The Motion of Light in Water Audiobook By Samuel R. Delany cover art

The Motion of Light in Water

Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village

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The Motion of Light in Water

By: Samuel R. Delany
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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About this listen

Born in New York City’s Black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married White poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city’s new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in summer 1961.

Through the decade’s opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned among the crowded streets and cheap railroad apartments. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this era of exploration and adventure as he details his development as a Black gay writer in an open marriage, with tertiary walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, W. H. Auden, and James Baldwin, and a panoply of brilliantly drawn secondary characters.

©2014 Samuel R. Delany (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing and Skyboat Media, Inc.
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I love Samuel "Chip" Delany's books, and I was quite excited to read this. It definitely surpassed my expectations, with an in-depth exploration of what it was like to be a queer black science-fiction writer (each of these identities significant in their own ways) in the 1960s. It gives a lot of insight into some of the tropes he likes to go back to, and is as relevant as ever in 2020.

A must-read for Delany fans

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Rudnicki does a marvelous job with Delany once again. To anyone interested in 1960s NYC, Science Fiction, Memoir, writing, sex, or queerness I CANNOT recommend this book enough. Profoundly insightful, derply moving, and yes, very entertaining.

A true classic performed perfectly

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