Samuel R. Delany's Nova was first published in 1968, and is currently available is available to aficionados and discoverers of Delany's work as a 2002 Vintage paperback (ISBN 978-0375706707).
Mouse
Nova opens with a young musician being urged to play a tune on his syrynx, a multi-sensory instrument that can create smells and visual effects as well as sounds, and an aged derelict recounting what is clearly a familiar tale, that of the nova he glimpsed with his own eyes before it blinded him.
But Mouse is less interested in earning a coin or two than in shipping out as a cyborg stud (crewman) aboard one of the interstellar freighters plying their trade between the Pleaides and Draco star clusters. Later that evening he gets his wish as he's hired by a grizzled, ruin-faced star captain, Lorq von Ray.
Lorq von Ray
Von Ray is the same captain who dived into the nova that blinded the derelict, and Nova is as much his story as it is that of Mouse.
Von Ray is the scion of an upstart house of interstellar traders in the Pleiades cluster, dubbed 'pirates' by their Draco competitors, notably the Red family of Earth. Von Ray has known Prince Red and his sister, the beautiful Ruby since childhood. To quote a line from Doctor Who, "it's been a long time since anyone said no to you." It seems that no one has ever said no to Prince - and lived. Prince is close to psychotic, although some of his behaviour may be explained by an early realization that for the von Ray house to prosper means the ruination of his own family.
Ruby
From von Ray's childhood the reader is taken to his arrival on Earth as a young man, as a triumphant interstellar yachtsman, his pivotal reunion with Ruby, and his subsequent disfigurement, literally at the hand of Prince. While von Ray and Prince are clear in their delineation, it is Ruby who is the most ambiguous character, perhaps reflecting Delany's attitude toward women.
As their hunt for the next nova progresses, so the emotional stakes between von Ray, Prince and Ruby are raised, while Mouse and his fellow crewmen can only watch and prepare to tackle the nova.
Nova's publication in 1968 marked the end of a remarkable three years during which he grew from one of many bright new prospects to --together with Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison-- being perhaps the hottest property in the SF world, on the back of consecutive Nebula Awards for his novels Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection.
Nova itself demonstrates all of Delany's strengths as well as many of his 'habits' (flaws is perhaps too strong a word, but certainly the Delany of this period had several notable stylistic habits that were at best distracting and at worst downright irritating), the long paragraphs during which the reader is lectured until their eyes glaze over, fragmentary untagged dialogue and at times almost purple prose.
But its strengths are equally striking; the muscular, active plot freighted (but not laden down) with myth; the sense that this is a real future, albeit a lost future; the glittering imagery, paying equal homage to SF's exotic pulp background and literature in equal measure.
There is a sense that this was Delany at the height of his success purely as an SF writer. Hereinafter he would gain acclaim as a critic, as a literateur and as a teacher, but never again would his star burn quite so brightly purely as a writer of pure SF, while Nova as a novel burns as brightly in the memory as its central motif.
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