Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Last and First Tales by Samuel R. Delany, which will be published in fall 2026 by Coffee House Press. You can pre-order your copy here.
Sci-fi Grand Master Samuel R. Delany presents a career and genre-spanning anthology of stories: innovative, erotic, provocative, and unforgettable.
From the publication of his first novel The Jewels of Aptor to his 1975 bestseller Dhalgren and beyond, Samuel R. Delany has been a fearless and unique figure in American letters. Curated by the author, Last and First Tales gathers Delany’s twenty-first century short fiction alongside previously unavailable work dating back to his earliest, startlingly precocious experiments in prose. Here you will find queer sexual awakenings; a future in which race and gender have evolved in strange new ways; newly emended versions of Delany’s classic stories; and myriad other reminiscences, inquiries, and transgressions.
As Junot Díaz writes in his foreword, “In Last and First Tales a reader will find the entire breadth of Delany’s remarkable sixty-five-plus-year oeuvre. All the singularities of talent, of insight, of compassion, all the rigorous intellectual and aesthetic surveys, the endless restless erudition and curiosity…I can think of no better survey of the labyrinth that is Delany’s work.”
Here is the cover, painted by Gregory Frux:
Samuel R. Delany: I lived for a year and a half in an old brownstone building in the East Village. I was living with my then-lover Ron Beauman, whom I met on the stoop. After sex, he was charmed by the idea of living with a literary lover. While I was there, I wrote two of the stories in this collection: “Drift Glass” and “Among the Blobs.” Ultimately, he decided a lover who wrote all day wasn’t as exciting as he thought it would be. I returned from a trip to London to find he had replaced me, and was ready for me to move out.
So it goes.
I had learned, at a rent party I threw, from a Dalton schoolmate, the great poet W.H. Auden lived a few doors down from that home. He was once the babysitter for my friend and his sister, a fact that amused as we partied down the street. It was there that the pornographic poem “The Platonic Blow” was set, years previously. Auden had a bar beneath his house—as for me, the Electric Circus nightclub was next door.
Ultimately, both the gay scene and literary figures found homes in that neighborhood for the same reason: the rent was cheap. Human beauty and self-expression bloom when they’re given the chance to. Too few places like this remain today.
Gregory Frux: In 1984 I had just come back from Italy where I was completing my Master of Fine Arts, where I had found the courage to paint outdoors. In Italy I painted on the streets in the famous small marble town of Carrara, which is the source of the best marble for artists in Italy and a welcoming place for them.
My first subjects back home were in East Village, which had many of the components that were important in my work. These were political (rent strike poster in the window) diverse community (Afghan restaurant and a variety of locals) and history (the 19th century brownstone architecture with carved figures). It was a raw time in the East Village, and it had a lot of character. Friends posed for some of the figures both on site and later in the studio. I was just getting to know Chip about this time after writing him a fan letter and sending an illustration I had done for Dhalgren. He graciously responded and invited me over. At that time I was painting portraits and this painting pointed me in a new direction of cityscape and landscape, often peopled, which I have continued to this day.
The name of this painting is “Words on 32 St. Mark’s Place” by Gregory Frux, www.fruxart.com
