Abstract

"Us-and-Them fiction" of any sort has never particularly interested me. … Identity is basically a synonym for category, and while categories make language possible, they make problems in life—especially when your try to assign subjects to them. People almost never fit, or never fit for long.In a 2015 interview with Cecilia D'Anastasio, Samuel Delany shares his motivations for writing science fiction from his position as a queer black man. Despite his trepidation about the limiting "categories" within "us-and-them-fiction," and the dangers of essentialist identity politics, Delany notes that his experiences are embedded in each of his texts—even when the protagonists are heterosexual, Asian, Native American, or...