Samuel R. Delany
See first quotes from Samuel R. Delany
25 Quotations from Samuel R. Delany
| Afrofuturism n. | 2020 Mirror of Afrofuturism in Extrapolation (vol. 61, issue 1/2) 174 To the extent Afrofuturism concerns science fiction and not the range of all the arts, including painting and music, classical and jazz, it requires writers thinking about black characters in the future. |
| alien adj. | 1966 Babel-17 i. 10 It isn’t a code, but rather an alien language. |
| Ballardian adj. | 1988 in N.Y. Times 15 May (Book Review) 28/4 It’s particularly effective for evoking the archetypal Ballardian objects: draining lakes, dried-up swimming pools, empty rivers, dusty streets, ruined machinery, beached boats, wrecked cars—or the obsessed men and women haunting them. |
| battleship n. | 1966 Babel-17 (1978) 246 Rydra stepped into the spacious cabin of the battleship Chronos. |
| earthman n. | 1966 Babel-17 iii. 33 He’s an Earthman. Though I believe he was born on route from Arcturus to one of the Centauris. |
| Earthside adv. | 1966 Babel-17 iii. 32 [I’ve been] Earthside, teaching at the University. |
| force field n. | 1966 Empire Star (1977) 123 The forcefield was permeable, and he ducked through. |
| generation ship n. | [ 1965 Ballad of Beta-2 7 By the time the ten remaining-generation-ships [sic] arrived in the Leffer System, Earth had already established a going-business [sic] of trade and cultural exchange, which was already a hundred or so years old, with scores of planetary systems. ] |
| heat ray n. | 1966 Babel-17 v. 170 A Ciribian heat ray…They won’t use it unless they’re attacked. |
| home galaxy n. | 1966 Babel-17 iii. v. 172 Like a triple clawed crab, the enemy boat angled away into the night. K-ward rose the flattened spiral of the home galaxy. Shadows were carbon-paper black on the smooth hulls. |
| hyperspace n. | 1965 Ballad of Beta-2 (1977) 8 They’d only been gone sixty years when the hyperspace drive became a large-scale reality. |
| jump n. | 1965 Ballad of Beta-2 13 Their technical means would not suffice for an interplanetary jump of more than six or seven million miles. |
| jump n. | 1966 Babel-17 iv. 152 You wouldn’t think something that’s so flimsy and shakes around like that would fly or make stasis jumps. |
| Mercurian adj. | 1968 Nova ii. 15 The freezing lichen forests of the Martian polar caps or the raging dust rivers at the red planet's equator; or Mercurian night versus Mercurian day—these he had experienced only through psychorama travelogs. |
| mother ship n. | 1966 Babel-17 i. 128 They made a three-way defensive grid before the mother ship. |
| mundane adj. 1 | 1978 Jewel-Hinged Jaw 81 I feel the science-fictional-enterprise [sic] is richer than the enterprise of mundane fiction. |
| near-future adj. | 1981 Some Remarks on SF Criticism in Science Fiction Studies (vol. 8, no. 3) Nov. 236 I mean that, historically, far-future SF (space opera) developed in the pulps of the 1930s and ’40s before near-future SF developed in the late ’40s and early ’50s. |
| nova v. | 1967 Corona in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct. 92/2 Bryan Faust walked across the platform to the microphones. Comets soared over his shoulders and disappeared under his arms. Suns novaed on his chest. Meteors flashed around his elbows. |
| space field n. 2 | 1966 Babel-17 (1976) 39 They left the Discorporate Sector and took the monorail through the tortuous remains of Transport Town, then along the edge of the space-field. |
| spaceship n. | 1966 Babel-17 . ii. 27 Managing a spaceship crew takes a special sort of psychology. |
| space suit n. | 1966 Babel-17 v. 171 To fight in a space suit out there is no good. |
| subjunctivity n. | 1969 About Five Thousand One Hundred and Seventy Five Words in Extrapolation (May) 61 Subjunctivity is the tension on the thread of meaning that runs between word and object. Suppose a series of words is presented to us as a piece of reportage. A blanket indicative tension informs the whole series: This happened. That is the particular level of subjunctivity at which journalism takes place. |
| topside adv. | 1974 Dhalgren i. 45 There was this damn dog, who’d been sleeping under the porch all the time I’d been snoozing topside. He was awake now. And he started barking. Then he chased my ass down to the road. |
| viewplate n. | 1966 Empire Star (1977) 124 The Geodetic Survey Station faded from the viewplates of the sensory helmet that was lying face-up on the dashboard. |
| viewport n. | 1966 Babel-17 iv. 155 Fog closed over the view-port. |