Empire Star - Major Themes

Major Themes

Empire Star shares themes and certain imagery with many of Delany’s other works – perception being the prime theme of this novella. While his Fall of the Towers trilogy (Captives of the Flame, The Towers of Toron, and City of a Thousand Suns) brought perception into play, Empire Star embraces it as central to the work in the concept of simplex/complex/multiplex: three different ways for an individual to perceive and order events. In following Comet Jo’s experiences over the course of a few months, what the reader perceives to be the order of events is not necessarily the order that would be perceived by other characters or entities, depending on their frame of reference and whether they view things "simplexually," "complexually," or "multiplexually." In our frame of reference, consequences of events sometimes impinge on the characters before the actual events seem to have occurred. Conversely, events are mentioned as having occurred, while the actual results of those events do not seem to effect characters who are chronologically older than they were at the time the events happened. Similarly, characters are introduced and then later appear as younger versions of themselves.

Towards the end of the story we learn that Empire Star itself is a small region in space-time that is under such incredible stress that it is likely one will exit at a vastly different time and place in relation to the point of entry. While not time travel in the classical sense, visitors to Empire Star become subject to time paradoxes. The tale we read in Empire Star is but one arc in the many loops that we can only infer must make up the entire story.

Mythology, another theme that finds its way into much of Delany's work, plays a small part here, as well. There is also a strong literary theme. One character is a writer, another is a poet, and there are many literary allusions (some explicitly mentioned) scattered throughout the novella. In much the way Alfred Bester's Stars My Destination (1957) is based on Alexandre Dumas, père's The Count of Monte Cristo, Delany's Empire Star is based on Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma (1839). Stendhal's novel tells of the political and social education of the naive young Italian Fabrice del Dongo by the Duchess Sanseverina and Count Mosca over a number of years. Delany has taken from Standhal's famous work the name Sanseverina (and "Oscar" is a slant rhyme for "Mosca") as well as the basic bildungsroman structure for his novella.

Empire Star also contains images and characteristics that Delany uses in several other works, notably in regards to Comet Jo. His brass claws can easily be seen as precursors to the "orchids" worn by the Scorpions in Dhalgren and, like characters throughout Delany's work, it is mentioned (though very much in passing) that Jo bites his fingernails on his non-clawed hand. Additionally, like blind Dan from Nova, the shuttle bums of Empire Star are described as wearing pants held on with rope belts.

Empire Star is considered to be an important precursor to later Delany works. The apparent circular/cyclic nature of the text is a concept further explored in Dhalgren and —in a very different way— the Return to Nevèrÿon series. Additionally, upon reading Babel-17, it is learned that Empire Star was supposedly written by a deceased husband of Rydra Wong, the protagonist of that novel. The husband's name is Muels Aranlyde. It is stated that he always writes himself as a character in his books, but typically not as a human. More often than not he is a computer—as in Empire Star. While spread over two books, it was always Delany's intention to have Empire Star published as a double novel with Babel-17. This, therefore, is a forerunner to the "text-within-a-text" style found in later works such as Dhalgren and Phallos. In fact, the link to Phallos is even stronger: In Delany's 2007 novel Dark Reflections, the careful reader learns that Arnold Hawley —the main protagonist of Dark Reflections— was actually the anonymous author of Phallos (the fictional novel discussed and quoted inside Delany's novel of the same name).