These people are psychotic, but in a specific way that makes them able to bear the stress of intergalactic travel.
Except for one class of people, discovered fortuitously: the golden. Some distance out of the Milky Way, people go insane, then die. Well, no I’m not - because it is only some way into the story that we learn one crucial thing. And he remembers his childhood on out-of-the-way Earth, confined in an apartment, Earth people mostly confined to their “primitive” planet.īut I’m forgetting something. Meanwhile Vyme leaves their home occasionally, for mechanic jobs across the local area of the Galaxy. But we don’t know that for a long time, as he tells of his earlier life, specifically a time period on another planet when he was part of a group marriage (or “procreation group.”) The group’s children make an “ecologarium,” sort of a large terrarium, and we see the alien life in the “ecologarium” go through its lifecycles, within its enclosure. It’s told by Vyme, a 40ish starship mechanic working in the “Star-Pit,” a huge structure at the edge of the Galaxy, from whence intergalactic ships depart. Covers by David Lee Anderson and Tony Roberts The Star Pit/Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo (Tor Double, 1989).
It’s long been obvious to me that Theodore Sturgeon was a major influence on Delany (as I believe he has often acknowledged) and I think this might be his most Sturgeonesque story. And it maintains its status as a great story. I have just reread it, in the very same copy of Alpha 5 I originally bought early in 1975. (We can’t ask them, alas, as they have all died – but at least Gardner and I commented to that effect in Jo Walton’s Informal History of the Hugos.)
Samuel r. delany the star pit ebook series#
I sometimes wondered why the story wasn’t in an Ace Double as other Delany novellas like Empire Star were, but it did get a reprint in the Tor Double series much later, backed with John Varley’s “Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo.” I think it was clearly the best novella of 1967, and I think it’s fair to say that Dozois, Merril, and Lupoff agreed with me. (Unfortunately, the What If? series was cancelled after the first two books, and Volume 3 only appeared decades later from a small press.)Īlpha 5 (Ballantine 1974, cover by Bruce Pennington) and Driftglass (Signet 1977, cover by Bob Pepper)ĭelany collected “The Star Pit” in his great first collection Driftglass, and in a later collection, Aye, and Gomorrah. And Richard Lupoff chose it for What If? Volume 3, the third entry in his series of books highlighting the stories that he felt should have won the Hugo each year. Gardner Dozois put it in his anthology with a similar title (and ambition) to Silverberg’s: Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction. Robert Silverberg anthologized it twice – not just in Alpha 5 but in the Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels. It was in Judith Merril’s SF 12, the very last outing for her seminal series. “The Star Pit” was a finalist for the 1968 Hugo for Best Novella, which went in a tie to “Riders of the Purple Wage” by Philip Jose Farmer and “Weyr Search” by Anne McCaffrey. (Interestingly, the magazine ceased publication after the next issue (May 1967) before a brief (three issue) revival in 19.) It first appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow for February of 1967 – and as Worlds of Tomorrow was widely considered the “third-string” magazine in Fred Pohl’s editorship, behind sister magazines Galaxy and If, that could be regarded as “underappreciation,” though more likely it reflected the difficulty of fitting novellas into magazines. In fact this is a story with a decent history of anthologization and recognition over the years, so my term “underappreciated” is off base.
But it’s been quite a few years since my last read. I remember as one of the great underappreciated novellas in SF. It was a story I liked then, and loved on a reread a few years later. I remember reading “The Star Pit” as a teen, probably in Robert Silverberg’s exceptional reprint anthology Alpha 5. Of necessity, each of these essays will go into some detail as to the plot of the stories – in most case, in my opinion, this will not “spoil” the stories, but I know that I am less spoiler-phobic than many, so tread carefully. This is the first of what I hope will be an extended series of essays taking a closer look at some stories I either consider to be particularly good, or interesting for other reasons. Worlds of Tomorrow, February 1967, containing “The Star Pit” by Samuel R.