"Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" Group Discussion

Seeing as though many people seemed to have obtained the book already...

so far i've been pleasantly surprised by "Stars" - about 100 pages in.

hmm - just noticed you guys were doing this - mind if I join? I'll pull it for reading next. Actually not sure if I've read this before.

#3

You're welcome to join, PortiaLong. In fact, anyone who wants to join in should feel free.

and you're in time to vote for the NEXT selection (doesn't take quite as long as seating a senator from Minnesota) - but a very fair process, very little money changes hands as far as i can tell in the selection process. Tho rojse and geneg really deserve the major plaudits here.

And we even pick more interesting books than the Hugo award does....

Ooh, the copy I received is a new edition from Wesleyan University press--and I bought six of their Early Science Fiction Series recently! Damn, I feel an attack of "completism" coming on. They are so pretty.

Only had the time to read a couple pages--looks good, written by an adult for adults.

#5

You promised not to tell anyone about the money!

While reading SIMPLGS chapter 1, 'From Nepiy to Free-Kantor' I noticed some classic algebra notation. I felt obliged to add, for the benefit of the mathematically challenged among us, that the 'employer1' with the subscript 1 can be read as either 'employer sub 1' or in this case (I think) as 'employer prime'. Other numbers are 'sub 2' or 'sub 3' and are used to delineate sets of terms in specific numerical order. This should clear up some confusion for at least one person, I'd bet.

The subscripts are to denote importance to you

Job-1 is your vocation, your calling. Job-2 is your day job - what you do for money. Job-3 is other stuff of little importance. For a few lucky people Job-1 and job-2 are the same.

Of course some confusion about some of the characters cannot be avoided as we do not know whether they are male or female.

Exactly

I've just got the book right now. It's hard reading, but well-written and enjoyable.

Well, I've just got the last two chapters and the epilogue to go. Not sure I can say I am liking the book, but it kept me reading it. The way the author uses language in dialogues seems effective at instilling a sense of an alien tongue.

One thing I wonder about, with the extreme medical abilities available, as used to save Rat Korga, I'm surprised anyone has to die. Yet when Marq describes his mothers, one of them seems quite physically old even tho he gives her age, if I recall correctly, as 68, which is not necessarily as aged as she sounds. But earlier generations don't seem to be alive despite there being no mention of illness. I suppose the author just didn't see health and longevity as an issue he wanted to address, except to indicate the longer lifespan of the evelem (I know I totally messed up the name of that species).

Finally finished this today after, I admit, something of a struggle. I'm not quite sure what to say of it yet, except that I think my favorite part of the whole thing is the title.

Otherwise, honestly, I'm left a bit cold. I didn't find the characters all that engaging or believable, and there isn't really a plot to either like or dislike. The book was quite interesting at the beginning, but quickly tapered off. In large part, I feel a little disappointed by the questions asked on the cover copy!

What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue," and the other is--you!

Well... you know. Four hundred some pages later, I still don't really know! It was frankly a fairly minute part of the book, and not terribly well explored, even with all the lovingly descriptive prose devoted to the state of Rat's fingernails. I certainly don't know about the 'you' part, because I'm pretty sure I'm not Marq Dyeth! Nor does he stand in proxy for me as reader, because I found nothing about him particularly relatable.

I feel like I am missing some key to the great understanding and enjoyment of this book. Anyone have some helpful thoughts?

I don't. I finished last week and didn't want to make the first comment and say exactly what you did. The worst part was that I cared less and less as the story continued. The only parts I liked was the opening story of Rat and the dragon 'hunting' scene. Its best quality was the way the language was twisted around to simulate an evolved or alien language, like the aforementioned hunting. That was definitely not worth the effort, at least to me. In its defense, there was a planned sequel that would have wrapped up the overriding story between the Family and the Sygn, but the book was never finished. Oh yeah, what's the deal with the Xlv? We'll never know. However, the writing quality was high enough to convince me to check out some of his other stories (from the library), like Dahlgren, which won a Nebula or Hugo or Campbell or something. Babel-17 sounds way more interesting than this book, as does Neveryon, and The Einstein Intersection. Ah well...

