Having previously read Babel-17 i was very much hoping this was just as good: so i did have very high expectations and it certainly had a lot to live up to.

So, yes, i did set out rather biased when i began to read this book, and while i have to say that it didn't quite meet with my expectations with regards to Babel-17, it was still a very enjoyable read.

Samuel certainly has his own style, very arty, very high brow, and also very imaginative: Nova holds it's place as one of the books which gave birth to the cyberpunk genre.   But where Babel-17 felt like a timeless read, Nova did feel a little dated to me, like it's from the 1960's or something.

But dated or not, it certainly has earned a deserving place in the "SF Masterworks" series. ( )

I read this so long ago that my memory has been occluded by the decades. Which is why I bought a copy, again, so much later. To experience a book that I know from dim experience to have been once judged first-rate — by me.

A whole lot of buildup to a rushed ending. The story gets well bogged down in mundane character activity and forgets about the premise and the plot. Which some people might like, but the big question on the readers mind throughout -“How are they going to enter the nova and extract the Illyrium?” - gets completely skipped over once it is about to happen, then very briefly explained via infodump after the fact.

At a future point where the galaxy is populated, additional elements with atomic weights in the 300 range have been discovered. These elements, known as Illyrium, are very scarce, but are the key source of high yield power, used for warming planets in the terraforming process and for powering FTL drives. Captain Lorq Von Ray thinks he can fly into a star as it goes Nova, extract massive amounts of Illyrium (millions of times more than has ever been produced), and exit again, making power more widely available and changing the balance of power in the galaxy. So he puts together a misfit crew, and then spends the middle 3/4 of the book not doing that. Finally in the last few pages they do finally head for a Star that is about to go nova.

Despite visiting maybe a dozen planets and moons, the Galaxy feels very, very small due to none of the thousands of cultures that must be present getting developed. Half the art seen is from various 20th century earth countries, and the ones that aren’t are not described in a way to give any clear sense of what style they are. ( )

It's pathetic, I know. Samuel R. Delany was, at one time, in my pantheon of 3 favorite SF writers: the other 2 being J. G. Ballard & Philip K. Dick. &, yeah, he's still in that pantheon except that it's expanded to include the Strugatsky Brothers, Stanislav Lem, & 'James Tiptree' (Alice B. Sheldon). &, yet, I've listed a slew of bks by him that I've read & I don't remember a single thing about them. Hence, no reviews. My excuse, as usual, is that I read this stuff at least 20 yrs ago, At least I can remember my girlfriends from back then. "Nova" is probably the 1st of his bks where I felt like he was "in his stride", where his no-doubt-substantial life experience was beginning to manifest itself in a greater richness of characters & social detail than previously - his earlier novels having been precocious but maybe just a little bit too much of-the-genre & a little-too-little original. ( )

More Energy Than a Nova

Lorq Von Ray is a man on a quest, driven by his desire to defeat his nemesis Prince Red, wrest away the primacy of the Draco system, Earth and its immediate colonies, controlled by the Red family, and establish the supremacy of the Pleiades Federation, Lorq’s home system. With worlds separated by light years, the principal industry is transportation, both the building of ships, controlled by the Red family, and the mining of fuel, a major Von Ray business, to propel them. The fuel is Illyrion, a precious substance because only small quantities can be extracted by mining it in the Outer Colonies. However, at the moment a star goes nova, tons of the stuff are created. Lorq has tried before to capture Illyrion and failed, but discovered that he can pilot straight through a nova and scoop of vast amounts of the stuff, seven tons to be exact, and thereby accomplish his twin goals. His quest and the various adventures it entails comprise the overarching narrative of the novel. And as a rip-roaring adventure novel, it in itself is a great yarn. In addition, though, Samuel R. Delany, who wrote this at age 25, jams quite a bit of sharp and witty observations on life grounded in the mundanity of good old Earth of 1968, not to mention current times. And it’s these layers that add immensely to the novel’s enjoyment.

Science fiction readers like to see authors create substantial worlds, both as backdrops to the action and as places removed the confines of this world. Delany’s worlds span light years in our galaxy, with some, like the planet Vorpis, at once alien, inhospitable, beautiful, and testament to human ingenuity. Those weaned on the likes of Star Trek and Star Wars like characters to traverse vast distances in the blink of an eye, and Delany doesn’t disappoint. Too, many want their protagonists larger than life, stronger, wittier, prettier, and humbly flawed. Here Delany provides a host of fatally flawed characters, like Prince Red, blind with revenge, Ruby Red, magnetically beautiful but unalterably attached to Red, and Lorq, who can’t see beyond an ambition that could destroy him. This, combined with the idea of power, how to get it, how to hold onto it, should satisfy a majority of readers.

Delany notches things up by expanding on other subjects very much on the minds of humans stuck here on Earth for the foreseeable future. In Delany’s distant future, race and nationality are still dividers, as crew member Mouse’s origin story reveals, not to mention the contrasted appearances of twins Lynceos and Idas. Too, Caucasians predominate in the Draco sphere, while both Pleiades and the Outer Colonies feature a racial mix, as Lorq himself exemplifies. Like our world of today, where we find ourselves not only attached to devices that determine to an increasing degree whether or not we will be successful, in Delany’s world, human and machine fuse via plug-in sockets that make flesh and metal one, and employment and acceptance accrue to those who accept this merging. Delany also ventures into philosophy as it involves creativity, with Mouse an accomplished musician able to conjure moods and worlds on his syrynx that incorporates a sort of hologram projector driven more by spontaneity vs. fellow crew member Katin, highly educated, given to long expositions on a variety of topics, and obsessed to the point of inaction by intellectualizing and planning the novel he wishes to write.

In short, then, Delany’s Nova can be read on a variety of levels, from fast-paced space opera to exploration of societal issues to metaphysics, enough to satisfy all types of sci-fi readers, as well as those who only occasionally read the genre.
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