Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Dust-jacket from the first edition
Author	Samuel R. Delany
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Bantam Books
Publication date	1984
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	368 pp
ISBN	0-553-05053-2
OCLC	11685942
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Class	PS3554.E437 S7 1984
Followed by	The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities (unfinished)

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. It was part of a planned diptych whose second half, The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities, remains unfinished.

Plot summary

The novel takes place in a far future in which human societies have developed divergently on some 6000 planets. Many of these worlds are shared with intelligent nonhumans, although only one alien species (the mysterious Xlv) also possesses faster-than-light travel. In an attempt to find a stable defense against the planet destroying phenomenon known as "cultural fugue" (a state of terminal runaway of cultural and technological complexity that destroys all life on a world via a singularity), many human worlds are aligned with one of two broad factions, one generally permissive (the Sygn) and one generally conservative (the Family) by today's standards.

The story opens on the planet Rhyonon. Korga, a tall, misfit youth, undergoes the "RAT" (Radical Anxiety Termination) procedure, a form of psychosurgery which makes him a passive slave, after which he is known as Rat Korga. After he has lived under a number of masters, Rat's world is destroyed by a conflagration. This is later explained to be the result of cultural fugue, though the explanation is far from conclusive, especially since Xlv spacecraft were present in the Rhyonon system when the disaster occurred. Because he is deep inside a mine shaft at the time, Rat Korga survives (though badly injured), the only known being to ever survive cultural fugue.

The action then moves to Velm, a Sygn-aligned world that humanity shares with its native three-sexed intelligent species, the evelm, and where sexual relationships take many forms—monogamous, promiscuous, anonymous, and interspecies. Resident Marq Dyeth, an "industrial diplomat" who helps manage the transfer of technology between different societies, is informed that Rat Korga is his perfect sexual match by a former connection in the powerful and mysterious WEB. Equipping him with a prosthesis (the rings of Vondramach Okk) that restores the initiative he lost due to the RAT procedure, the WEB sends Rat Korga to Velm under the pretext that he is a student, and he and Marq begin a romantic and sexual affair. They go on an unusual hunting expedition and return to a dinner party which becomes chaotic due to the disruptive presence of visitors from a Family world and intense planetwide interest in Korga. Soon after, Rat Korga is forcecd to leave Velm and be permanently separated from Marq (their pairing having been an alien cultural experiment) because their interaction was creating a threat of cultural fugue.

Major themes

As in Trouble on Triton, the novel explores conflicting ideas about personal freedom and desire (Korga has voluntarily opted for a form of psychosurgery making him incapable of anxiety or independent thought), and definitions of gender (the novel invents an alternate use of grammatical gender, in which the pronouns he and she reveal the speaker's sexual interest in the subject rather than the subject's biological sex or social gender). Like several of Delany's other works, it portrays a relationship between an intellectual and a disadvantaged person. It also includes extended digressions by Dyeth as the narrator, speaking to the reader about history, art, sex, politics and civilization.

The two galactic factions, the Sygn and the Family, are representations of opposing modes of thinking as conceived in poststructuralist philosophy. Societies aligned with the Family take the human nuclear family as the basic template for all human relations, of which all variants are considered imperfect copies; the nuclear family plays the role of the transcendental signified, a universal concept from which all other concepts are derived. Societies aligned with the Sygn reject any transcendental signified and instead focus on the idea that all ordering principles are contextual instead of universal; the Sygn emblem, the cyhnk, symbolizes this through the fact that cyhnks from different Sygn groups share a similar underlying structure but always differ in detail, with no one version of the cyhnk considered the ideal form. Reflecting these philosophical orientations, Family societies tend toward hierarchical organization, while Sygn societies tend toward networks of exchange among equals. (The two metaphorically come into conflict in the novel's dinner party sequence. A Velmian dinner party is based on guests exchanging food in a pattern of constant circulation. In the relevant scene, the dinner is attended by the Thants, a family which has long had friendly relations with the Dyeths, but which has recently become the "focus unit" for a Family world, Nepiy. Assuming a position of superiority to the other guests, they refuse to accept food from them, bringing the process to an awkward halt.)

Style

Stars employs many stylistic tropes that reinforce the differences between contemporary thinking and the thinking of the novel's far-future setting.

