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In light of the recent revelations concerning science fiction figures Marion Zimmer Bradley, Walter Breen, and Ed Kramer, Will Shetterly thought it advisable to interview Sam Delany, who in addition to being SFWA’s most recently named Grandmaster, is also known to have publicly endorsed the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Be aware before you read it that it deals in fairly graphic detail with sexual deviancy and child abuse:

After Marion Zimmer Bradley’s daughter spoke out about child abuse by Bradley and her husband, Walter Breen, a member of NAMBLA, writers as different as Vox Day and Liz Williams brought up Samuel R. Delany’s comment about NAMBLA twenty years ago:

“I read the NAMBLA [Bulletin] fairly regularly and I think it is one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I’ve ever found. I think before you start judging what NAMBLA is about, expose yourself to it and see what it is really about. What the issues they are really talking about, and deal with what’s really there rather than this demonized notion of guys running about trying to screw little boys. I would have been so much happier as an adolescent if NAMBLA had been around when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.” — Samuel R. Delany, Queer Desires Forum, New York City, June 25, 1994. 

Then I began to
feel bad for not asking Chip Delany about this. In the 1960s, he was one
of a small number of writers who made me believe fantasy and science
fiction could be both great fun and great art. When he was the guest of
honor at the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, he was charming and
learned and pretty much everything anyone could want in a guest of
honor. I can’t say I know him, but I can say I like him. I believe we should be able to talk about things which are taboo—what
reveals our nature is not what we say, but what we do. This is
especially true of storytellers, who regularly write about things they
would never do. 

So I wrote Chip, which
began a discussion that moved between Facebook messages and email. He
has agreed to share it. What follows is a version that I lightly edited
for clarity.

 As some readers may recall, I have observed that in addition to Delany’s homosexuality, his endorsement of NAMBLA, his fiction is literally overflowing with deviancy, sex crimes, and the abuse of children. I view all three of those factors as red flags of varying degrees of seriousness indicating a potential predilection for pedophilia. I would encourage you to consider some of Delany’s following statements that I have highlighted in that light:

• I never met or knew Walter Breen (and only two or three times met Marion Zimmer Bradley, in the last two or three years of her life)…. I got the impression from others who knew him that the gossip about Breen, especially in the first years I knew Paul (well before Stonewall), whether Breen was gay or straight, was a tempest in teapot. Currently it sounds like it’s not. But, again, I never knew Breen or saw him in my life.
• I have no idea what NAMBLA has been doing for the last twenty years.
• I had my first sexual experience with an adult when I was six, with a local Harlem building superintendent. And nothing hurtful happened at all. It would have been cruel and unusual punishment to incarcerate him for it…. The building superintendent, however, abused me not at all. To say that he did, is just incorrect.
• I said and still maintain that 20 years ago [NAMBLA] was an intelligent and highly thoughtful institution.
• Since I spent eighteen years of my life as a child, and nine years of that life as a pretty sexually active gay child, my complaint against the current attitudes is that they work mightily to silence the voices of children first and secondarily ignore what adults have to say who have been through these situations. One size fits all is never the way to handle any situation with a human dimension.
• The current attitude toward pedophilia is a tragic attempt to drive nature out with a pitchfork, and at this point it is a self-reinforcing tragedy, encouraging the worst and punishing the best by making no distinctions at all
• The consent of a seven-, eight-, or nine-year old is not the same thing as the consent of a seventeen- or eighteen-year old. And the “consent” of a three, four, and five year old means much less—especially if it’s negative. But it must count for something, otherwise you are just saying the child is not human and has no feelings or agency whatsoever—which, in itself, is abusive and counter-intuitive. And, I would maintain, immoral when another possibility presents itself.
• I have heard fifty or sixty such tales from gay men of this nature. It had none of the affect of abuse. If anything, it had more the feel of an impromptu educational session.

