There is a spectre haunting the science fiction genre—the
spectre of Barry N. Malzberg ...
In a genre that, with one hand, claimed to be the ultimate
storehouse of innovation, and with the other, leveled strict rules for writing
and codes of narrative conduct onto its authors, Malzberg stuck out like a forked
tongue, composing works of bona fide literature that dwarfed the efforts of his
contemporaries and established him as one of science fiction’s most dynamic enfant terribles.
Originally published in 1975, Galaxies is a masterwork of the Malzbergian canon, which includes
over fifty novels and collections. Metafictional, absurdist and sardonic, the
book mounts a concerted attack against the market forces that prescribed
science fiction of the 1970s and continue to prescribe it today. At the same
time, the book tells a story of technology and cyborgs, of bureaucracy and
tachyons, of love and hate and sadness . . .
Despite his deviant literary antics, Malzberg could not be
ignored by the SF community.
In 1973, he won the first annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which is presented
to the best SF novel of the year by a distinguished committee of SF experts,
authors and critics. Thereafter he received nominations
for the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, among others. Nonetheless his
work has not received the attention it so profoundly deserves.
Galaxies is among
the works listed in acclaimed SF editor David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, published in 1985. With an
introduction by Jack Dann, this special paperback edition of Galaxies ushers Malzberg’s genius into
the twenty-first century.
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