Time Considered as a Helix: The Life of Samuel R. Delany

FAIN: FEL-294240-24

Justin David Gifford
University of Nevada, Reno (Reno, NV 89557-0001)

Research and writing of a biography of Black science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany (b. 1942).

My book project, “Time Considered as a Helix: The Life of Samuel R. Delany,” which is under contract with Temple University Press, is the first biography of Samuel R. Delany, the very first openly gay Black science fiction writer in history. Still living today, Delany is the author of such canonical works of the genre as Babel-17 (1966), Nova (1968), and Dhalgren (1975), his crowning achievement and the book that made him an icon of popular culture. In the early 1960s, when Delany was first starting out as a writer, science fiction was dominated by straight white men. As a gay Black intellectual, Delany was the first writer to take the speculative genre in politically challenging new directions, creating fictional worlds with Black protagonists, queer and transgender characters, and gay sexual relationships. Written in cooperation with Delany himself, "Time Considered as a Helix" uses his life as a focal point to reveal the hidden cultural histories of 20th-century Black and gay life.