I think part of what drives Delany is questions and answers are not so important to him, and in many cases he resolutely refuses to answer them (see, for example, Dhalgren). I believe that it is possible that Delany never intended to write The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities leaving all of the questions raised in Stars in My Pocket LIke Grains of Sand unanswered for all time, leaving the reader to consider what they might mean.

I found the most interesting part of be the dinner party at the end, and the intentional snub combined by the (seemingly) frantic attempts by Dyeth and his family to break through to their guests.

One thing about the book is that some of the elements that are in this book were reused from other books of his: the numerical sexual compatibility scale was featured in Triton, the obsession with boys with bad fingernails was also in Triton, and in Dhalgren, and so on. The motif of cultural decay or drift is used in Nova and (once again) Dhalgren. Delany seems to reuse many motifs, and use them in very slightly differing ways. I have always wondered if there is some overarching message or meaning one could derive by piecing together these recurring elements from his various books (other than the obvious that Delany has a sexual fetish for men with broken fingernails).

#16

Oh Chip intended to write The Splendor and Misery Of Bodies and I think he has a draft of a start but couldn't see a way to doing the story properly.

I think with Stars In My Pocket you have two things going on simultaneously. The first is the surface story with the political struggle between the Sygn and Family; and the Xlv and the destruction of worlds that they cause. The second is a hymn to the inexplicable nature of sexual attraction. The second is obviously what is important to Delany but that doesn't mean he entirely ignores the first. I consider the world-building first rate although the threat of the Xlv are dealt with very obliquely. The political struggle is more in the foreground and that was reasonably interesting but not entertaining - this isn't really an entertaining book.

#14

I don't think it is fair to judge the book on some advertising copy on the front of the book. My copy did not have those sentences.

#15

I haven't read Dhalgren (always too intimidated to try, and it has had a very mixed reception), hated Neveryon (not a big fan of sword & sorcery in the first place), but like Delany's early work - Nova, Babel-17, and The Einstein Intersection.

BTW Dhalgren didn't win any awards (it was nominated for the Nebula). Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection both won Nebulas (Nebulae?) and made the Hugo final ballot. Nova made the Hugo final ballot too. Triton was nominated for the Nebula.

17: I know that a section that was supposed to be drawn from Splendor and Misery was published. However, I would not put is past Delany to have done so as a wind up for readers with no intention of ever publishing the book. Delany has made a career out of doing odd, experimental things, and this would be something I would find entirely in character.

Of Delany's work, I have read Nova, Triton, Dhalgren, and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand as well as several short stories. I have Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection and a couple Neveryon books, but haven't gotten to them yet. Soon though . . .

I read about half of the book, and gave it up because I was feeling overwhelmed by the darkness. Other than that, I loved Delaney's use of language, his mind-bending assignment of personal pronouns, his aliens and world-building, his quirky sex scenes which seemed to pop up and burst like random random fireworks and certain alien places he built that stick in my mind like glue. My only other complaint - once in a while I felt irritated at the length of 'aliens at a NYC cocktail party' scenes. I don't think I'll go back to finish it, but I'm glad I experienced it the first part. Sort of like eating snails: I might not make them a staple of future meals, but it was worth the experience to do it once.

Delany's biography is fascinating, and throws some light on his writing (well, why ever not, of course).

I'm glad several people have posted some of what I'd been thinking about this book. I hesitated to post negative about yet another book from our group reads. But..but...I really did like The Day of the Triffids!

I find myself just not connecting with the characters, but I was impressed early on with Delany's creation of a world that feels both primitive and futuristic at the same time.

Personally, I find the use of pronouns just plain annoying. I've come across a little bit of explanation so far, but I'd find it less annoying if he hadn't coopted pronouns already in use, and had invented new ones for his system. Perhaps he wants the reader to think about gender and gender roles in a certain way, but it bounces me out of the story each time he does it.

