124 pages
Published 1965
Read from July 18 to July 20
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
This book opens with field recordings of folk music from an interstellar generation ship. That’s one of the coolest hooks to begin a sci-fi novel I’ve ever seen. Like… how is this from 1965 and not 1985? Once again, I must refer to my thesis that SF writers of the global majority (and queer writers, and otherwise marginalized writers) have always been a creative generation ahead (on average) of their more societally privileged contemporaries.
Delany does quick, efficient work at worldbuilding, sketching in not only the culture and language of the generation ships, but also the chrono-drive colonists who leaped over them and beat them by several centuries to the stars.
Reluctant student Joneny picks through the generation ships for clues to the meaning of the folk ballad, uncovering a culture puritanically obsessed with “the Norm,” liquidating those who violate it — whether they deviate by biting their nails, growing moles, or studying history. The narrative isn’t the most gripping, but even by the standards of 1965 sci-fi, the allegory is hard to miss. Conservatism and conformity stifle any chance for the generation-ship culture to adapt and innovate.
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