Reviews for Distant stars

The average rating for Distant stars based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-01-20 00:00:00 Eric Lalor This was my first Delany book, and it left me pretty impressed. The first few stories in this collection, namely "Prismatica", "Corona", and "Empire Star" (really a novella) would have been off-putting for their slick cleverness if the prose and the imagination behind the prose weren't so damn good. My favorite stories, strangely, tended to be the ones with the longest, strangest names: "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", and, especially, "We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line".

Review # 2 was written on 2020-11-22 00:00:00 Tracy Will It can take me a little while to get into the groove with a Delany tale so I'm not surprised that the best of this bunch are the longer entries which are given more time to hit their stride. Even so, these short stories can feel truncated or impulsive as if they're part of a planned bigger work that the author abandoned or whatever the literary equivalent of a watercolor is. I also suspect, after reading this collection, that when it comes to fiction, the more Delany leans into scifi -- and away from fantasy -- the more his mind has space to roam.