New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | September 12, 2005

Bidisha Banerjee looks at the Katrina aftermath through the eyes of SciFi eminence grise Samuel R. Delaney.

Comments

|9.12.05 @ 7:43PM|#

grice? Maybe "grace" with an English accent?

|9.12.05 @ 7:47PM|#

I have not read this book, but I have read Delaney's THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION, which is a marvelous blend of traditional mythology, psychological horror, and science-fiction. I highly recommend it.

|9.12.05 @ 7:59PM|#

On a similar note, the album Deltron 3030 has seemed particularly apropo these last few weeks.

Particularly the song Turbulence (Remix)

|9.12.05 @ 8:06PM|#

"Grise" is the word, is the word, is the word.

|9.12.05 @ 9:12PM|#

What panurge said.

Jeff P.|9.12.05 @ 10:12PM|#

I posted this last week, but here's a piece on the SF trope of contemporary cities in ruins.

http://www.stanford.edu/~dplatt/Ruins/

|9.12.05 @ 10:26PM|#

Thank you, Julian. But you also changed matthew hogan's post from "grice" to "grise". So now my first post just makes me look nuts! :)

B.D.|9.13.05 @ 7:31AM|#

Nice to see a Delaney reference. "Dahlgren" is an epic piece of literature. Artistic, sometimes confounding, sensual, and filled with commentary on social structures.

|9.13.05 @ 7:47AM|#

I suppose the biggest difference between Dahlgren and the Katrina aftermath is that there was a hell of a lot more homosexual dick licking in Dahlgren than in the Katrina aftermath -- if the media reporting is any guide, anyway. God only knows what people were doing in the Tennessee Williams' beloved city in between taking shots at helicopters, though.

Jeff P.|9.13.05 @ 8:15AM|#

I've always found "We, in Some Strange Powers Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line" to be the more libertarian of Delany's work. The whole concept of the "good life" (read as cheap and easy connectivity) being mandatory and the proliferation of mass communication being the catalyst for war is slowly coming to fruition.
Paul Di Filippo wrote a semi-homage to this story called Harlem Nova a few years back.
Also, readers may find A.A. Attanasio's Radix to be similar in tone and style to Dhalgren, albeit on a slightly bigger scale.

Shannon Love|9.13.05 @ 10:17AM|#

I'm not sure the image of New Orleans as a dystopia is really accurate. This morning the official death count for the entire state of Louisiana stands at 272 and few now expect it to go much higher.

So we have 100,000 people trapped in a flooded and devastated city with little functioning authority and little outside help and yet they manage to take care of themselves and each other to the extent that fewer than 1/2 of one percent of them die. That is a pretty remarkable accomplishment in anyone's book!

When you consider that: (1) most of those left were the poorest with the smallest support networks and least skills and (2) that the evacuation raised the relative proportion of the criminal and dysfunctional in the population, the low death toll becomes even more remarkable.

I think the lesson of New Orleans is that individuals do a better job of caring for themselves and others than the state.

(My favorite Delaney work is "Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand" which presaged the whole red/blue cultural divide.)

Jim Henley|9.13.05 @ 12:27PM|#

Nice analogy in the article (I've made it myself) but Katrina New Orleans was lacking in the Mobius strip/time loop department. Also, only one moon!

|9.20.05 @ 9:14AM|#

I'm glad someone else noticed this. Strangely, I was just finishing up my second reading of Dahlgren (which is pretty much my favorite book ever) when the hurricane hit. The Thursday after the storm, when things seemed at their most chaotic, I spent the whole evening crying in front of the TV, occasionally picking up my beat-up copy of the book, and comparing, with awe, how similar the cover art of people gathered on broken highway bridges was to the images on the screen. I've never been more convinced of Delany's genius.