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nivekgnir | 22 May 19:06

A brilliant review of Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

If you have had difficulty with TVNS, you may not be reading it right. Full disclosure: I have spent the last
several years proofreading and partially editing the book. I have a very intimate relationship with it.
Yet even with that connection, I doubt I could have even come close to writing the incredibly insightful
review that just came out in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders has
been grokked:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=652&fulltext=1&media=
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Zvi Gilbert | 22 May 18:35
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'Spiders' review from the LA Review of Books

I think this review is exceptionally insightful, written by someone who is
aware of Delany's output, and may give rise to some discussions about
exactly what kind of a book it is and what it's trying to do, referencing
our discussions over the last little while...

<http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=652&fulltext=1&media=>

--Z

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Erich Schneider | 16 May 05:51
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finished reading _Spiders_

A short while ago I finished _Through the Valley of the Nest of
Spiders_. I have to say, it's not up there among my favorites of his
(those would be _Stars_, _Dhalgren_, _Triton_, and the
autobiographical works). The feeling I get is that the block of marble
needed some more chiseling to more clearly reveal the statue within.

I find myself agreeing with a few of the specific points made in
this review (but I would stop short at saying it was "bad"):

http://jwcampb.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-of-through-valley-of-nest-of.html

I'm sure Delany could explain exactly why every one of the many sex
scenes was kept in at the length and level of detail it was, but I did
start to mentally say "oh, not another one" as things went on. 

The relationship of Eric and Shit did remind me of that between Marq and
Rat in _Stars_, only here, the question asked is "so you meet your
perfect erotic match... and then get to live with them for 70 years in
a milieu where sex is the primary way you spend your free time, at
least for the first few decades. What happens?" In _Stars_ I felt like
I got to get up and walk around Velm or Rhyonon a little, and when I
did, what I saw made my brain light up like a Christmas tree. There
was the potential for that here, but it largely didn't happen.

The scene in the "Gay Friendly" men's room is the funniest scene I can
remember in all of Delany's fiction. 

I found the depiction of Eric and Shit as old men touching without
being mawkish.
(Continue reading)

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Planet_Stories | 13 May 14:45
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Two Questions

First, anybody have a contact with Delany, his agent or his publicist? I was asked by Rick Kleffel, of The
Agony Column Podcast, if I knew of such a contact--Rick would like to interview Delany about Spiders and
his writing. If need be, e-mail me at Recursive _ Loop @ yahoo . com .

Second, this site came up in Google, but when I look at it (Firefox and IE), all I see is a blank screen:

www.samuelrdelany.com

Placeholder for an eventual actual author site?

Thanks much!

Fred Kiesche
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Planet_Stories | 12 May 04:47
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Splendor Excerpt (?) on Amazon

Greetings:

Anybody have this? Is it worth buying?

http://www.amazon.com/splendor-misery-cities-fiction-excerpt/dp/B00096NF3O

$5.95.

About 80% down with "1984". Read "Bread and Wine" last week and Mr. Postman brought me a bunch of odds and ends
including "Heavenly Breakfast" and an Ace Triple of Delany - Vance - Simak.

FPK3
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Keith Knight | 22 Apr 21:32
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Paul di Filippo review

Long review of 'In the Valley...' by Paul di Filippo on the Locus website

http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/04/paul-di-filippo-reviews-samuel-r-delany/ 

Keith

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Daddy Todd | 20 Apr 22:20
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Re: Digest Number 1116

Steve,

It IS necessary to convert it back to a Kindle-readable format. Kindle
can't read epub, despite epub being the world-wide standard...

Todd

Re: Spiders errata
>    Posted by: "Steve Maxey" lists <at> maxx-it.com chimaxx
>    Date: Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:49 pm ((PDT))
>
> The Kindle edition is similalry unencumbered by DRM, so you can use
> Sigil to create a corrected copy of it, as well. I used Calibre to
> translate the Kindle version to epub, did the edits in Sigil and
> translated back--though I don't know offhand if that's necessary.
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Zvi Gilbert | 19 Apr 19:03
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The World of Mad Men (Fwd: Digest Number 1115)

> And then, in a recent episode, we learn that a character has been
> writing SF stories in his spare time and getting them published in the
> SF magazines of the day...

