Nova was published by Doubleday in 1968. Delany was twenty-six. It is his most purely enjoyable novel — a space opera of extraordinary velocity and invention that operates simultaneously as adventure story, economic allegory, Arthurian quest narrative, and meditation on art and creation. It was the last science fiction novel Delany wrote before turning toward the experimental difficulty of Dhalgren and Triton.
The year is 3172. Interstellar civilization runs on Illyrion, an element found only in the cores of exploding stars. The economy is controlled by two factions: Draco (centered on Earth, old money, monopolist) and the Pleiades Federation (newer, democratic, economically insurgent). Captain Lorq Von Ray — aristocratic, scarred, obsessive — intends to fly his ship through a nova at the moment of stellar explosion, harvest seven tons of Illyrion, and flood the market, breaking Draco’s monopoly forever.
The Grail quest structure is explicit: Lorq is a composite of Perceval and Ahab; his adversary Prince Red (heir to the Draco fortune, literally missing an arm) is the Fisher King; the Illyrion is the Grail; the nova itself is the Chapel Perilous. Delany layers onto this a Tarot framework (each crew member corresponds to a Major Arcana card) and a subplot about a novelist aboard ship who is trying to write a novel about the voyage — making Nova simultaneously a novel about economic revolution and a novel about the creation of novels.
The prose is dense, allusive, and sensuous — every paragraph contains multiple registers (scientific, mythological, sensory) operating simultaneously. But unlike Dhalgren, it never sacrifices momentum: the book hurtles toward its climax with genuine narrative urgency. It is the novel where Delany proved that literary complexity and pulp excitement were not merely compatible but synergistic.
Collecting Nova
First edition (Doubleday, New York, 1968): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $100–$300
- Signed first edition: $200–$600
- Without jacket: $20–$40
- First UK edition (Gollancz, 1969): $40–$100
The last of Delany’s “accessible” SF novels and the one most frequently cited as his single best book by readers who find Dhalgren impenetrable.