I admit it, I am a Delany gusher. And an SF fan, at least of some of it. I thought it was interesting that you said you don’t consider yourself a fan of the genre... "but I’ve read a fair amount of it, and I own a lot more— because much of it is among my favorite fiction writing." But I get it, in the way, that I am not a fan either in some sense (I don't go to conventions, etc.)
In your short story posts I haven't seen much SF and was kind of wondering if such masters of the short form as Harlan Ellison were going to turn up in your next post on stories of 3,000 + words... part of what I like about Sturgeon is he was part of that old school SF where psychism and the supernatural could be a part of his stories without getting talked down to as not being "hard" SF.
Anyway, I trust that when you get round to reading Dhalgren, Babel-17, Neveryona and the other books on your Delany Guilt shelf, you'll enjoy them. He is much better at the long form than the short, though his early novels also benefited from being on the shorter side. I think SF and Fantasty have suffered from a glut of too-long epics and trilogies. Sometimes what you need is just a short novel.
This glitch mini-album by Kim Cascone was inspired by Dhalgren.
Sturgeon was amazing- all those stories and a few novels, besides. He set an extremely high standard for all the SF writers that came after him.
I admit it, I am a Delany gusher. And an SF fan, at least of some of it. I thought it was interesting that you said you don’t consider yourself a fan of the genre... "but I’ve read a fair amount of it, and I own a lot more— because much of it is among my favorite fiction writing." But I get it, in the way, that I am not a fan either in some sense (I don't go to conventions, etc.)
In your short story posts I haven't seen much SF and was kind of wondering if such masters of the short form as Harlan Ellison were going to turn up in your next post on stories of 3,000 + words... part of what I like about Sturgeon is he was part of that old school SF where psychism and the supernatural could be a part of his stories without getting talked down to as not being "hard" SF.
Anyway, I trust that when you get round to reading Dhalgren, Babel-17, Neveryona and the other books on your Delany Guilt shelf, you'll enjoy them. He is much better at the long form than the short, though his early novels also benefited from being on the shorter side. I think SF and Fantasty have suffered from a glut of too-long epics and trilogies. Sometimes what you need is just a short novel.
This glitch mini-album by Kim Cascone was inspired by Dhalgren.
https://silentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/anti-correlation