{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2740", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2740, "subject": "Possible Delany comparisons", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2001-07-28T04:00:25+00:00", "last": "2001-07-31T11:37:01+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "PMorris33", "address": "pmorris33 at aol.com" }, "date": "2001-07-28T04:00:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Possible Delany comparisons", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In terms of \"worked prose\" and a highly nonchalant attitude to the future, \nperhaps\nDelany's \"Stars In My Pockets like Grains Of Sand can compare to the Wolfean \nLong Sun and Short Sun series. Does anyone know if Delany ever published his \nsequel to \"Stars In My Pockets\"?\n\nPippen" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-07-30T08:18:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) RE: Possible Delany Comparisons", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Pippen wrote:\nIn terms of \"worked prose\" and a highly nonchalant attitude to the\nfuture, perhaps Delany's \"Stars In My Pockets like Grains Of Sand\ncan compare to the Wolfean Long Sun and Short Sun series. Does\nanyone know if Delany ever published his sequel to \"Stars In My Pockets\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, he has not. He has made several different comments about this, which\nadd up to a kind of ambiguity. The two major points have been that (1) he\ndid indeed intend to finish it and worked on it from time to time but that\n(2) since the advent of AIDS, and the devastation it wreaked among his \nfriends and acquaintances, he has found it difficult to get back into the\nkind of mental space in which he wrote the first volume.\n\nI agree that it is comparable to Wolfe in the ways you suggest; and quite\ndifferent from Wolfe in almost every other way. Among the ways in which it\nis similar is what you might call a time-bomb effect -- the way in which,\nafter you've been reading along for some time, you suddenly realize that\na common English word means something quite different in the mouth of the\nnarrator from what it means in modern (or post-modern) English, and this\nforces a revision of everything you have read so far. (I remember the first\ntime I read it, back in '84, how difficult it was for me to adjust to the\nway Marq Dyeth uses the commonest of pronouns!)\n\nThe one thing in your post I would question is the term \"highly nonchalant\nattitude to the future.\" To my mind, this is an intensely thought-out\nfuture, one which considers, questions, and often rejects many (most?) of\nthe most commonly-made assumptions about \"the future\" we find in science\nfiction: not least of which is the tendency for SF writers to conceive of\nplanets as ecologically and culturally monolithic. \"The desert planet,\" \"the\n\njungle planet,\" \"the planet of sharp-trading gypsies,\" \"the planet of \npastoral Quakers,\" and so on, simply are _not_ likely to exist because (as\nMarq repeatedly observes) worlds are _big_ places.\n\n--Dan'l" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "matthew.malthouse", "address": "matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk" }, "date": "2001-07-31T11:37:01+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Possible Delany comparisons", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 28/07/2001 05:00:25 urth wrote:\nIn terms of \"worked prose\" and a highly nonchalant attitude to the future,\nperhaps\nDelany's \"Stars In My Pockets like Grains Of Sand can compare to the Wolfean\nLong Sun and Short Sun series. Does anyone know if Delany ever published his\nsequel to \"Stars In My Pockets\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Alas no.\n\nBetween the time when Delany planned the diptych and wrote Stars... and it was\npublished then getting on with the second the AIDS issue hit and Delany said\nthat his world was so changed by it that he could no longer write the second -\npoor memory might not serve but I think it was to be entitled \"The Slplendour of\nCities and their Dying\" or something bery similar.\n\nSince there has be romour that he started working on it again, but only romour:\nI've heard nothing that could taken as reputable news.\n\nIt's a great shame as Stars is one of my favorite novels and every time I read\nit I regret the lack of a completion.\n\nMatthew" } ] } ] }