SOURCE: “Necessary Constraints: Samuel R. Delany on Science Fiction,” in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall, 1996, pp. 165-9.

In the following essay, Samuelson provides an overview of Delany's intellectual development, radical social consciousness, and theoretical perspective as a critic and writer of science fiction.

Important not only as a science fiction writer, Samuel R. Delany is also a major critic and theorist of the genre. Beyond what is embedded in his fiction, he has published five volumes specifically devoted to SF criticism and theory. The core document for this purpose is The American Shore (1978), linking microcosmic and macrocosmic levels of analysis. This detailed discussion of a Thomas M. Disch short story, which on the surface is minimally science fictional, examines how reading it as SF shapes reader reactions differently from reading it as mundane or fantasy fiction, which Disch also writes. Dividing the story into 287 “lexias” for...