to an increasing degree whether or not we will be successful, in Delany’s world, human and machine fuse via plug-in sockets that make flesh and metal one, and employment and acceptance accrue to those who accept this merging. Delany also ventures into philosophy as it involves creativity, with Mouse an accomplished musician able to conjure moods and worlds on his syrynx that incorporates a sort of hologram projector driven more by spontaneity vs. fellow crew member Katin, highly educated, given to long expositions on a variety of topics, and obsessed to the point of inaction by intellectualizing and planning the novel he wishes to write.

In short, then, Delany’s Nova can be read on a variety of levels, from fast-paced space opera to exploration of societal issues to metaphysics, enough to satisfy all types of sci-fi readers, as well as those who only occasionally read the genre. show less

Mi primer reseña:

Siempre me pasa lo mismo con los autores anglos de género (y específicamente con los de la new wave de ciencia-ficción), sus ideas y conceptos son geniales pero sus diálogos me embrutecen. Quizá debería leerlos en su idioma original...

A Delany hace mucho que lo quiero leer y no defraudó, es poético y extraño y cuenta historias violentas con tintes bíblicos (si van a robar, siempre roben de la biblia).

En Nova hay poesía, una especie de metaficción (Katin Bin podría se el propio Delany), critica social (hay una importante lucha de clases esencial para la historia), filosofía y mucho lore, es impresionante la cantidad de información que hay en 270 páginas sobre el mundo en donde sucede la historia. Se show more adelanta al cyberpunk por más de 10 años.

Nova es una opera espacial sobre una tripulación en busca de toneladas de ilirión (un recurso natural esencial para el funcionamiento del imperio intergaláctico de la humanidad) y el único lugar donde se puede conseguir esa cantidad es en una nova, una estrella en explosión... show less