• As mentioned above, the Velm sections of the novel assign an alternate meaning to the pronouns "he" and "she" not related to physical gender. All characters, whether they are human males or females or evelm males, females, or neuters, are referred to as "she" in most contexts, and "woman" and "womankind" are used as generic terms for humans. The normally male pronouns such as "he" or "him" are used to denote sexual interest in the subject by the speaker.
• Words relating to work and occupations are subscripted (for example, job₁, job₂, job₃) to indicate whether the work involved is one's central "life's work", a different work that one still habitually performs, or an occupation taken up temporarily. Marq Dyeth is consistently called an industrial diplomat₁, as that is his job₁, but at home he works₂ as a docent₂ for visitors to his famous residence; in his youth, he worked₃ for a time as a tracer₃, a Velmian occupation tracking the flow of resources through the economy. This usage derives from Alfred Korzybski's general semantics.
• Unusual terms are used for what seem to be familiar concepts; for example, "geosector" is used consistently instead of "nation" or "country", and "nurture stream" in the Velm sections instead of "family" (when referring to the Velmian version of a family; the "Family," the galactic faction, is referred to by that term). Also, familiar terms, such as "room", "hunt," and "dinner party," refer to things very much unlike what they refer to in our world.
• Residents of Velm use five cardinal directions instead of four: north, east, south, oest, and west.
• The central sense of the evelm is taste, rather than sight, and both evelm and Velmian humans (including Marq) use many phrases and metaphors relating to taste and the tongue where English speakers would use a visual metaphor (saying something "tastes good" instead of "looks good," for example). In fact, the evelm have multiple tongues and can use them to speak multiple things simultaneously, something that is shown typographically in the novel.

Connections to Delany's other work

Stars has a number of plot elements that are similar to certain elements in Trouble on Triton. Most notable is the presence in both novels of the General Information service, although it is more sophisticated in Stars (one need merely think a question for GI to place the knowledge in one's mind, as opposed to Trouble on Triton's GI which takes questions on machines similar to modern computers). Both novels also feature aboveground and institutionalized versions of gay male cruising spaces, although open to all genders and sexual preferences; in Trouble on Triton the protagonist visits such a space in the form of an indoor club, while in Stars the protagonists visit one of their city's many parklike runs set aside for that purpose. Finally, the Family/Sygn conflict in Stars is similar to the conflict between the social systems of Earth and the Outer Satellites in Trouble on Triton; a "Sygn" is present in Trouble on Triton, but is a minor religious cult mentioned very briefly.

Delany's short story "Omegahelm" (found in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories) is set in the same universe as Stars; it concerns Vondramach Okk, conqueror of ten planets and employer of an ancestor of Marq Dyeth.

The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities

All editions of Stars contain an author's note stating that it is the first half of a diptych, the second half of which is the novel The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities. This latter novel is unfinished, and is unlikely to ever be finished. Delany has stated two reasons for this in various writings and public appearances. First, much of the creative impetus for Stars came from his relationship with his then-partner, Frank Romeo (to whom the novel is dedicated); this relationship ended soon after the novel was published, removing much of Delany's creative energy related to the project. Second, the novel was published just as AIDS was becoming an epidemic in the gay culture Delany was immersed in, and he found it difficult to continue to write about a setting which mirrored the sexual scene that gave rise to an epidemic that caused the deaths of many people close to him. An excerpt from The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities was printed in the Review of Contemporary Fiction in September, 1996.

In fact, Stars was the last of Delany's major science fiction projects until 2012's Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. As seen in 1984: Selected Letters, at the time Stars was published his relationship with his publisher, Bantam, underwent a major rupture, with Bantam declining to print the final volume of the Return to Nevèrÿon series, Return to Nevèrÿon (eventually published by Arbor House as The Bridge of Lost Desire). Delany's works largely went out of print in the immediately following years, and he turned to academia for his living, taking up the first of his professorial posts in 1988, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Afrofuturism

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand employs the cultural trope of Afrofuturism. Mark Dery states that afrofuturism within speculative fiction, “treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century techno-culture”. Delany’s use of technology to discuss issues of race within his novel complies with Dery’s definition. Delany uses space travel, hologram, alien life forms, and an interconnected web of information to comment on the ways in which the technologies of the future can work to reflect the experiences of dislocation, isolation, and foreignness black Americans historically and presently feel. In addition to his use of technology, Delany comments on the digital divide through Rat Korga. Rat Korga’s inaccessibility to the Web reflects the raced and classed limitations on access to technology. Alondra Nelson writes that, “Blackness gets constructed as always oppositional to technologically driven chronicles of progress” pointing to the racialization of technology and the consequent limitations on technological availability to black people globally. Delany’s use of technology and his commentary on the digital divide work to make Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand an Afrofuturistic text.

Popular culture

• The British musical group Opus III's first album, Mind Fruit, included the song Stars in my Pocket with lyrics referencing the novel.

cover of the Wesleyan University Press paperback reprint edition

Editions

• Bantam, 1984, 368 pp, hardcover. ISBN 0-553-05053-2
• Bantam Spectra, 1985, 368 pp, paperback. ISBN 0-553-25149-X
• QPB/Bantam, 1985, 368 pp, paperback. no ISBN
• Grafton/Panther, 1986, 464 pp, paperback, ISBN 0-586-06749-3
• Bantam Spectra, 1990, 385 pp, paperback, ISBN 0-553-25149-X, adds a 10 page afterword on postmodernism
• Wesleyan University Press, 2004, 356 pp, paperback. ISBN 0-8195-6714-0, adds a foreword by Carl Freedman