Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand [Paperback]

"Stars in my pocket like grains of sand" is a novel written by an English professor, and whose narrator is essentially a human galactic encyclopedia- and that's exactly how it reads. Expect sentences that stretch to entire paragraphs and lengthy descriptions with little plot advancement.

The novel is basically one long description of several societies completely different from ours, physically, politically and socially. Holding it together is a thin romantic plot about two people from different worlds who are nevertheless deemed erotically perfect for each other. There are other interesting parts- such as the warring ideologies throughout the novel's universe, the mysterious Xlv alien race, the ubiquitous and menacing Web and the destructive Cultural Fugue that links all of them- but Delany chooses to downplay them in favour of examining the excrutiating minutae of the main character's society. Delany seems to be operating under the assumption that, while most readers find page upon page of description without moving the plot forward boring, they won't find it boring if the culture being described is different from our own. He's wrong.

But that's the thing about the novel. It succeeds as an experiment in estrangement, and in challenging the stereotypes of the SF genre. And there are parts of it that definitely open the reader's mind, but at the ultimate cost of their enjoyment; the novel can be fascinating, brilliant and painfully boring all in a matter of pages. There's plenty there for SF academics to discuss and praise, but not much left over for the average reader.

awkward with no meaning nearly unreadable,is rat konga serious, like nearly all his writing a near impossible sophmoric mess, is this book about mad cravings does rat konga escape the rat laboratories or the spca is he castrated so what who cares, is he a metaphor for impotence and ragelike brain cells of stars in the co op three eared errors hula dancers he implores bores the reader like so many mind numbing self congaduatory brain puzzles in shower stalls for fools gold post struccccture projectionst fluff..

Stars... to me is a description of the future of humanity. In this work, Delany has taken a (his?) view of moral, literal, technological, sexual, and societal tends and extrapolated them into a mosaic of imagery and context that reminds the reader of a future she has never known, but has experienced nonetheless. He reminds us that science is not just limited to the realms of mathematics and physics, but is integral to the society that we live in. I eagerly await the sequel, which after all of these years I fear will never arrive. Geoffrey John Atkinson