Samuel R. Delany

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. (/dəˈleɪni/; born April 1, 1942), Chip Delany to his friends, is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.

His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), Nova, Dhalgren, and the Return to Nevèrÿon series. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. From January 2001 until his retirement in May 2015, he was a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 2010 he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 30th SFWA Grand Master in 2013.

Life and career

Dhalgren

Dhalgren is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. The story begins with a cryptic passage:

to wound the autumnal city.
     So howled out for the world to give him a name.
     The in-dark answered with wind.

What follows is an extended trip to and through Bellona, a fictional city in the American Midwest cut off from the rest of the world by some unknown catastrophe. William Gibson has referred to Dhalgren as "A riddle that was never meant to be solved."

Plot overview

The city of Bellona is severely damaged; radio, television, and telephones do not reach it. People enter and leave by crossing a bridge on foot.

Inexplicable events punctuate the novel: One night the perpetual cloud cover parts to reveal two moons in the sky. One day a red sun swollen to hundreds of times its normal size rises to terrify the populace, then retreats across the sky to set on the same horizon. Street signs and landmarks shift constantly, while time appears to contract and dilate. Buildings burn for days, but are never consumed, while others burn and later show no signs of damage. Gangs roam the nighttime streets, their members hidden within holographic projections of gigantic insects or mythological creatures. The few people left in Bellona struggle with survival, boredom, and each other.

Jay Scheib

Jay Scheib (born October 6, 1969) is an American stage director, playwright and artist, noted for his contemporary productions of both classical and new plays and operas. Scheib is a Professor for Music and Theater Arts and director of the Program in Theater Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he teaches performance media, motion theater, media and methods, and introduction to directing. Scheib has been a regular guest professor at the Mozarteum Institute für Regie und Schauspiel in Salzburg, Austria, where he conducts an annual "viewpoints and composition" studio.

Biography

Early career

Scheib was born in Shenandoah, Iowa and attended the University of Minnesota. In 1997 he entered Columbia University School of the Arts from where he later received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater Directing. He began his career in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a 1991 production of Antonin Artaud's Le Jet du Sang followed by a commission from the International Festival of Free Theaters in Szeged, Hungary where Scheib was to premiere The Seasonal. He went on to co-found The American Theater Institute, which eventually became The Arcade Studio. Productions here included: The Kingdom, The Suicide, Poems for the Theater, The Device Machine, Lendra // Revolute, John Day, Galileo Sidereal, Witkacy's The Madman and the Nun, Heiner Müller's Mommsen's Block, The Battle (Die Schlacht), Prolegomenon, and Pickaxe.