Wesleyan University Press is republishing Samuel R. Delany‘s The Jewel Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (with an introduction by Matthew Cheney). The nonfiction collection, which was first published in 1977, looks at science fiction from a unique perspective, and is now available as a 288-page trade paperback for $27.95.
As Wesleyan says, “When it was released in 1977, science fiction master Samuel R Delany’s collection of essays The Jewel-Hinged Jaw initiated a new way of looking at the science fiction genre. No longer content with simply cataloguing the particularities of a supposedly inferior form and calling it criticism, Delany drew from his extensive body of knowledge and intense respect for science fiction to formulate a challenging, meticulous expression of the unbounded possibilities contained within tales of ‘events that have not happened.’
“With the republication of this important critical work, Wesleyan University Press is pleased to introduce to a new generation of science fiction devotees the diverse set of essays. Here readers will find a rigorous attention to language with definite poststructuralist inclinations, as well as careful textual readings of great subtlety and a nascent engagement with feminism, gender, and sexuality that marked Delany out as a visionary then and remain profoundly relevant today.
“Included within the volume are ‘To Read The Dispossessed‘ Delany’s thorough, complex analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel; ‘About 5,750 Words’, a concise essay that elaborates a compelling theory of the way science fiction can actually alter the way language works, and ‘Thickening the Plot’, which walks the reader through the process of writing quality, compelling science fiction, line by line. These essays are required reading for those who love science fiction and, more broadly, for anyone who wants to challenge the way they approach the written word.”
Delany has won the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and is a novelist and critic who teaches English and creative writing at Temple University. His critical work has won him the Pilgrim Award for science fiction scholarship. Cheney is a columnist for Strange Horizons.