The Einstein Intersection

By Samuel R. Delany and Neil Gaiman

A dragon herder embarks on a quest to bring his beloved back from the dead in this Nebula Award–winning science fiction adventure.

The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are “different” must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey’s mythic quest for his lost love, Friza. In luminous and hallucinated language, it explores what new myths might emerge from the detritus of the human world as those who are “different” try to seize history and the day.

Featuring a foreword by Neil Gaiman.

“When Delany describes to us what he has seen, what he can compute, adduce, intuit or smell in the underbrush, our reaction is to sit bolt upright and cry out, “Of course, I have that very wound myself!” The ability to produce this reaction in people is one of the commonly accepted and apparently valid appurtenances of genius. . . . I look forward to the explosion reading this will create within you.” —A. J. Budrys, Galaxy Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9780819571960

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany published his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, at the age of twenty. Throughout his storied career, he has received four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, and in 2008 his novel Dark Reflections won the Stonewall Book Award. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002, named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2014, and in 2016 was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Delany’s works also extend into memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. After many years as a professor of English and creative writing and director of the graduate creative writing program at Temple University, he retired from teaching in 2015. He lives in Philadelphia with his partner, Dennis Rickett.  

Book preview

It darkles, (tinct, tint) all this our funanimal world.

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

I do not say, however, that every delusion or wandering of the mind should be called madness.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Praise of Folly

There is a hollow, holey cylinder running from hilt to point in my machete. When I blow across the mouthpiece in the handle, I make music with my blade. When all the holes are covered, the sound is sad—as rough as rough can be and be called smooth. When all the holes are open, the sound pipes about, bringing to the eye flakes of sun on water, crushed metal. There are twenty holes. And since I’ve been playing music I’ve been called all different kinds of fool—more times than Lobey, which is my name.

What I look like?

Ugly and grinning most of the time. That’s a whole lot of big nose and gray eyes and wide mouth crammed on a small brown face proper for a fox. That, all scratched around with spun brass for hair. I hack most of it off every two months or so with my machete. Grows back fast. Which is odd, because I’m twenty-three and no beard yet. I have a figure like a bowling pin, thighs, calves, and feet of a man (gorilla?) twice my size (which is about five-nine) and hips to match. There was a rash of hermaphrodites the year I was born, which doctors thought I might be. Somehow I doubt it.

Like I say, ugly. My feet have toes almost as long as my fingers, and the big ones are semi-opposable. But don’t knock it: once I saved Little Jon’s life.

We were climbing the Beryl Face, slipping around on all that glassy rock, when Little Jon lost his footing and was dangling by one hand. I was hanging by my hands, but I stuck my foot down, grabbed him up by the wrist, and pulled him back where he could step on something.

At this point Lo Hawk folds his arms over his leather shirt, nods sagely so that his beard bobs on his ropy neck, says: And just what were you two young Lo men doing on Beryl Face in the first place? It’s dangerous, and we avoid danger, you know. The birthrate is going down, down all the time. We can’t afford to lose our productive youth in foolishness. Of course it isn’t going down. That’s just Lo Hawk. What he means is that the number of total norms is going down. But there’s plenty of births. Lo Hawk is from the generation where the number of non-functionals, idiots, mongoloids, and cretins was well over fifty percent. (We hadn’t adjusted to your images yet. Ah, well.) But now there are noticeably more functionals than non-functionals; so no great concern.

Anyway, not only do I bite my fingernails disgracefully, I also bite my toenails.

And at this point I recall sitting at the entrance of the source-cave where the stream comes from the darkness and makes a sickle of light into the trees, and a blood spider big as my fist suns himself on the rock beside me, belly pulsing out from the sides of him, leaves flicking each other above. Then La Carol walks by with a sling of fruit over her shoulder and the kid under her arm (we had an argument once whether it was mine or not. One day it had my eyes, my nose, my ears. The next, Can’t you see it’s Lo Easy’s boy? Look how strong he is! Then we both fell in love with other people and now we’re friends again) and she makes a face and says, "Lo Lobey, what are you doing?"

Biting my toenails. What does it look like?

Oh, really! and she shakes her head and goes into the woods towards the village.

But right now I prefer to sit on the flat rock, sleep, think, gnaw, or sharpen my machete. It’s my privilege, so La Dire tells me.

