 |
Most novas burn out to cinders, but this one blazes as brightly as ever. |
|
We have Mouse, an untutored Earth gypsy, master of the sensory-syrynx, a "musical" instrument of astounding complexity.
Sebastian and Tyÿ, husband and wife from the Pleiades. He is allied with strange winged creatures, while she reads the Tarot-an infallible prophetic device according to these citizens of the future.
Katin is an over-educated, somewhat effete fellow, slumming amid the proles. And he has the oddest idea: to resurrect that extinct artform called "the novel."
Idas and Lynceos, former miners, are two of triplets. One black, one albino, they complete each other's sentences, so closely linked are they, despite suffering from being severed from their third brother.
All these reluctant and obsessive questers possess cybernetic bio-jacks that allow them to plug in and fly the starship Roc and to perform other essential 32nd-century functions. (Anything else would be considered barbaric.) So off they go, Prince and Ruby in hot pursuit, with several stops on a variety of exotic planets, heading for glory or doom, to change a galaxy's balance of power.
Blazes as brightly as ever
Three main aspects of this landmark SF novel Nova bear discussion: its origins in and out of the genre; its status and influence in the genre and the era; and its particular place in Delany's career.
Nova's Origins: written by the stripling Delany, then only 25 years old, the book represented his distillation and transmogrification of such iconic influences as Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith and Alfred Bester. The contending powerful Shakespearean dynasties; the quirky, deeply inhabited characters; the poetic language (baroque, yet unclotted and limpid); the portrait of a future radically estranged from ours, where our era is mythic to theirs, and they are myths-to-come for us; the layered symbological apparatus— All these aspects hail from the past masters cited above, yet are fused into a beautiful organic whole whose likes had never before been seen. (On a lesser, closer scale, one might detect hints of then-current Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny and Larry Niven in Nova. Delany was intimately hip to all that was going on in the field at the time.) Additionally, Delany showed his generation's desire to blend mainstream and genre, by adding bit of James Joyce and others to the stew. As for the Clutian "real year" of the novel, it encapsulates the ambiance of 1968 so precisely as to be almost a roadmap of that tumultuous period.
Nova's Influence: hailed as a work of genius at the time by such savvy critics as Algis Budrys and Judith Merrill, Nova went on to meet an enthusiastic response that only deepened over time. Its sway over the cyberpunks is legendary, and the roots of every postmodern space opera are bedded in its soil. Re-visited today, Nova holds up remarkably well, vital, prescient, affecting, a genuine work of art.
Career placement: this was Delany's first hardcover appearance after many paperback originals, and as such marks a new literary stature for him. Nova exhibits all his prior concerns—the poetic depiction of action, character and place; a close examination of the explicit and implicit systems of the world; the romance of an artist's interaction with his material—and presages what was to come in such future works as Dhalgren (1975) and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984). It can be seen as the jeweled axis on which both halves of Delany's career spin.
Most novas burn out to cinders, but this one blazes as brightly as ever.
Readers desirous of more depth and details than this short review can provide are advised to check out the superb Wikipedia article on Nova.
It is highly amusing that M. John Harrison was initially disparaging of Delany's masterpiece upon its publication, as Harrison's own two latest novels are clear-cut descendants of Nova, and could not exist without that earlier book's influence.
—Paul
