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Acknowledgments i must thank Brian Stableford, first for his lucid essays on the sociology of science fiction, which have appeared all too infrequently over the past decade, then for his supportive correspondence over the past year; also, had he not given me a chance to read in manuscript his exhaustive survey, The Scientific Imagination in Literature, i would never have had the insight that prompted “exotext 4.” Monte Davis generously provided half-a-dozen pages single-space typed commentary on my own, which proved inexpressibly valuable in organizing this present draft. i must also thank Jean Marc Gawron, Marilyn Hacker, and Joanna Russ, who, for the year i have been engaged in this study, subjected me to an astute and unremitting criticism of the entire concept of difficult discourse, a criticism that, even when it reaches (or especially when it reaches) its most antagonistic, is inestimably useful to any writer who would essay such discourse, if the play such discourse allows is not to become polysyllabic silliness in its search for either the accurate or the ironic—a trespass every difficult writer risks. i must thank David Hartwell, medieval scholar, contemporary poetry entrepreneur, and science fiction editor extraordinary, who supported me in the most generous way an editor can. He said: “Write your book. i shall publish it.” My typist, Daniel Neudell, rendered services far above monetary value, correcting my erratic spelling and generally performing those endless intelligences needed to render the illegible lisible. i have known psychiatrists to show, for ten times the fee, less insight and discretion. Camilla Decarnin of San Francisco has, once again, been more generous and helpful than i can say. The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and its Center for 20th Century Studies (Michel Benamou, director) where i was a fellow in 1977, provided a number of astute and helpful readers during the final birth-pangs of this text, including Professor Teresa de Lauretis, then assistant director of the Center, and Assistant Professor Mary Kenny Badami of the Department of Communications. xii Acknowledgments Finally, i must thank Thomas M. Disch. There is so much for which to thank him that partial enumeration, which is all this note affords, would merely misrepresent my gratitude. Let me end, then, by offering this simplest, this richest, this most endless of metonymies: i thank him for “Angouleme.” 1977 For his generous support and help for this 2013 Wesleyan University Press edition, from beginning to end, Matthew Cheney and i would both like to thank Gregory Feeley, executor of the literary estate of the late Thomas M. Disch. i am very grateful as well to Alex Luzopone for redrawing (and much improving upon) the illustrations that appeared in the first (Dragon Press) edition of this book. Samuel R. Delany December 2013 ...

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