Until a little while ago, Lo Little Jon, Lo Easy, and Lo me herded goats together (which is what we were doing on the Beryl Face: looking for pasture). We made quite a trio. Little Jon, though a year older than me, will till death look like a small black fourteen-year-old with skin smooth as volcanic glass. He sweats through his palms, the soles of his feet, and his tongue. (No real sweat glands: piddles like a diabetic on the first day of winter, or a very nervous dog.) He’s got silver mesh for hair—not white, silver. The pigment’s based on the metal pure; the black skin comes from a protein formed around the oxide. None of that rusty iron brown of melanin that suntans you and me. He sings, being a little simple, running and jumping around the rocks and goats, flashing from head and groin and armpits, then stops to cock his leg (like a nervous dog, yeah) against a tree-trunk, glancing around with embarrassed black eyes. Smiling, those eyes fling as much light, on a different frequency, as his glittering head. He’s got claws—hard, sharp horny ones, where I have nubs. He’s not a good Lo to have mad at you.

Easy, on the other hand, is large (about eight feet tall), furry (umber hair curls all down the small of his back, makes ringlets on his belly), strong (that three hundred and twenty-six pounds of Easy is really a lot of rock jammed jagged into his pelt: his muscles have corners), and gentle. Once I got angry at him when one of the fertile nannies fell down a rock chimney.

I saw it coming. The ewe was the big blind one who had been giving us perfect norm triplets for eight years. I stood on one foot and threw rocks and sticks with the other three limbs. It takes a rock on the head to get Easy’s attention; he was much closer than I was.

Watch it, you non-functional, lost-Lo mongoloid! She’s gonna fall in the— At which point she did.

Easy stopped looking at me with his what-are-you-throwing-stones-at-me-for? face, saw her scrabbling at the edge, dove for her, missed, and both of them started bleating. I put my all behind the rock that caught him on the hip and almost cried. Easy did.

He crouched at the chimney edge, tears wetting the fur on his cheeks. The ewe had broken her neck at the chimney’s bottom. Easy looked up and said, Don’t hurt me no more, Lobey. That—he knuckled his blue eyes, then pointed down—hurts too much already. What can you do with a Lo like that? Easy has claws too. All he ever uses them for is to climb the titan palms and tear down mangoes for the children.

Generally we did a good job with the goats, though. Once Little Jon leaped from the branch of an oak to the back of a lion and tore out its throat before it got to the herd (and rose from the carcass, shook himself, and went behind a rock, glancing over his shoulder). And as gentle as he is, Easy crushed a blackbear’s head with a log. And I got my machete, all ambidextrous, left footed, right handed, or vice versa. Yeah, we did a good job.

Not no more.

What happened was Friza.

Friza or La Friza was always a point of debate with the older folk-doctors and the elders who have to pass on titles. She looked normal: slim, brown, full mouth, wide nose, brass-colored eyes. I think she may have been born with six fingers on one hand, but the odd one was non-functional, so a travelling doctor amputated it. Her hair was tight, springy, and black. She kept it short, though once she found some red cord and wove it through. That day she wore bracelets and copper beads, strings and strings. She was beautiful.

And silent. When she was a baby, she was put in the kage with the other non-functionals because she didn’t move. No La. Then a keeper discovered she didn’t move because she already knew how; she was agile as a squirrel’s shadow. She was taken out of the kage. Got back her La. But she never spoke. So at age eight, when it was obvious that the beautiful orphan was mute, away went her La. They couldn’t very well put her back in the kage. Functional she was, making baskets, plowing, an expert huntress with the bolas. That’s when there was all the debate.

Lo Hawk upheld: In my day, La and Lo were reserved for total norms. We’ve been very lax, giving this title of purity to any functional who happens to have the misfortune to be born in these confusing times.

To which La Dire replied: "Times change, and it has been an unspoken precedent for thirty years that La and Lo be bestowed on any functional creature born in this our new home. The question is merely how far to extend the definition of functionality. Is the ability to communicate verbally its sine qua non? She is intelligent and she learns quickly and thoroughly. I move for La Friza."

The girl sat and played with white pebbles by the fire while they discussed her social standing.

The beginning of the end, the beginning of the end, muttered Lo Hawk. We must preserve something.

The end of the beginning, sighed La Dire. Everything must change. Which had been their standing exchange as long as I remember.

Once, before I was born, so goes the story, Lo Hawk grew disgruntled with village life and left. Rumors came back: he’d gone to a moon of Jupiter to dig out some metal that wormed in blue veins through the rock. Later: he’d left the Jovian satellite to sail a steaming sea on some world where three suns cast his shadows on the doffing deck of a ship bigger than our whole village. Still later: he was reported chopping away through a substance that melted to poisonous fumes someplace so far there were no stars at all during the year-long nights. When he had been away seven years, La Dire apparently decided it was time he came back. She left the village and returned a week later—with Lo Hawk. They say he hadn’t changed much, so nobody asked him about where he’d been. But from his return dated the quiet argument that joined La Dire and Lo Hawk faster than love.

. . . must preserve, Lo Hawk.

. . . must change, La Dire.

