As attention to his writing has grown, critics have come to see all of his works (science fiction, fantasy, realism, autobiography, theory) as a unified endeavor in which the discourse of race, by way of its complex crossings with gender, genre, and language, provides an opening for a new universalism. An influential-at times controversial-science-fiction scholar, he has contributed work in reader-response and post-structuralist criticism, stressing the distinctive rhetorical strategies and practices of the genre.

This strategy is also evident in Delany’s Nova.ĭelany’s career, as both a writer and a critic, now spans genres. Indeed, Lem’s strategy is typical in the rewriting of Moby-Dick: one iconic feature of the novel (ocean) is re-encoded over one or more of the others (whales). The numerous highly self-conscious postmodern pastiches of Moby-Dick include the metafictional Chinese boxes of scholar John Kessel’s 1982 novella “Another Orphan.” 3 Non-Anglophone writers have also contributed science fiction adaptations, as in the case of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris-the only novel to rewrite Melville’s cetological chapters, which brilliantly collapses the role of the whale into the ocean itself. Bass’s 1974 The Godwhale and, with an additional stress on gender, Vonda N. Other texts focus on cetaceans as emergent forms of intelligence allied with new forms of humanity, such as T.J. 2Īmong more simplistic examples is Philip José Farmer’s 1971 The Wind Whales of Ishmael, which leads Melville’s character into a light-hearted, pulp-style adventure. fiction, film, television, and comics, Ishmael-figures have recounted the fate of obsessive crew-leaders traveling through boundless outer space, pursuing revenge, and seeking redress against real or imaginary leviathans. Since the 1950s, science fiction has exhibited an enduring fascination with Moby-Dick, ranging from naïve sequels to sophisticated revisions.

Delany nova