Triton (novel)

Lore & Background

Trouble on Triton was written partly in dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin's anarchist science fiction novel The Dispossessed, whose subtitle was An Ambiguous Utopia. Delany takes the term heterotopia from the writings of philosopher Michel Foucault, who used it to designate spaces outside everyday fixed institutional and social spaces, such as trains, motels, and cemeteries. In the novel's future Solar System, Neptune's moon Triton supports a human society independent from Earth, developed along radically libertarian lines: a representative government exists but has virtually no power to regulate private behavior, and citizens may choose to live in areas where no laws apply. Technology allows for high degrees of self-modification, including changes to physical appearance, gender, sexual orientation, and patterns of likes and dislikes.

The novel is loosely linked to other books by Delany (particularly Neveryóna) through references to 'the modular calculus,' a vaguely described future mathematics that would analyze analogies, fictional constructs, and possibly human personalities. The most recent U.S. edition from Wesleyan University Press (1996) includes a foreword by postmodern novelist Kathy Acker, focusing on Trouble on Triton as Orphic fiction. The novel's title was inspired by Leonard Bernstein's 1952 opera Trouble in Tahiti; editor Fred Pohl at Bantam made Delany shorten the title to Triton to avoid confusion with other works.

Reader's Guide

The novel examines how Triton's freedoms and customs are perceived by its main characters, particularly Bron Helstrom, a young man who previously worked on Mars as a prostitute. Mars's society is far harsher than Triton's, and Bron is self-absorbed, lacks insight about himself and others, and has great difficulty with personal relationships. Although Triton offers everything he could reasonably want, he is unhappy, out of harmony with those around him, and continually looks for others to blame. Political tensions between Triton and Earth lead to a destructive interplanetary war, which serves as backdrop for Bron's ultimately disastrous relationship with a brilliant young woman known as the Spike. Delany speculates about how an interplanetary war might actually unfold.

Reception: Richard A. Lupoff, though dissatisfied with the novel's 'abrupt' conclusion, praised Triton as 'a thoroughly absorbing, highly rewarding reading experience... a noble and fascinating experiment [that] speaks well for the author.' In a 2008 review for Tor.com, Jo Walton praised Trouble on Triton for being a 'personal is political' novel, which was not typical for its contemporaries in science fiction. The novel contains the first two parts of the five-part series 'Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus,' which continues in several volumes of the Return to Nevèrÿon series. Several plot elements have corresponding elements in Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, and the novel is set in the same universe as his short story 'Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones.'

Did You Know?

• The novel was originally published under the shorter title Triton.
• Bron's home city of Bellona on Mars shares its name with the Bellona where Delany's other novel Dhalgren is set.
• The complex game vlet, which Bron observes, is inspired by the Joanna Russ short story 'A Game of Vlet.'