Idle musings follow:

Chip was writing novels (not short stories yet, in 1966 -- Babel-17 and
Empire Star) and selling them to Ace. It was interesting to think of the
young Chip as I watched the episode just 'offstage' as it were in the Mad
Men world. Down in the bohemian part of town.

I was wondering how realistic it was to have Cosgrove actually take a
meeting with an editor from Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux. In spite of him
having published a literary short or two previously, he was publishing
genre (in Galaxy, no less). The state of the science fiction was heavily
ghettoized in that era, with the exception of name writers like Heinlein
and Bradbury. It would have been more usual to have him talking with an
editor from Ace (or some other pb publisher) about a collection of shorts
(i.e., Heinlein's _The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein_ came out from Ace in
1966).

Ballantine in 1966:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?19+1966
Ace in 1966
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?37+1966

Mind you, Farrar, Strauss and Young had published Sturgeon's More Than
Human a decade earlier but it feels like a strange exception:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?1667
(Continue reading)

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Wade T Smith | 19 Apr 18:40
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Re: Digest Number 1115


On 04 19, 2012, at 08:21:01, delany-list <at> yahoogroups.com wrote:

> And then, in a recent episode, we learn that a character has been
> writing SF stories in his spare time and getting them published in the
> SF magazines of the day...

Under nom de plumes, of course, one of which was Ben Hargrove. Not ringing any bells, not that it should. The
one rag mentioned was Galaxy, which was a big 'un, for sure. From the general description of the stories he
was writing, possibly a Cordwainer Smith type.

I don't know if anyone here ever mentioned the most excellent episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 'Far
Beyond the Stars', which was specifically about a black science fiction writer trying to get a black
protagonist in print in this period. Perhaps non-coincidental, the name was Benny Russell.

Chip was asked about this episode, but said at the time he had not seen it-
http://www.sfsite.com/06b/srd106.htm . This was over a decade ago, so I hope he has since then.

- Wade
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Erich Schneider | 18 Apr 18:07
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Delany and _Mad Men_

Ever since I started watching _Mad Men_, it's tickled me to think that
the time and place the show is set in (New York City, 1960 to 1966 so
far) is the same as that of the bulk of _The Motion of Light in
Water_. So when characters drop by the East Village, I think "hey,
that's Chip's neighborhood!" There's also the contrast between
Delany's depiction of his life vs. that of the closeted gay
character on the show.

And then, in a recent episode, we learn that a character has been
writing SF stories in his spare time and getting them published in the
SF magazines of the day...

--

-- 
Erich Schneider  erich <at> alumni.caltech.edu
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Seth Tisue | 18 Apr 15:09
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How's a woman going to fall in love with a giant gorilla?


 > Apparently and contrary to what we assumed, but sadly did not prove
 > the copy didn't follow the usual Ubu policy [...]

That policy covers materials Ubu actually host themselves.  But on
Twitter they often tweet links to stuff on other sites.  There aren't
any Delany materials on Ubu Web itself.

Changing the subject, Calamus Bookstore in downtown Boston has 'Through
the Valley of the Nest of Spiders' in stock.  I'm just 40 pages in;
working, eating, and sleeping keep interfering.  Curses!

A referent of the title, it turns out, is a lost scene from the 1933
King Kong film.  On page 14, a character refers to Peter Jackson's
recreation of the scene.  Background:
<http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2005/kong/>
<http://www.killermovies.com/k/kingkong/articles/5711.html>

"Peter Jackson, writer and director of the upcoming King Kong remake,
says that he couldn't resist the urge to resurrect the legendary 'spider
pit' sequence from the original 1933 movie. 'The spider pit scene is,
obviously, [speaking] as a King Kong fan, ... a mythic scene that was a
sequence in the original film that was cut at the last minute,' Jackson
told Sci-Fi Wire. 'It's become mythic because no prints of it survived,
and there's a couple of still images. I wanted to put it in [the new
film] as a Kong fan, because I thought it would be really cool to see
King Kong and have a version of the spider pit scene in there."

--

-- 
Seth Tisue | http://tisue.net
(Continue reading)

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Gmane