I get bounced out a lot, but it isn't always in a bad way. Delany likes to insert a "treatment" of an idea and sometimes it's worth it. One of the first I noted was when Korga reads books. With the rereading of some of them later, Delany emphasizes the point of what not only the reader brings to the novel, but that what she brings may depend on when in life it's read. The experience may change at a rereading as experience and learning broadens. My favorite passage relating to this point was,

"And put that back, pulled out the next, and to his great surprise reread 'The Mantichorio', marveling both at how much he remembered and how much seemed wondrously new, as familiar characters, who, in his mind's eye, looked entirely different from memory, engaged familiar battles and said familiar lines, their motivations and arguments so changed--so much more, indeed, like his own might have been, now, here. Still, it was amazing how the black ripples under the children's long oars on the underground waterway were lit, this reading, by torchlight of such a different gold."

In one passage he evokes so many thoughts and ideas, not the least of which is the underground waterway (railway), and Delany's look at slavery and the mental states of slave and master.

So, then why do I struggle so to revisit the book after putting it down for awhile, particularly since I like his writing style? Maybe I can answer if I get further, although several people have already posted reasons that ring true to me.

I couldn't make it past the prologue. But that's not entirely fair, I had to relinquish the book, but the prologue left me feeling a lot iffy about continuing anyway. Just something I didn't care for. Another Gully Foyle? I'm not much on futuristic worlds where humans are used as beasts of burden or bred or otherwise formed along social lines as in Brave New World. Those are societies I have no interest in whatsoever.

I had started reading "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand", and was enjoying it (my original post was written after about ten or fifteen pages), but being in the view of a near-mindless reactive lump as the main character left so many gaps in the plot and the world in which he lived that I couldn't really figure out what was going on.

The abrupt shift in perspective at the end of the prologue, and the continued lack of explanation of what exactly was going on didn't help, either. I kept reading it, hoping for things to clear up, but they didn't for me.

I'm not chalking this up as a bad book, but rather, a book that I am not yet able to appreciate. Perhaps I might better appreciate what it was doing (whatever that is) in a few years time.

> 17

I'm not judging it based on those sentences, I'm judging it on something those sentences help me express - as the rest of my post describes, on the lack of a plot or characters that I found engaging, and on the promise (in the text, not just the cover copy) to explore certain things that I felt weren't really explored.

I like questions in my sci fi - in fact, that's one of the things I like most about the genre. But I also want the author to explore those questions, not just raise them. I feel like Delaney had the set up to do so - the fuss made about the decimals - but didn't do very much with it.

Have just started Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. It's the one book by Delany I've always had trouble reading - I've started and failed to finish it three times previously... although that was more than 15 years ago. And that's despite liking Delany's fiction a great deal - Dhalgren is a favourite (see here), Empire Star is another I like a great deal, and I've read and enjoyed and admired Nova, Babel-17, The Jewels of Aptor, The Einstein Intersection, Triton, Driftglass, Distant Stars, The Motion of Light in Water, The Fall of the Towers, The Tides of Lust... I have the Nevèrÿon books, although I've only read the first, Tales of Nevèrÿon; and I also have but haven't read The Mad Man and The Jewel-Hinged Jaw. Oh, and I have the graphic novel he did with Howard Chaykin too, Empire (too common a word for touchstones to work properly. sigh).

I began enjoying the book a good deal and I did like the "origin" story of Rat Korga. But once good old Mark Death and his sexual predilictions - quantifiable to what, 5 sig. digits? - came to the fore, the going became progressively harder and harder. I may or may not finish. I'm about 80% done, but my reading resembles one of Zeno's paradoxes - if each reading is 1/2 the length of the prior, will i ever finish?

In my previous post (#13), with two chapters and the epilogue to go. I wasn't sure whether I liked the book, but those last two chapters really turned me off. The bit about 9000 people with a zombified need to see Rat Korga just because he was the lone survivor of a planet? Totally ludicrous.

And what was wrong with the author that he couldn't figure out some less ludicous reason for the Web people taking Rat away?

