SOURCE: “To See What Conditions Our Condition Is In: Trial by Language in Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand,” in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall, 1996, pp. 153-60.

In the following essay, Bray examines Delany's subversion of language and social organization in Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. Bray contends that the reader is drawn into a “textual webbing” that illustrates the relationship between the individual and society and brings into focus current social realities and alternative futures.

One of the definitive characteristics of Samuel R. Delany’s fiction is its “consciousness-raising” function. The number of characters in his works who are marginal to their social contexts or outsiders to those contexts altogether calls attention to those social frameworks and what they offer or deny their inhabitants. Add to this awareness the dialogue between the givens of the present world and the givens...