Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. It was part of a planned diptych whose second half, The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities, remains unfinished; in September 1996 the Review of Contemporary Fiction printed an excerpt. The novel takes place in a far future in which human societies have developed divergently on some 6000 planets. Many of these worlds are shared with intelligent nonh... more

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984) is a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany. It was part of a planned diptych whose second half, The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities, remains unfinished; in September 1996 the Review of Contemporary Fiction printed an excerpt. The novel takes place in a far future in which human societies have developed divergently on some 6000 planets. Many of these worlds are shared with intelligent nonhumans, although only one alien species (the mysterious Xlv) also possesses star travel. Many human worlds are aligned with one of two broad factions, one generally permissive (the Sygn) and one generally conservative (the Family) by today's standards, in an attempt to find a stable defense against the planet destroying phenomenon known as "cultural fugue" (a state of terminal runaway of cultural and technological complexity that destroys all life on a world). The story opens on the planet Rhyonon. Korga, a tall, misfit youth, undergoes the ... less