Will sez, "I thought you'd be interested in this chapter from Samuel R. Delany's much-anticipated new book, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders the story of a decades-long interracial romance between two men on the Georgia coast."
Barbara said, "That's a lot of trouble."
"Ain't no trouble at all," Jay said. "It's nice out on Gilead. Next time you get a day off, we should take you both. Cook hamburgers and hotdogs on the back deck. Bring that boyfriend of yours, Mr. Bodin, out, if y'all can stand us for an afternoon."
"Oh, Mom–come on! I'm seventeen, now. I wanna go out there. Today–tonight! Please?"
Jay said, "He ain't got to be back at work with Dynamite on the garbage run till Tuesday. The boy can come on out and see the place. We ain't gonna let him stay up all night, believe me. We're up and movin' by four-thirty–we'll have him back here when you get in for your shift. And we'll give you a call."
Twenty feet away, below the shingle, the sea made the sound of something rushing off somewhere, even while late-summer waves moved in toward grass, sand, and rock. At the world's rim, an elongated gray-green scab crossed part of the horizon, one end thicker than the other: Gilead Island.
Delany is one of science fiction's greatest masters, and this is indeed a long-anticipated work.
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
(Thanks, Will!)
(Image: Samuel R. Delany "The Star Pit" 40th Anniversary 2007-10-02, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from houari_b's photostream)
