Dhalgren (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

A young man arrives in the anarchic city of Bellona, in a near future USA. This world has two moons but could otherwise be our own.The man, known only as 'the Kid' begins to write a novel called Dhalgren that begins where it ends. Dhalgren is about the possibilites of fiction and about the special demands and pleasures of youth culture.

Samuel R. Delany Jr., celebrated science fiction and short story writer, was born in Harlem, N.Y., in 1942 to Samuel Ray and Margaret Carey. Delany suffered from dyslexia, which was not diagnosed until he attended the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, where he also met his future wife and where he began publishing short stories that won high school literary awards.

Delany's first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, was published in 1962. It established the direction his later works would take by exploring the ways in which myth shapes our cultural beliefs. Delany also examines topics such as alternative love and sex relationships, mythic elements in the imagination, issues of communications and community, and the role of the artist in society. Delany has written more than 20 novels and collections of short stories, memoirs, and critical essays.

His many awards include the Nebula Award for Best Novel for Babel-17 in 1966 and The Einstein Intersection in 1967, the Hugo Award for best short story, Science Fiction Convention, for Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones in 1970, and the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in Gay Literature in 1993.

What is Dhalgren? Dhalgren is one of the greatest novels of 20th-century American literature. Dhalgren is one of the all-time bestselling science fiction novels. Dhalgren may be read with equal validity as SF, magic realism, or metafiction. Dhalgren is controversial, challenging, and scandalous. Dhalgren is a brilliant novel about sex, gender, race, class, art, and identity.

A mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled. But others are drawn to the devastated city, among them the Kid, a white/American Indian man who can't remember his own name. The Kid is emblematic of those who live in the new Bellona, who are the young, the poor, the mad, the violent, the outcast--the marginalized.

Dhalgren is many things, but instantly accessible isn't one of them. While most of this big, ambitious, deeply detailed novel is beautifully pellucid, the opening pages will be difficult for some: the novel starts with the second half of an incomplete sentence, in the viewpoint of a man who doesn't know who he is. If you find the early pages rough going, push on; the story soon becomes clear and fascinating. But--fair warning--the central nature of the disaster, of its strange devastations and disruptions, remains a puzzle for many readers, sometimes after several readings.

Spoiler warning: If you want to figure out the secret of the novel as you read Dhalgren, then stop reading this review right now! If you want to know the secret before you start, this is what the novel is about: the experience of existence inside a novel. Time passes differently for different characters. A river changes location. Stairs change their number. The Kid looks in a mirror and sees not himself, but someone who looks an awful lot like Samuel R. Delany. Central images include mirrors, lenses, and prisms, devices that focus, reflect--and distort. The Kid fills a notebook with a journal that may be Dhalgren, and is uncertain if he has written much, or any, of it. The characters don't know they're in a novel, but they know something is wrong. Dhalgren explores the relationship between characters and author (or, perhaps, characters, "author," and author).

The final chapter can be even tougher going than the opening pages, with its viewpoint change and its stretches of braided narrative--and the novel ends with the beginning of an unfinished sentence. But the last chapter becomes clear as you persevere; and when you get to that unfinished closing line, turn to the first line of the novel to finish the sentence and close the narrative circle. --Cynthia Ward