Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany Author Photo

Samuel R. Delany is a 1-Time AALBC.com Bestselling Author

Biography of Samuel R. Delany

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. was born April 1, 1942 and is the author of numerous science fiction books including, Dhalgren and The Mad Man, as well as the best-selling nonfiction study Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. He lives in New York City and taught English and Creative Writing at Temple University until he retired in 2015. The Lambda Book Report chose Delany as one of the fifty most significant men and women of the past hundred years to change our concept of gayness, and he is a recipient of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime’s contribution to lesbian and gay literature.

By age 26, Samuel R. “Chip” Delaney had won four Nebula Awards and is arguably the best science fiction writer in the world. After his seventh novel Empire Star(1966), Samuel Delany began publishing short fiction professionally with “The Star Pit.” It appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow and was turned into a popular two-hour radio play, broadcast annually over WBAI-FM for more than a decade. Two tales, “Aye, and Gomorrah” and “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-precious Stones,” won Nebula Awards as best SF short stories of, respectively, 1967 and 1969. Aye, and Gomorrah contains all the significant short science fiction and fantasy Delany published between 1965 and 1988, excepting only those tales in his Return to Nev’r’on series. In July of 2002 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Fun Facts:

  • Sadie and Bessie Delany, or Having Our Say fame, were his aunts;
  • Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for Elsie and Corry in “Atlantis: Model 1924,” the opening novella in his semi-autobiographical collection Atlantis: Three Tales.
  • His grandfather, Henry Beard Delany, was the first black Bishop of the Episcopal Church.

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17 Books by Samuel R. Delany