Delany is definitely an author who does not waste any time coddling the reader who was lucky enough to pick up his book. Right from the beginning of the novel, Delany flings the reader into a complex world that is vastly different from the one we live in. In the first sentence, the narrator, Bron, mentions going home to the “Serpent’s House” which is a men’s co-op. Already the reader has learned two important things about the story: 1) there are men’s co-ops (implying there are women’s co-ops as well) and 2) the main character lives in one. Additionally, Delany uses complicated syntax full of parentheses that is pretty confusing and hard to follow – especially when you consider the fact that most of the names and places being given still mean nothing to the reader as they have not been contextualized.
In the first paragraph, Bron references “Earth and Mars” meaning that the solar system is familiar to us. This is what first gives me a hint that this may be an alternate history or a possible future novel versus a story that takes place on made-up planets, like The Dispossessed. In this sentence, Bron also establishes that there are people living on both Earth and Mars and it appears that the calendar system they use is quite different from the one we are used to. Later on, Bron also mentions “Earth’s Second World War” (5) which implies the historical timeline is probably the same as ours (or at least very similar), but also shows that there have been changes that have affected people’s perception of the past. We are used to hearing “World War 2” more than any other name but “Earth’s Second World War” implies that now there are more planets with their own wars and the name “World War 2” just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Similar to Le Guin, Delany very much uses Bron as the main source of information for the reader. Everything we find out about the society from this initial introduction is through Bron’s own personal thinking. Because of this technique, it almost seems like we are often getting half of a full explanation about what’s going on. It’s possible to make some inferences from what Bron is thinking, but obviously he does not explain the things that are already common knowledge to him. Although this technique does remind me of Le Guin, the settings are so different that experience the reader has is completely unique for each novel. In Le Guin’s novel, Shevek is new to Urras and therefore the reader gets very in-depth descriptions and explanations of the world as Shevek learns about it. Bron, on the other hand, is an assimilated citizen of Triton and his inner thinking is focused on his own life and issues, not the world around him that is already so familiar.