His three most pure "science fiction" novels are Babel-17, Trouble on Triton (originally published as Triton), and Nova. They are all very imaginative but grounded in scientific extrapolation.
His Neveryona series of stories and books are set in a medieval frame but are really about modern life. I found them interesting and thought-provoking.
He wrote a short autobiographical piece about some time he spent in a commune called "Heavenly Breakfast" that I found insightful.
He has a number of very good shorts science fiction stories from the 60's and 70's that are very good as well. Two in particular I enjoyed:
"Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"
"We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line"
Totally.
I discovered it on a shelf labeled "The Unfuckwithables" in a little indie bookstore years ago, next to Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and William Vollmann.
Since I loved the other three, I pretty much had to give it a shot. I still think about it regularly even though I can't really recall any particular storyline or plot. I've always thought it would make for a great procedurally generated game world for some reason.
I tried one, maybe 20 years ago. I barely remembered it existed. I know I gave it a decent go, at least 100 pages, but it didn't stick. But I've had 20 more years to consume formulaic books, and then more that did quite a bit to subvert those overlapping genres in interest ways. Maybe I'll appreciate what might have been subtleties more nuanced than I had an eye for the first time around, and come at it with a more experienced set of eyes a second time. I'll go dig up something online to go through the beginning, and see if Dhalgren's found me now and buy a copy.
I have read many of his books, including Dhalgren, which is a complex and dense book that does not make for easy reading. I recommended the ones that were more "hard science fiction" that were full of interesting ideas. The protagonist in Triton is not really a hero but Delany's world building is very thought provoking.
The Neveryon books and 'Times Square Red, Times Square Blue' are my favorite Delany.
My introduction to Delany was randomly stumbling on the first Neveryon book in the stacks of a university library, being intrigued by the (wholly untrue) intro about Linear B translations of ancient stories, and then getting completely sucked in by the storytelling. The world needs more pan-sexual barbarians, IMO.
The Neveryon story about the invention of writing and its complex set of unintended consequences was perhaps my favorite in the series. ("The Tale of Old Venn" in Tales of Neveryon.)
I would say Dhalgren's not particularly difficult to read, or complex - the Kid's experience in Bellona is not comparable to Bloom's allusive and metaphore laden journey through Dublin in Ulysses. Bellona is just fucking weird.
Starting with Section 7 "the Plague Journal" on page 723 the single narrative splits into multiple streams on the same page, there are gaps in all of the streams, and finally on pages 831-32 there is this
"My life here more and more resembles a book whose opening chapters, whose title even, suggest mysteries to be resolved only at closing. But as one reads along, one becomes more and more suspicious that the author has lost the thread of his argument, or more upsetting, have so changed by the book's end that the
answers to initial questions will have become trivial."
It continues in this multi-stream format until page 869 and then ends ten pages later on 879 with sentence fragment "Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills I have come to" At which point you remember it began with a sentence fragment "to wound the autumnal city." and realize that the book has wrapped on itself and will not reach a conclusion.
I am used to academic texts with footnotes and some how-to books with sidebars that provide details and examples from the primary flow, but this becomes a scrapbook that juxtaposes incongruous blocks of text. Sometimes I could tease out the connection but not always.
If your argument is that Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake are more complex then I agree. But I found Dhalgren much harder to follow or understand than the French existentialist novels (e.g. "The Flanders Road", "The Marquise went out at 5" or "Jealousy") that were stream of consciousness but maintained a consistent perspective
> Sometimes I could tease out the connection but not always.
I think that was Delaney's intention. The narrative, and the city aren't really open to analysis. Bellona is a hazy, druggy, liminal space and its incoherence and narrative instability is part of what makes it so beautiful.
So it's not complex or particularly difficult to read, but it is opaque, incoherent, self-contradictory, and intentionally incomplete. We don't agree on everything but we have discovered some common ground.
Jewel Hinged Jaw is literary criticism and advice for writers https://www.amazon.com/Jewel-Hinged-Jaw-Language-Science-Fic...
His three most pure "science fiction" novels are Babel-17, Trouble on Triton (originally published as Triton), and Nova. They are all very imaginative but grounded in scientific extrapolation.
His Neveryona series of stories and books are set in a medieval frame but are really about modern life. I found them interesting and thought-provoking.
He wrote a short autobiographical piece about some time he spent in a commune called "Heavenly Breakfast" that I found insightful.
He has a number of very good shorts science fiction stories from the 60's and 70's that are very good as well. Two in particular I enjoyed:
"Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones"
"We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line"
are collected in "Driftglass"