And the party thing! Marq is supposed to be a diplomat and he couldn't figure out what the insult was about after the prior scene with George coming after the little kid and upset that the kid had exposed their plan to move to that other planet? And he couldn't even understand it after George came to his room and spelled it out for him?

And what was with the XIV? Why were they around Marq's planet and then left when Rat was taken away? Was it related to Rats comment when he came out of medical repair, something to the effect that they better find him a planet or he would take one?

Then came the epilogue. What a waste of ink and paper and a total waste of my time. The only halfway interesting idea was how they did the space travel--but that could have been included in an early chapter instead of adding the otherwise useless, rambling epilogue.

The only things I liked about the book was the alien use of language, the initial story of Rat told in the prologue, and the dragon hunt.

I was reading the thread. Didn't read the book recently. I tried a while ago and stopped. I may pick it up again but I found it uninteresting.

I do have many of Delany's books and have read and enjoyed quite a few: Dhalgren, Atlantis:Three Tales, Motion of Light and Water, Mad Man, Heavenly Breakfast, the infamous Hogg.

But the mention of a graphic novel made me realize I was missing something from my catalog, his graphic novel Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York.

In my previous post (#13), with two chapters and the epilogue to go. I wasn't sure whether I liked the book, but those last two chapters really turned me off. The bit about 9000 people with a zombified need to see Rat Korga just because he was the lone survivor of a planet? Totally ludicrous.

Really? That seems totally believable. Look at today's newspapers and other media. If there are survivors of a big natural disaster then at times there seems to be a press scrum around them. That is just the same only by proxy.

Am about a third of the way into the book and I'm beginning to understand why I've never managed to finish it on previous occasions. The opening section with Rat Korga is, well, typical Delany - an archetypal Delany protagonist doing typical Delany things.

But the next section seems to comprise chiefly of one character telling a character stuff in order to explain the book's universe to the reader. It doesn't help that pronouns change between people depending on their sexual relationship to the narrator and not on their biological gender. And the dialogue... half the time the characters are speaking prose, not speech.

Considering that Dhalgren is one of my favourite novels, I'm finding this one a bit of a slog.

question answered - i'm not going to finish. Did start and finish Pandora in the Congo which had SFish bits tossed into its metafictional melange.

I got started shortly after my post >3 PortiaLong: - zipped through the Rat part of the story - which I really liked and then kind of ground to a halt around p. 117 during a (the first?) ''aliens at a NYC cocktail party" scene (Thanks, Pandababy, for that phrase from >19 Pandababy:.) It felt like reading a history textbook when what you needed was a brochure.

I wandered off and read two or three other things and am just getting back to it.

I was going to say a bit about the distractive quality of the pronouns but GwenH said it better in >20 GwenH:. It does "bounce" me out of the narrative in a way that using a different set - for instance zhe/ zer - would not. I understand it, I get the point, but I lose the flow.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was bugged by the pronouns. I had a hard time articulating why they bothered me, especially since I /like/ books that play with societal assumptions like gender. But you're right in that they tossed me directly out of the story every time.

I suppose there is maybe something to be said about that in itself - why it is that I spent so much time working so hard trying to uncover the 'real' gender of characters, and why it mattered to me. But that's a point that I really could have had made with far fewer pages. If I'm devoting this much time to a book, I want to enjoy it, too!

I'm getting the impression that I shouldn't be heartbroken about the fact that my library hold is still pending after five weeks.

>33 sqdancer: -

I don't know sqdancer - for all I know it might turn out to be your most favorite book ever (although I wouldn't hold my breath). Many people have different tastes than I do - good thing too!

okay all you Dhalgren/Delany fans....watch out for--

"Bellona, Destroyer of Cities"
adapted and directed by Jay Scheib

playing at The Kitchen, NYC March25-April 4th, 2010

http://www.jayscheib.com/bellona/index.html

>33 sqdancer: in every genre there are writers who generally work for many readers that some of us never get: Gene Wolfe almost w/out exception is a bust for me (there've been a few short stories i've enjoyed, though nothing that knocked my proverbial socks off); i liked Babel 17 a good deal but have been disenchanted w/ other Delany. And then there are writers whose books i generally love, but are a big meh for most of the rest of (in this case) the SF world (Melissa Scott being one of my faves whose books most SF readers can happily live without - though if one's interested in gender/sf issues she might well be up one's biblioalley).

