Empire Star

Lore & Background

Empire Star is a 1966 science fiction novella by Samuel R. Delany. It is often published together with another book, most frequently (three times) with The Ballad of Beta-2. Delany hoped to have it first published as part of an Ace Double with Babel-17, but instead it was published with Tree Lord of Imeten by Tom Purdom. It was finally bundled with Babel-17 in a 2001 reprint. The story revolves around the protagonist, Comet Jo, and a narrator named Jewel. Nominally a tale of Comet Jo’s coming-of-age, his education into galactic society (and as such can be considered a mini-Bildungsroman), his efforts to deliver an important message to Empire Star, and the attempt to bring an end to slavery, the story has several layered loops of events which run back upon themselves—and the concepts, layering, and ordering of the events are as important as the story itself.

Reader's Guide

Empire Star is significant for its experimental narrative structure, where the ordering of events is as important as the story itself. The novella explores concepts of simplex, complex, and multiplex perception, and the nature of slavery through the Lll, a race of builders whose enslavement causes overwhelming sadness in their owners. The story raises questions about whether the narrative is a closed loop or has a definitive end. It also features a character named Oscar/The Lump, an artificial lifeform with a consciousness based on a Lll named Muels Aranlyde, an anagram of Samuel R. Delany. The work is often paired with The Ballad of Beta-2 and was later bundled with Babel-17 in 2001.

Did You Know?

• The character Muels Aranlyde is an anagram of Samuel R. Delany.
• The Lll are builders of ecosystems, societies, and ethical systems, and their enslavement causes 'the sadness of the Lll'.
• Charona and her pet 3-Dog are mythological references to Charon and Cerberus.
• The story's linear narrative stops and is replaced by a few pages of important events not arranged in strict order.

Roots in Harlem and a Legacy of Achievement

Samuel Ray Delany Jr. entered the world on April 1, 1942, in the heart of Harlem, the son of Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, a clerk within the New York Public Library system, and Samuel Ray Delany Sr., who operated the Levy & Delany Funeral Home on Seventh Avenue from 1938 until his death. The family occupied the upper two floors of a modest three-story private home nestled between taller apartment buildings. Delany's ancestry was extraordinary: his paternal grandfather, Henry Beard Delany, was born into slavery yet rose after emancipation to become the first Black bishop of the Episcopal Church. His aunts Sadie and Bessie Delany were recognized civil rights pioneers, while another aunt, Clarissa Scott Delany, was a poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His uncle served as a judge. Delany attended the private Dalton School, spent summers at Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, and later enrolled at the merit-based Bronx High School of Science. His first published story, "Salt," appeared in 1960 in the school's literary magazine, Dynamo, just months before his father's death from lung cancer that October.

Breakthrough Fiction and Critical Acclaim

Delany's fiction career ignited in the mid-1960s with a pair of Nebula Award–winning novels: Babel-17 for 1966 and The Einstein Intersection for 1967. The latter was composed during a five-month journey through France, England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, and those European locales would resurface in later works such as Nova and the short stories "Aye, and Gomorrah" and "Dog in a Fisherman's Net." Critics responded with extraordinary enthusiasm. Algis Budrys declared Delany a "genius and poet," grouping him alongside J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and Roger Zelazny as representing "an earthshaking new kind" of writer, while Judith Merril dubbed him "TNT (The New Thing)." His short story "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" took the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1970. Over his career, Delany accumulated four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. His body of fiction spans a remarkable range, including Dhalgren, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, Hogg, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, while his nonfiction encompasses Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, About Writing, and eight additional essay collections.

Academic Career and Institutional Recognition

From January 1975 through May 2015, Delany held professorships in English, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing across four institutions: SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Albany, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Temple University. This four-decade academic tenure ran parallel to a steady accumulation of major honors. In 1997 he received the Kessler Award, and in 2002 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. The academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries presented him with its third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. In 2013, the Science Fiction Writers of America named him its thirtieth SFWA Grand Master, a distinction reserved for a writer's body of work as a whole. He followed that with induction into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021. Most recently, on October 11, 2025, Delany was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recognition that places his contributions within the broader landscape of American letters and scholarship.

Creative Range and Personal Journeys

Delany's life beyond the page was as varied as his bibliography. In August 1961 he married poet and translator Marilyn Hacker, who was then working as an assistant editor at Ace Books; her editorial connections helped shepherd his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, into print in 1962 when he was only twenty. After a period of separation, Delany spent five months living communally on the Lower East Side with the folk-rock group Heavenly Breakfast, an experience he later rendered in a 1979 memoir of the same name. In 1972 he directed a sixteen-millimeter short film called The Orchid and scripted two issues of the Wonder Woman comic book (No. 202 and 203) during a controversial run in which the character had shed her superpowers. A planned story arc culminating in a confrontation at an abortion clinic was ultimately canceled following a lobbying campaign led by Gloria Steinem. Delany also directed his attention to memoir, producing The Motion of Light in Water to chronicle his early writing years and marriage, and he lived for a time in London before settling at the Albert Hotel in Greenwich Village.