Samuel R, Delany ~ Vintage editions

Some years ago I purchased a copy of Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren in, I think, Borders on Oxford Street. I loved the book – classic post apocalyptic fiction, but with several twists and a particularly visionary aspect which raises it above and beyond its peers by some distance. I’m writing this now, partly because I mentioned the book in passing in a Burnt Sugar review I reread recently after seeing the band live (turns out Greg Tate, unsurprisingly in retrospect, is a big fan). I also adored the jacket design which is among my favourites of all the books I own – it’s evocative, resonant and illustrative without limiting the potential for imagination that so many designs do (worst offender I can recall is the cover for Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse which displays an oil painting of a woman who all too easily could be the central, mother figure in the book). I also really like the typography, looks like Century Gothic maybe which is my current favourite, also used for Autechre’s EP5. The reason for the post is that I’ve just discovered that the Dhalgren edition is but one of a series of five and I’m hungry to snare the rest. It’s not looking as easy as I’d like as his books are fairly difficult to get hold of in the first place and online vendors don’t always make clear which edition you’re buying because they don’t always display the covers (Amazon UK only stocks one of the Vintages and its marketplace setup and Abebooks don’t display images or often even the publisher). I’m determined though…