Samuel R. Delany is an acclaimed writer of literary theory, queer literature, and fiction. His works have fundamentally altered the terrain of science fiction (SF) through their formally consummate and materially grounded explorations of difference. This anthology of essays, talks, and interviews addresses topics such as sex and sexuality, race, power, literature and genre, as well as Herman Melville, John Ashbery, Willa Cather, Junot Diaz, and others. The second of two volumes, this book gathers more than twenty-five pieces on films, poetry, and science fiction. This diverse collection displays the power of a towering literary intelligence. It is a rich trove of essays, as well as a map to the mind of one of the great writers of our time.

Samuel R. Delany: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works is the first encyclopedic overview of Delany’s fiction, essays, public talks, and interactions with leading writers and icons, from W. H. Auden to Wonder Woman. No book offers such a comprehensive guide to the scope of Delany’s presence in American letters, literary, and popular culture. The alphabetical listing is organized to maximize reader accessibility, with cross-references that allow for exploration of his intertextual and intracultural reach. His biography is also meticulously detailed with entries on his grandfather Henry Beard Delany (born enslaved and the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church), aunts Sarah and Bessie Delany (the celebrated sisters of Having our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years), parents (into whose home many leaders of the Harlem Renaissance were welcomed), and the vast cultural landscape with which he has engaged for over five decades.. This bookcontains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries addressing each of Delany’s major novels, short stories, nonfiction, and theoretical texts, and entries addressing the full scope of Delany’s writings and major events in his life. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Samuel R. Delany.

Recollections of a Scientist, Volume 2 Expanding HorizonsEngland and Europe (1948-1951) This illustrated book is the second volume of Memoirs of a distinguished, internationally renowned scientist, Professor Norman N. Greenwood, FRS. It takes up the story of his life from the first moment he arrived in England as a research student from Australia in September 1948. Term had not yet started in Cambridge so he spent a hectic first month visiting and getting to know the members of his parents families who lived in London and Brighton. He also spent some time in the delightful countryside around Guildford and the Surrey Downs with a fellow passenger, following a shipboard romance during the long trip from Melbourne. He then visited the recently inaugurated Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell in Berkshire (where his former research supervisor was now a senior scientist in the chemistry division) and had the exciting experience of seeing Europes first, recently commissioned nuclear reactor in operation. In Cambridge he took up residence in a set of rooms in Sidney Sussex College and began research discussions with Professor Harry Emelus, FRS the most distinguished inorganic chemist in the UK at that time. The unique charms of the Cambridge Colleges and the arcane procedures of the University itself are affectionately described, and at various places throughout the book there are graphic representations of life in Cambridge in the late nineteen-forties. An early example is his description of the Universitys decision to allow, for the first time in its seven centuries of existence, women to be awarded substantive degrees (rather than merely titular ones). The first such degree to be conferred on a woman, in an appropriately grand ceremony, was on the enormously popular Queen Elizabeth, consort of King George VI (later known as The Queen Mother). At a more mundane level, post-war austerity necessitated the rationing of food and many other items at levels that were even more severe than those in operation during the war (WW2). The list given of a weeks rations is a salutary reminder of those days. Norman is a past master at describing in accessible terms the research work that he was doing in the laboratory and its wider significance. He also gives perceptive descriptions of the international group of research chemists working in the laboratory at that time and of many members of staff. As earlier in Melbourne, he made the most of opportunities to attend lectures by famous visitors and distinguished members of the University in other departments of the University. There are memorable descriptions of a course of lectures given over two terms by Bertrand Russell on Philosophy, and numerous other lectures by Science Nobel Laureates. Vacations provided a wonderful opportunity to visit other places in England and Europe. Just before Christmas 1948 he went with the Oxford and Cambridge Ski Clubs to Sestriere in the Italian Alps, a splendid location for skiers of all abilities. Directly following this, and with virtually no money left, he spent a memorable Christmas and New Year on his own exploring the wonders and glories of Paris. And what wonders he describes. He had a room in the Latin (student) Quarter at 350 francs per night (i.e. 35p or 0.35) for bed and breakfast at the then exchange rate of 1 ~ 1000 francs. The next vacation, at Easter, was to southern Scandinavia to visit his sister, Margaret who had married a Swede in 1946 and was living on a small island in the Baltic Sea just off the coast near Karlskrona. [Volume 1 of these Recollections was dedicated to her on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday in 2012.] The journey was also memorable for a different reason for it was on the Flying Scot, en route to Newcastle upon Tyne to catch the ferry to Bergen in Norway, that he first met Kirsten Rydland whom he later married in 1951. [This Volume 2 is dedicated to her.] Norman was cl

"Samuel R. Delany is not only one of the most profound and courageous writers at work today, he is a writer of seemingly limitless range."--Michael Cunningham A vast river of a novel alive with explicit sexuality and the the richness of life itself, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders concerns a gay, working-class, interracial relationship. In 2007, just before Eric's seventeenth birthday, his father brings him to Diamond Harbor, a failing tourist town on the Georgia coast, to live with his mother. There Eric meets nineteen-year-old Morgan Haskell, who works with his father, Dynamite Haskell, and the two boys soon join their lives--and their bodies--together on the coast as a couple over the next seventy-five years. The author of more than forty books, Samuel R. Delany is a novelist and critic whose novel Dhalgren has sold over a million copies. He is a recipient of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a Lifetime Contribution to Gay and Lesbian Writing and the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award. He is a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia.

A group of men dig a tunnel under the threshold of a house. Then they go and fetch a heavy, sagging object from inside the house, pull it out through the tunnel, and put it on a cow-hide to be dragged off and thrown into the offal-pit. Why should the corpse of a suicide – for that is what it is– have earned this unusual treatment? In The Curse on Self-Murder, the second volume of his three-part Suicide in the Middle Ages, Alexander Murray explores the origin of the condemnation of suicide, in a quest which leads along the most unexpected byways of medieval theology, law, mythology, and folklore –and, indeed, in some instances beyond them. At an epoch when there might be plenty of ostensible reasons for not wanting to live, the ways used to block the suicidal escape route give a unique perspective on medieval religion.

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 2 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.