The Einstein Intersection

This talented author weaved a very engrossing tale of a far distant future! This was a page turner, and filled with detail and creative writing. I’ve read some of his other works, and this one did not disappoint!

I am reading all of the Nebula Award winning Novels in time order. This is my fourth and the second one by Samuel R. Delany, the first being Babble-17. I can see why this novel won the Nebula Award. It is well written, interesting, and unique. The only problem is that it is not memorable. It's only been a couple of days since I read it and I hardly remember anything about it. It's a good book but you don't learn much from it, it doesn't stretch your brain.

Overall I think the book feels a bit rough, like the connection of the plot points weren't fully flushed out. I don't know if I feel the ending was really earned. But I have been thinking about this book a lot since finishing it, so I suppose that is a good thing. I have to say it is thought provoking, but not necessarily likable. There were parts of the story that I found really interesting, and I found some of the quotes preceding the chapters quite poignant. But others just felt tacked on and some (like the author's notes) threw me out of the story a bit. I think the most interesting parts of the books were when the characters were discussing relationships and genetic mutations. I wasn't as impressed with the action sequences. I think the main themes of the book were interesting and thought provoking, but I didn't really think they were presented in a way that provided a lot of clarity. There were insights and quotes peppered through the text that I simply loved, but the overall story left me feeling unsatisfied.

So well written. Beautiful. The negative reviews almost dissuaded me. In retrospect those reviewers must be very literal minded people with stunted imaginations. There really is no accounting for lack of taste. So. This is a book I could easily reread and in which I am sure I would still find something new to appreciate. I am grateful to have stumbled across Delaney. Having read voraciously for years, I was beginning to fear I had exhausted most of the quality veins in the mines of literature. But not true! My only complaint is that the book was too short. More please. Much more of works like this, and uh, thank you, Mister Delaney.

Hmmm... the writing is good but the subject matter is too vague to become engrossed in it. Some non-human beings in a post-apocolyptic earth? They tell tales of their adventures with history thrown in, in the form of myth. There was no plot that evolved or that can be perceived. Great character descriptions but where this story went is ambiguous. More of an Arthurian tale without beginning or end.

Einstein Intersection is perhaps, a hard book for some people to understand. I’m not sure why this is, perhaps I had a hard time finding the meaning in the story but I certainly understood it perfectly well. The book takes place on Earth, in the future. When humans have left the Earth, presumably due to some kind of nuclear disaster. There are rampant mutations and now aliens have arrived to pick up where Humans have left off. But the one to one here is by way of three or four. What I mean by this is that things are exactly what they seem and if you take some things at face value you might not only miss the point of the book but get very confused. Also, reading carefully is a must for this short novel. If you don’t, you also will lose your way. Everything is important, from the incredibly interesting language used by the characters to the strange travel log quotes the author uses at the head of some of the chapters. Einstein Intersection is a masterpiece of Science Fiction. Not because it was exciting or had memorable characters, which it did. But because this book was written in the 1960s and we can still discuss what it means and the themes it deals with today. That, to me is what separates literature from fiction. Einstein Intersection is definitely literature.

The story was interesting, different, but I didn't love it. I enjoyed the writing, I might well try another Delany, I've heard so much positive

When it first came out in paperback in the 1960s this book was just an exciting science fiction book for a junior high school boy. Reading it again in my 60s it is so much more. I hope to read it again in my 80s.

This is unlike anything you will ever read. Aliens (but the word is misleading) have inherited our world and our myths. Their world is layered on top of ours. They struggle to interpret our myths and find ways to adapt them to the world that is now theirs. It is a lyrical story of Lo Lobey as he seeks to follow one of our ancient myths to bring back the love of his life. It's about herding dragons through the bits and pieces of the world we left behind. There are moments of clarity when you get to experience that world through Lo Lobey's eyes. To actually feel what it would be like to live in this post-human world. Finally, the writing is a level above. Very lyrical, poetic, and vivid. Come and listen to Lo Lobey make music on his machete and you'll understand what I am babbling about.

worth a read - so different from stuff written more recently