The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-1965

After Delanyblack, gay and from Harlemplunged into a hasty marriage with young white poet Marilyn Hacker, he continued his sexually open lifestyle and had many partners, threesomes included. This self-indulgent, portentously titled hodgepodge of autobiographical snippets only sporadically reveals how the controversial themes of his bestselling science fiction (Dhalgren, etc.) emerged out of the tensions of his marriage, psyche and relations with society. Delany writes about his precocious talent, school days at the Bronx High School of Science, the Lower East Side arts scene and his friendship with W. H. Auden. The book's paragraphs and sections are numbered, divided and subdivided like a dissertation, but the detached style is at odds with the slender material. Fans of his SF will be disappointed. (March)