Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

By: Samuel R. Delany

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

The story of a truly galactic civilization with more than 6,000 inhabited worlds.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science-fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues - technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism - have only become more pressing with the passage of time.

The novel's topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue", and the other is - you!

©2019 Samuel R. Delany (P)2019 Skyboat Media, Inc.

Brilliant

A brilliant novel covering a vast range of subjects from slavery to love to beauty to family to gender to language. Very well written and read.

TWA

This one went right over my head. I’d ove to return it because I will never be able to finish it. Kudos to all of you it makes sense to, entertainment shouldn’t make me work so hard. I’ll Re read “Dune” for some real fun or even “The Road”. Where are you Cormack when we need you.

amazing book that isn't for everyone

beautifully written. beautifully narrated. notably incomplete. intended to be the first half of a diptych, it is not very plot intensive. while the book stands fine on its own, by the end of the novel, one feels that the story has only just begun. i would recommend this novel to everyone with an open mind and a loving heart

Masterwork of postmodern fiction

This, my introduction to Delaney, is a mind-expanding, category-shattering novel rich in characters both familar and unfathomably Other. As prescient as William Gibson's cyberpunk (both the Web and a kind of universal Wikipedia are present) and as ethnographically subtle as Ursula Le Guin's Hainish books, with sophisticated flavors from queer theory and Sapir-Whorf throughout, "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" is both ingenious sci-fi narrative and an experiment in literary cultural criticism.

Two formal comments. One, the reading is excellent but bassy, such that it works better in a room than a car. Driving, I had to continually adjust the volume or repeat passages. Two, this is a work so inventive that many of the words and some of the ideas (such as contrapuntal speech by multiple tongues) are better seen than heard. I picked up a used copy of the text and found it added greatly to my sense of the book.

A wonderful, sophisticated read, highly recommended.

Wow the prose.

I will be reading all else I can from this author. And to meet the minimum word requirement I will add #yup

Meh

Meh. I stopped after a few hours. Slow burn that could not get to the point.

3 hours in and still no plot.

I gave up - it was to the point where I couldn't tell if I'd been listening to the same chapter over and over. I could not make myself focus on listening to this book.

First 25% strong the rest meh

Was really rooting for this one… just didn’t land. I can see how others would like it though

I love this author but not this book

One must write ones own view of the world, expressing your views of the ideal and your frustrations with the actual.Of course acceptance of variation is correct . Mightn't these have been stated more simply.

I will not be finishing this book

Aggressively sexual, word choice was too complicated for someone who’s supposed to be uneducated (like he kept a thesaurus next to him as he wrote this book) and the prologue was over two hours long (it was a complete story and should have been made into a two part series). When the prologue abruptly ends and the actual book begins the author makes you feel stupid for struggling to follow along. The author gives me “likes to mention his IQ in casual conversation when no one asked” vibes.