"Dhalgren"
by Samuel Delany

Reviewed by James A. Hoopes

Science fiction is generally considered the exclusive domain of White authors. The characters that people that domain are usually White heterosexual males with 20th century values and attitudes projected into a futuristic or exotic setting. Women, people of color, and members of sexual minorities, if present at all, are usually portrayed in a stereotypical manner. Because of this, it's a special pleasure to discover Black authors who have taken on the challenge of writing science fiction. And, while still a small minority in the field, Black authors are liberating science fiction by introducing fresh social concepts, new rhythms, and even new languages to the genre. Two members of this rare breed are Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler.

Born in 1942 and raised in Harlem, Samuel Delany began writing science fiction more than 20 years ago. He has won the Hugo Award for science fiction once, and the Nebula Award four times. Once married to poet Marilyn Hacker, he now lives in New York with his daughter and his lover of five years.

"Dhalgren" is one of Delany's most unique and ambitious works. Unlike most novels, it has no clear-cut plot traveling from beginning to end. Rather, Delany has painted a picture of how a society might react in the face of total anarchy. His palette is the collected entries in the protagonist's notebook, a record of the people and events of the city of Bellona. Bellona is located in the southwestern region of the United States. The year is 1985. Bellona suffers an unexplained catastrophe which causes buildings to burn continually without being consumed. A permanent haze not only blocks the sun, but prevents radio and TV transmissions both out of and into the city. Bellona once had a million inhabitants, now only a thousand remain.

Into this setting comes the Kid, a former mental patient, now a nameless drifter. The first Bellonian he meets, Tak Loufer, introduces him to a group of people who live in one of the city's parks. Among this group is a former socialite named Lanya who encourages the Kid to write poetry, using his experiences in Bellona as the subject. The Kid's poems are published in a local (and very bizarre) newspaper, and the Kid becomes a celebrity.

His continued interest in life in Bellona, eventually leads the Kid to a street gang known as the Scorpions who terrorize the city's inhabitants. He becomes friendly with them and is invited to accompany one "nest", or chapter, on one of its frequent raids to acquire food. The Kid finds the experience stimulating and eventually becomes a somewhat reluctant leader of the nest.

One of the most, interesting things about Dhalgren is the way Delany has managed to create such believable characters. He describes in detail not only their personalities, but their reactions to the environment of Bellona. But Delany's real genius lies in his keen observational skills, and the setting of this book - a modern American city totally isolated from the rest of the country - allows him to closely examine our institutions, value systems, and social behavior and to point out some of the absurdities they have produced. For example, here's Lanya explaining why, after seeing a psychiatrist, she decided to give up painting:

"I realized something. About art. And psychiatry. They are both self-perpetuating systems. Like religion. All three of them promise you a sense of inner worth and meaning, and spend a lot of time telling you about the suffering you have to go through to achieve it. As soon as you get a problem in any one of them, the solution it gives is always to go deeper into the same system. At best, each is trying to encompass the other two and define them as sub-groups."

However, not all of "Dhalgren" is so philosophical. Some reviewers have complained that Delany dwells too much on the sexuality of his characters, and indeed, he does have a flair for the erotic. But the eroticism of Dhalgren never appears contrived or gratuitous. It is simply another aspect from which Delany develops his characters.

For the reader who likes to have all the subplots of a story neatly tied up at its end, "Dhalgren" will be frustrating reading. Mysteries are created, then left unsolved, apparently Delany's way of reminding us that life doesn't provide all the answers, and that we must learn to live with ambiguities. Like all good science fiction, "Dhalgren" will challenge the thoughtful reader to reexamine some accepted ideas, and to reflect upon what would be if . . .