Totally besides any point..Do other people have the problem I do w/ mucking up placement of apostrophes when typing (as opposed to handwriting)? 50% of the time i'll initially get its/it's or who's whose typed incorrectly.

Not really, but I've spelled recommend wrong at least ten times in the last few months (including right there).

I read Stars in My Pocket a couple of times when it was first published, and I remember it as wonderfully mind-blowing, and still consider it my favorite of his novels, and he one of my favorite writers. This discussion has inspired me to revisit it soon (despite peoples' quibbles and frustrations). Wish I had something more intelligent to offer than adulation :-)

> 38 I'm curious, do you recall what it was about it that made you like it so much?

I had a spike in my workload and "stuff" which compromised the attention with which I read this--and now I can barely do justice to the few remarks I can make... but, here goes:

This was my first Delany, first encounter with the author and his style, much more demanding than anything we read here so far. However, from the start a well-known pattern imposed itself on my reading--that of an urban gay subculture (after Stars... I read Delany's biographical Motion of light in water, and, yes! The "key" works--it's even clearly labelled "NYC, pre-AIDS"!), and a kind of emancipatory, gender-bending postmodern philosophy, here simply projected on the universe of the Velm etc.

This helped with resolving the dynamics of the relationships (at least somewhat) and understanding the characters and their worlds, insofar as we're allowed to understand them. (Do I know what every Thant was stamping about, what every flicker of every tongue of the evelmi was meant to convey, why A did B--nope. Some part of the mystery of a book is achieved by mystifying the reader, I suppose.)

Delany's themes are extraordinarily interesting, his style polished, and I fully understand the "mind-blowing" potential of the book. (If I was less interested by it than I would have been, say, 20 years ago, it's because I've encountered his ideas (who knows, sometimes perhaps as a reflection of HIS influence) in many guises already--gotten past having my mind blown here and now.) And the book is fresh! Although much of our Western and Western-influenced society has grown more sophisticated (or at least knowing) in the past 25 or so years, there is still (and maybe can't help existing) a huge difference between the world as intimately experienced by straights and non-straights. The mere fact of his homosexuality teaches the homosexual that the world is more complex and diverse than his heterosexual counterpart knows. From that primary, intimate knowledge of the “more complex and diverse” it is easier to extrapolate to the possibility of “infinitely more complex and diverse” than from any learned principle.

So, Delany extrapolates both his circle and philosophy onto cosmos, playing with our perceptions of gender, sex and sexuality, family (no egg-and-sperm connections between any of Marq's "ancestors", "mothers" and "siblings"!), in short, saying, "what if THIS were normal, and THAT queer?" Which is an excellent and never often enough asked question.

Brief notes: I didn't feel the first part, on Rhyonon, gelled with the second--but perhaps that helps to differentiate the two worlds in the reader's mind, maybe illustrates the size and variety of this universe. Korga being the only survivor struck me as implausible (but what's implausible in a book in which humans have sex with dragons or some such?), but it certainly underlines his uniqueness for Marq--and maybe he's meant to appear as a kind of Messiah to the rest?

The pronoun game amused and somewhat irritated me. As I said, since I couldn't help reading this in the key of Gay, it constantly reminded me of the campy "she-ing" and "Mary-ing"--and I can't believe Delany didn't predict this effect, he who is so meticulous and attuned to nuances of language. At the same time, ANY object of desire is called "he"--and this too echoes the (older) gay tradition, when gays who desired men where "women", and only "real" men; he-men, could be desired. The fallout is that, except in the very few cases (the "bitch" on Rhyonon, probably one of Marq's mothers, Shoshanna, Nea Thant, and one female mentioned indirectly in passing), one suspects ALL the characters are, or might be, male. Women, as we know them, have been linguistically supplanted--by the paradoxical means of calling everyone "women".