On the basis of Mr. Delany’s remarkably frank answers, I would maintain that he was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused as a child to the point that he is intrinsically unable to tell black from white or right from wrong with regards to sexual matters. However, it is to be regretted that Mr. Shetterly did not ask Mr. Delany anything about the elephant in the room, namely, what he, himself, did. We know Mr. Delany was sexually abused by an older man at the age of six. We know he is familiar with fifty or sixty similarly abused homosexual men. What we still do not know, and what Mr. Shetterly rather delicately avoided asking, is if Mr. Delany ever put his principles into action, and, as an adult, engaged in sexual relations with children under the age of legal consent.

Since most sexual abusers were abused themselves as children, (a fourth red flag, if you’re still counting), at this point I doubt it would very much surprise anyone if he had. And lest you doubt that SFWA’s support for Mr. Delany, let me remind you what SFWA President Steven Gould and former SFWA President John Scalzi had to say about Samuel R. Delany last December.

1. “One of the perks of being SFWA president is the option of
   selecting the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s next
   Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. One of the tragedies is we only get
   to select one a year. That said, from the grains of sand in my pocket, I
   am delighted to pull this star. Samuel R. Delany is one of science fiction’s most influential
   authors, critics, and teachers and it is my great honor to announce his
   selection. When discussing him as this year’s choice with the board,
   past-presidents, and members, the most frequent response I received was,
   “He’s not already?” Well he is now.” (S. Gould)
2. “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has named Samuel R.
   Delany its newest Grand Master…. I will say this: This is an award
   both well chosen and well deserved.” (J. Scalzi) 

It would certainly be interesting to know if Mr. Gould and Mr. Scalzi still unreservedly support Mr. Delany.

After his sister, Moira Greyland, bravely came forward and publicly exposed her mother, the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, as a child abuser, her son has also stepped forward to confirm both her charges and the deposition of Elizabeth Waters. This is a brief selection; read the whole thing there.

CS: Do you think other people were aware of your mother’s abuse of you and your sister at the time? If so, in what ways did they respond?
MG: You assume that I would have felt free to say anything. There was always drama and there was always the invisible blade of what would happen if all of this dreadful secret got out. The atmosphere of fear of discovery was simply everywhere and there was no place to hide.

Worse, I was ashamed. When you are small you believe stuff, and I felt with my whole heart that I was responsible when she would go bad. There was absolutely no way I was gonna drag the mountain onto my head. And that made every day a drama, a thick clogged tube of waiting for the dreadful, the un-nameable horror.

And nobody spoke. Everything was always fine and that was my clown suit. I thought everyone knew and that I was such a bad person no one would speak to me. My echo chamber filled me with such fear of exposure I would do anything to make the shadow go away. And I did. The shame paints my world yellow and pink and brown. I don’t want to say these things any more….

CS: Who benefits from the sales of your mother’s books and the MZB trust?
MG: I was disinherited by language that sounded so unlike my mother that I knew she never wrote it, as was my sister and my half-brother who is now deceased.

The money went to the opera and to her lover.

“Nobody spoke.” That is the shame of the science fiction community then and now. Now that they can’t deny the fact of MZB’s abuse, they can still pretend that Ed Kramer isn’t a member of SFWA, they can still pretend that there aren’t a veritable United Nations of red flags waving around Sam Delany’s head, they can still try to brazen it out. But the truth is going to come out eventually, and their legacies will reflect the fact that they did their very best to sweep the ugly truth under the carpet as long as they thought they could get away with it.

SFWA still has not responded to my questions about its position on the eligibility of known and suspected child molesters for membership in the organization. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has the organization that produced an 80-page investigative report on the subject of a single tweet done anything to discover who in the science fiction community knew what and when they knew it.

As for Mark and Moira, as difficult as it may be, they have the right to hold their heads up high. Unlike all the cowards, they were not afraid to speak. They were not afraid to expose the evildoers. One need not be a writer of fantasies to know, and to acknowledge, that such actions are indicative of the behavior of a hero, not a villain, and not a helpless victim.

If I could tell Mark one thing, it would be this: You did the right thing. You broke the spell of silence. You have made it harder for others to do what was done to you. You don’t have my pity or even my sympathy. You have my respect.