Author | Samuel R. Delany |
---|---|
Original title | Triton |
Cover artist | Mitchell Hooks |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | 1976 |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 369 |
ISBN | 0-553-22979-6 |
OCLC | 14151051 |
Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) is a science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It was nominated for the 1976 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for a retrospective James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 1995. [1] It was originally published under the shorter title Triton.
Delany has said that Trouble on Triton was written partly in dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin's anarchist science fiction novel The Dispossessed , whose subtitle was An Ambiguous Utopia. [2] It is also loosely linked to other books by him (particularly Neveryóna) in its references to "the modular calculus", a vaguely described future mathematics that would analyze analogies, fictional constructs, and possibly human personalities. The most recent U.S. edition from Wesleyan University Press (1996) has a foreword by the postmodern novelist Kathy Acker, focusing on Trouble on Triton as Orphic fiction.
As the subtitle implies, the novel offers several conflicting perspectives on the concept of utopia. Utopia literally means "good place" or "no place". Delany takes the term heterotopia from the writings of philosopher Michel Foucault. [3] Literally, heterotopia means "other place" or "a place of differences". Foucault uses the term to designate spaces outside everyday fixed institutional and social spaces, for example trains, motels and cemeteries. In the novel's future Solar System, Neptune's moon Triton supports one of several human societies independent from Earth, which has developed along radically libertarian lines in some ways: although a representative government exists, it has virtually no power to regulate private behavior, and citizens may choose to live in an area where no laws apply at all. Technology provides for a high degree of self-modification, so that one can change one's physical appearance, gender, sexual orientation, and even specific patterns of likes and dislikes.
The novel examines how Triton's freedoms and customs are perceived by the main characters, particularly Bron Helstrom, a young man who has previously worked on Mars as a prostitute. The society of Mars is far harsher than that of Triton, and it has evidently influenced Bron's personality. He is self-absorbed, often lacks insight about himself and others, and has great difficulty with personal relationships. Although the civilization of Triton offers everything that he could reasonably want, he is unhappy with his life, out of harmony with those around him, and continually looking for others to blame whenever things go wrong.
As the novel continues, political tensions between Triton and Earth lead to a destructive interplanetary war. This is mainly used as the backdrop for Bron's (ultimately disastrous) relationship with a brilliant young woman known as the Spike, but Delany speculates about how an interplanetary war might actually unfold.
Although dissatisfied with the novel's "abrupt" conclusion, Richard A. Lupoff praised Triton as "a thoroughly absorbing, highly rewarding reading experience. . . . a noble and fascinating experiment [that] speaks well for the author." [4] In a 2008 review for Tor.com, Jo Walton praises Trouble on Triton for being "a “personal is political” novel, which was not typical for its contemporaries in the science fiction genre. [5]
The novel offers a unique directional artificial gravitational field created by inducing relativistic motion of atomic particles, essentially extreme elliptical orbits.
Trouble on Triton is not to be confused with the 1941 Henry Kuttner novel or the 1954 Alan E. Nourse novel Trouble on Titan.
The title of the novel was inspired by Leonard Bernstein's 1952 opera, Trouble in Tahiti . Fred Pohl, the editor at Bantam, made Delany shorten the title to Triton to avoid confusion. [6]
Trouble on Triton contains the first two parts of the five-part series "Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus", which continues in several volumes of the Return to Nevèrÿon series. The novel as a whole is Part One, while Part Two is the novel's second appendix.
Bron's home city of Bellona on Mars shares its name with the Bellona where Delany's other novel Dhalgren is set.
Several plot elements in Trouble on Triton have similar corresponding elements in Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand .
Trouble on Triton is set in the same universe as Delany's short story "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", included in his collection Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories .
The complex game vlet, which Bron observes the play of, is inspired by the Joanna Russ short story "A Game of Vlet", found in her collection The Zanzibar Cat .
The New Wave was a science fiction (SF) style of the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by a great degree of experimentation with the form and content of stories, greater imitation of the styles of non-science fiction literature, and an emphasis on the psychological and social sciences as opposed to the physical sciences. New Wave authors often considered themselves as part of the modernist tradition of fiction, and the New Wave was conceived as a deliberate change from the traditions of the science fiction characteristic of pulp magazines, which many of the writers involved considered irrelevant or unambitious.
The Dispossessed is a 1974 anarchist utopian science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, one of her seven Hainish Cycle novels. It is one of a small number of books to win all three Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, utopia, individualism, and collectivism.