Usually Lo Hawk gave in, for La Dire was a woman of wide reading, great culture, and wit; Lo Hawk had been a fine hunter in his youth and a fine warrior when there was need. And he was wise enough to admit in action, if not words, that such need had gone. But this time Lo Hawk was

Reviews for The Einstein Intersection

[dreamweaversunited · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It was with a heavy heart that I abandoned this book halfway through, because normally I love Delany. He is truly an inspiration to me. But while I loved the worldbuilding in this book, as I always do with Delany, I found the book confusing and hard to follow, and the main character not very compelling.

[jimmaclachlan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the only book by Delany that I've ever cared for & I love it. He blends SF & mythology, a post-apocalyptic world filled with wonders & monsters. Our hero journeys through this world, discovering more about it, himself & the human race. He shows mankind's greatest failures & achievements through the eyes of something else. A very interesting read & re-read.I read it again & although the words are very familiar after all these years, still they move me in different ways & make me think of different things. Certainly a classic.

[jonfaith · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

As morning branded the sea, darkness fell away at the far side of the beach. I turned to follow it.
So ends The Einstein Intersection. My own interest in Delany may be terminated as well. The novel began as Orpheus and became Red River and ended as David Copperfield. All that without Walter Brennan. Delany lards his fiction with ideas, with theory. Unfortunately he can't stop acknowledging that. A future grimdark place where the humans have left. Mutants remain, clinging to our myths. This novel appeared to be all sprint. I do not wish to end this Delany endeavor. We shall see. 2.3 stars

[timothyl33 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

For the most part the story seems to hint an at intriguing premise of post-apocalyptic Earth being inhabited by someone trying to become humans. But almost 10 pages before the end, it feels like this concept was more than the author could handle and he just gave up. Overall, not a book I would recommend, except for those who love to say "huh??" at the end of books.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting book - I liked it a lot even though I am not sure that I understood it! I loved the myths which entwined the science fiction (and had some laughs at the 1960s references to 45s & 33s; Ringo Starr & "the great rock and the great roll").

[sffstorm · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was interesting and well written, but quite often I found myself wondering what the hell was going on. I feel like Delany actually intended on that reaction though. I did enjoy the read, but I'm not entirely sure what it is that I read or what actually happened.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A post-apocalyptic World is the setting for this novel about how an alien might try to understand who the human race was. We're gone, and all we have left behind is a computer, who has a good deal of explaining to do. The larger theme is an exploration of how the "Odd" among us, come to terms with "Normal" life.

[quondame · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I don’t think too well of this one. I would have thought less of it when it first came out. Alien human re-interpreter Orpheus who doesn’t even get as far as walking out of Hades.

[jim53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very young (25 I think) and self-conscious Delaney gives us a story of a young man in a far future who reenacts aspects of Orpheus's journey to the underworld. Genetics play a key role in this world, with people having to earn the right to be considered "full norms." Semi-educated Lobey, our protagonist, falls in love with a girl who dies, and undertakes a journey to kill Kid Death and bring her back. Along the way he meets characters clearly based on Christ, Judas, Billy the Kid, and Jean Harlow. Delaney introduces chapters with quotations from other writers and entries from the journal he kept while writing. Overall the story is confused, but isn't really helped by his journal entries or the explanations one character feels compelled to provide. It's fun to see Delaney just starting out, feeling his way into the mythological material and combining it with the popular culture of the time. One thing he does well, for the most part, is NOT explaining the world his characters inhabit... we learn things along with Lobey, and we know enough to process the story. The style, like the story, is confused and inconsistent; it jars occasionally but overall it fits well with the characters and the story.

[clong_818048 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Delany was 25 when this book won the 1968 Nebula for best novel (his third!). It is a strange, yet compelling read. It's kind of a fantasy/horror story set in a science fiction universe, with a strong thread of mythology running throughout. Add to this a collection of quotes both from other authors and from Delany's notes that he was keeping as he was writing this book (he was touring Italy and Greece), and you have a thoroughly confusing, genre-hopping, yet oddly poetic quick read. The book is populated with archetypal characters who explore difference vs. sameness, reality vs. perception, observation vs. action. I'm not sure that I understood what happened at the end, and I'm not sure that repeated readings would make it any clearer, but I think it would be worth repeated readings to find out.

[neil_luvs_books · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The Einstein Intersection was just an ok read for me. I doubt that I will read it again. I think I missed the point of aliens inhabiting human form after humans have left the earth. I suspect that Delany was trying to say something about the significance of difference and myth but it was unclear to me. In contrast, I really enjoyed reading Dhalgren four decades ago despite that book having a meandering plot. But that one was still interesting. I wonder if I just missed something in TEI.

[stige_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't think I got it... Pretty, but (to me) nonsense

[ikeman100 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

There are a couple of Delany books I really like but this is not one of them. I prefer "SF" and this is "Fantasy". To many good books in the pile to waste my time on this one. Did not finish.