Nova

flawed but heroic space captain, on a mission that is part vengeance and part noble quest, assembles a disparate crew to fly through a nova. this is Samuel R. Delany so that synopsis just barely scratches the surface. I'm going to copy & paste a post regarding this book that I just made in a group I......more

Nova: A New-Wave Grail Quest space opera from the 1960s Originally posted at Fantasy Literature Nova is Samuel "Chip" Delany's 1968 space opera with mythic/Grail Quest overtones. It is packed with different themes, subtexts, allegorical and cultural references, and literary experiments, and the young......more

Finished a reread of Samuel R. Delany's Nova for my reading group. I'll post a longer review later, but for now... Nova is considered by some critics as the last of Delany's early period, "lesser" novels. I think it is the first of his masterpieces insofar as he fully embraces what will become a trad......more

A grizzled young captain and his ragtag crew go on the biggest and deadliest refueling trip in history. Stakes: entire galactic economy, massive inflation should they succeed. It starts out promising, introduces the main characters effectively, gets us to hate the bad guys properly, and outlines eno......more

Sprung from pirates, reeling blind in fire, I am called pirate, murderer, thief. Kudos to Delany for writing, in 1968, one of the first space opera stories with real substance and serious cultural and sociological underpinnings, as well as some interesting mythological overtones. It is also considere......more