Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

The long-awaited reissue of a classic work of criticism ― revised and expanded

In Starboard Wine, Samuel R. Delany explores the implications of his now-famous assertion that science fiction is not about the future. Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a text's specific "difference," we begin to see the quality of its particulars. Through riveting analyses of works by Joanna Russ, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Thomas M. Disch, Delany reveals critical strategies for reading that move beyond overwrought theorizing and formulaic thinking. Throughout, the author performs the kinds of careful inquiry and urgent speculation that he calls others to engage in.

SAMUEL R. DELANY is an acclaimed novelist and critic who teaches English and creative writing at Temple University and is the author of numerous works of fiction and criticism, most recently his novel Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. MATTHEW CHENEY is a columnist for Strange Horizons and writes regularly for his weblog, The Mumpsimus.