The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction [Paperback]

Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw appeared originally in 1977, and is now long out of print and hard to find. The impact of its demonstration that science fiction was a special language, rather than just gadgets and green-skinned aliens, began reverberations still felt in science fiction criticism. This edition includes two new essays, one written at the time and one written about those times, as well as an introduction by writer and teacher Matthew Cheney, placing Delany’s work in historical context. Close textual analyses of Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ read as brilliantly today as when they first appeared. Essays such as “About 5,750 Words” and “To Read The Dispossessed” first made the book a classic; they assure it will remain one.An indispensable work of science fiction criticism revised and expandedPrefaces and Acknowledgments
Ethical Aesthetics, An Introduction – Matthew Cheney
About 5,750 Words
Critical Methods / Speculative Fiction
Quarks
Thickening the Plot
Faust and Archimedes
Alyx
Prisoners’ Sleep
Letter to the Symposium on “Women In Science Fiction”
To Read The Dispossessed
A Fictional Architecture That Manages Only with Great Difficulty Not Once to Mention Harlan Ellison
Appendixes: Midcentury
Letter to a Critic •Index