Dhalgren is a 1975 science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It features an extended trip to and through Bellona, a fictional city in the American Midwest cut off from the rest of the world by an unknown catastrophe. It is number 33 on the 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction list.
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. It is part of what would have been a "diptych", in Delany's description, of which the second half, The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities, remains unfinished.
Nоva is a science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany and published in 1968. The plot concerns the spaceship captain Lorq Von Ray's search for a supernova, which will produce the essential power source Illyrion, and his vendetta with the Red family, who seek to kill him. Nominally space opera, it explores the politics and culture of a future where cyborg technology is universal, yet making major decisions can involve using tarot cards. It has strong mythological overtones, relating to both the Grail Quest and Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece.
The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, is the autobiography of the science fiction author Samuel R. Delany in which he recounts his experiences growing up as a gay African American man, as well as some of his time in an interracial and open marriage with Marilyn Hacker. It describes encounters with Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael and Stormé DeLarverie, a dinner with W. H. Auden, and a phone call to James Baldwin.
Neptune has appeared in fiction since shortly after its 1846 discovery, albeit infrequently. It initially made appearances indirectly—e.g. through its inhabitants—rather than as a setting. The earliest stories set on Neptune itself portrayed it as a rocky planet rather than as having its actual gaseous composition; later works rectified this error. Extraterrestrial life on Neptune is uncommon in fiction, though the exceptions have ranged from humanoids to gaseous lifeforms. Neptune's largest moon Triton has also appeared in fiction, especially in the late 20th century onwards.
The Space Machine, subtitled A Scientific Romance, is a science fiction novel written by English writer Christopher Priest.
Return to Nevèrÿon is a series of eleven sword and sorcery stories by Samuel R. Delany, originally published in four volumes during the years 1979–1987. Those volumes are:
The Einstein Intersection is a 1967 science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. The title is a reference to Einstein's Theory of Relativity connecting to Kurt Gödel's Constructible universe, which is an analogy to science meeting philosophy. Delany's intended title for the book was A Fabulous, Formless Darkness.
Tales of Nevèrÿon is a collection of five sword and sorcery stories by Samuel R. Delany published in 1978. It is the first of the four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series and contains the stories "The Tale of Gorgik," "The Tale of Old Venn," "The Tale of Small Sarg," "The Tale of Potters and Dragons," and "The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers."
Black science fiction or black speculative fiction is an umbrella term that covers a variety of activities within the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres where people of the African diaspora take part or are depicted. Some of its defining characteristics include a critique of the social structures leading to black oppression paired with an investment in social change. Black science fiction is "fed by technology but not led by it." This means that black science fiction often explores with human engagement with technology instead of technology as an innate good.
Heterotopia is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. Foucault provides examples: ships, cemeteries, bars, brothels, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs, Muslim baths and many more. Foucault outlines the notion of heterotopia on three occasions between 1966 and 1967. A lecture given by Foucault to a group of architects in 1967 is the most well-known explanation of the term. His first mention of the concept is in his preface to The Order of Things, and refers to texts rather than socio-cultural spaces.
Samuel R. "Chip" Delany is an American writer and literary critic. His work includes fiction, memoir, criticism, and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society. His fiction includes Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection ; Hogg, Nova, Dhalgren, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, About Writing, and eight books of essays. He has won four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards, and he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002.
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders is a novel by Samuel R. Delany.
James S. A. Corey is the pen name used by collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, authors of the science fiction series The Expanse. The first and last name are taken from Abraham's and Franck's middle names, respectively, and S. A. are the initials of Abraham's daughter. The name is also meant to emulate many of the space opera writers of the 1970s. In Germany, their books are published under the name James Corey with the middle initials omitted.
The Long Earth is a collaborative science fiction novel series by British authors Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.
Empire is a 1978 graphic novel written by Samuel R. Delany and illustrated by Howard Chaykin.
The Straits of Messina is a 1989 non-fiction collection of essays, in which author and critic Samuel R. Delany discusses his own novels. The essays are published under his own name, and under the pen name K. Leslie Steiner.
A Plunge into Space is an 1890 science fiction novel by Irish author Robert Cromie. It describes a voyage to Mars, where Earthlings find a utopia that is so perfect as to be boring. It received mostly positive reviews upon release and likely sold well. The second edition was published in 1891 with a preface attributed to the French science fiction author Jules Verne; modern scholars have concluded that it was likely written by somebody else. Cromie later accused fellow writer H. G. Wells of plagiarising key plot elements from the book for his 1900–1901 serial The First Men in the Moon; Wells denied ever having heard of Cromie or the book.