I'm pretty sure Delany is closer to feminist than anti-feminist (and as his bio attests, no stranger to female sex in any sense), but the atmosphere on his Velm nevertheless makes me wonder about the egalitarianism of that society. Take for instance the short passage when Marq takes Korga to the "run" (a park where gays gather for sex, on Earth), and a female approaches the group of males--it's not clear what for, except that she's fascinated by Korga--and Korga politely chases her away (garnering thanks from other males). He tells her it's not her place, she's not wanted there. There seems to be no other function to this passage except to put this nameless female character in her place.

Well--I got distracted, so that's all from me folks--oh yes, my edition (Wesleyan) had a very useful Afterword by Delany--I hope so did others?--it helps explain his intentions some.

I have Babel-17 and Dhalgren at home; perhaps I'll revisit these notes as I get to them. Overall, I'd say this was a good one, although demanding (and deserving) more work than it got from me.

Lola -
thank you! your essay didn't make me LIKE "Stars.." any better, but it DID make me appreciate the book a lot more.

Well, I finished it.

(*WARNING* - may contain details that some would consider SPOILERS.)

Aside from the first "aliens at a cocktail party" scene and the pronoun issue already mentioned, I was actually going along quite well and mildly enjoying the book as Rat and Marq explore Marq's world/culture - Marq's family/home, the runs, dragon-hunting, etc.

I did appreciate the treatment of homosexuality (LolaWalser addressed this fantabulously in post 40!).

But the whole thing absolutely fell apart for me from the second aliens at a cocktail party scene (the formal dinner) on. Blech. Ugh.

Come on - you have a family which includes SEVERAL diplomats who should be used to navigating worlds/cultures that are almost incomprehensibly different and they are COMPLETELY frozen into a confused inability-to-act when the guests of honor behave inappropriately?!

The whole mechanized-dungeon-of-torture deal with the dinner party gave me Indiana Jones flashes...kind of interesting but surreal - in a negative "what the hell happened to the story" way.

I found the dense philosophical prose of the ending scenes of the "Epilogue" to be painfully grueling to force my way through - I had to keep telling myself "Only 20 more pages....19....18..." I found myself wanting to slap Marq for the last 8.5 pages of the book in order to make the whining stop.

The last 1/5 of the book took it down from a 3-Star book to a 1.5 to 2 star book (my ratings tend also to reflect if the work is historically significant for the genre so I'll likely go with a qualified 2 when I get around to generating a review based on my comments here.)

>36 bobmcconnaughey:

I'm curious if you have noticed any patterns with the writers that generate the most divergent response from SF readers. (i.e. those that like "x" also like "y" but hate "p" and "q".)

For instance - I don't like Ray Bradbury (except F451) and Phillip K. Dick and Delany may make that list if this is representative (although I'll try a few more before I make up my mind). But am a huge fan of Heinlein/Asimov/Farmer.

**PortiaLong apologizes for going off topic...we can continue this in another thread if there is any interest.**

Well, I like Delany - although not this one so much - and I'll read Dick, Heinlein and Farmer. But I'm not a big fan of Bradbury or Asimov. And I hated Fahrenheit 451 - but I love Truffaut's film adaptation.

Bob, too kind, I just piled on notes before I forgot them.

Portia, yeah, it WAS gluey dense in places.

I haven't read Heinlein, Asimov or Farmer... actually, I read Asimov's non-sf mystery stories as a kid--The black widowers? An all-male monthly dinner club where one of the members brings a guest, and every time the guest has an interesting problem to solve--which they do, sitting around. I liked them because they were smart and always hinged on logic or science. Damn, now I wish I hadn't given those books away.

I liked everything of Dick I read so far--the Valis trilogy, and The man in high castle. The Valis books especially were such a strange, thrilling experience, I'm afraid to reread them.