Publications: Reviews

NOVA by Samuel R Delany

Gollancz 2001 224pp £6.99

First published in 1968, Nova is No 37 in Gollancz' SF Masterworks series. Nova is a jewel-bright, exuberant, baroque novel in which every character is larger than life, every setting richer than reality, every turn of the swift plot laden with resonance and import.

Like a fairy tale or myth of tradition, Nova has the simplest plot: a quest. And the quest quickly becomes a race, always in danger of being frustrated by an enemy who is spectacularly, and appropriately, nasty.

Nova is an appropriate title, since the object of the quest, the fantastically valuable Illyrion, is to be gathered by flying through a nova -- an exploding star.

All of which makes for a spicy concoction -- like a pile of Clark Ashton Smith stories -- full of memorable images as the story hurtles towards its climax. As in a fairy tale it is giving nothing away to say that the quest is achieved, and the heroes and heroines win, proving themselves in the process. But what a journey of getting there. What an exercise of the storyteller’s art. (Both by and through Delany.) It is easy to see why, 30 years ago, Delany was the hottest young sf writer in the business. And why he is still so highly respected today.       

Copyright (c) 2001 John Howard