Summary
Samuel R. Delaney’s 1968 novel, Nova, tells of the struggle for galactic dominance between the Pleiades Federation and Draco, an Earth-based faction led by the Red family of Red Shift, Ltd. The most important element in the galaxy is Illyrion, a super heavy material that fuels space travel and is integral to terraforming planets.
The novel is set in the 32nd century and spans three sections of the galaxy: the Earth-based Draco system, the Pleiades Federation, and the Outer Colonies. Although the narrative features a complex structure of flashbacks, subplots, multiple points of view, expository asides, and meta-narrative, Nova is best understood as a three-part arc orbiting a central quest.
The first part of Nova sets up the story. In a bar located in the Hell3 colony of the moon Triton, the paths of the Mouse, Lorq Von Ray, and Katin collide.
Inside the bar, the Mouse prepares to play the syrynx, an electronic, battery-powered musical instrument that produces sensory holograms. An elderly man named Dan enters the bar and begins to tell the story of his time as a cyborg stud on a ship named the Roc. The ship, captained by Lorq Von Ray, journeyed into a star going nova in search of the rare element, Illyrion, which only occurs within the bounds of a nova. Dan vividly describes the sensory overload he experiences while inside the nova and blames his condition on the misplaced ambition of Lorq Von Ray.
When Mouse leaves the bar, the narrative shifts, flashing back to his childhood as a Romani orphan. While rowing up in Istanbul, he learned to play the syrynx from the fisherman Leo. Mouse’s nostalgic reverie is interrupted when he bumps into a man with a scarred face who turns out to be Lorq Von Ray.
Dan also tells his story to Katin, a resident of Hell3 originally from Earth’s moon. Employed at a boring job, Katin’s dream is to write a novel. To build material for his someday novel, Katin takes copious notes of his surroundings and keeps a recording device constantly attached to him by a chain. Katin’s research and observations provide the novel’s running commentary, background, and world-building.
Lorq Von Ray announces to the bar’s occupations that he intends to once more travel into a nova star. The Mouse; Katin; Sebastian, the animal trainer; his companion Tyÿ; and the twin miners from the Outer Colonies, Lynceos and Idas, agree to join the crew. Katin later explains why Von Ray is so interested in mining Illyrion, as it is a rare element that, if amassed in significant amounts, could dramatically change the economic and political balance of the galaxy.
As the new crew prepares for the journey, an anguished Dan commits suicide. On board the Roc, the crew plugs into the ship’s computer system and departs from Triton.
A lengthy flashback describes Lorq’s youth in the Pleiades. Readers watch as he meets his future rivals, Prince and Ruby Red of the Draco system, at a party meant to establish peace between the Von Ray and Red families after generations of enmity and conflict. Prince’s right arm is a prosthetic, and Ruby warns Lorq of her brother’s sensitivities about his arm. Even still, Lorq inadvertently insults him, which leads to the breakdown of the truce after Prince crushes Lorq’s mother’s hand in retribution.
Lorq grows up to be a wealthy playboy whose main activity is spaceship racing. At a party in Paris, he encounters Ruby Red and falls in love with her, but Prince appears and attacks Lorq, splitting his face open with his metal hand....
(This entire section contains 1335 words.)
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Back at home, Lorq recuperates from his injury and learns the history of the rivalry between the Von Lorq and Red families from his father. He realizes that this conflict represents the larger power struggle between the Draco and Pleiades systems; his desire to seek Illyrion and flood the market with it is born of this struggle, as Lorq views it as the sole means for him to defeat Prince Red and the Red-shift Limited company.
The first part of the novel ends on board the Roc, as Tyÿ gives Lorq a tarot card reading about his quest. A worried Mouse believes the reading is superstition and steals the Sun card, making Tyÿ’s reading incomplete. He later confesses his theft of the card to Katin and gives the card back to Lorq.
The next part of Nova describes the conflict between Lorq Von Ray and Prince Red as it presently exists and opens with the Roc landing on the planet Vorpis in the Draco system. Lorq and Katin visit the Alkane Institute, a museum where Lorq’s aunt, Cyana Morgan, works. Cyana notes the importance of the dynamic 20th century as compared to the static 32nd century. Prince Red sends a threatening message to Lorq through the planet’s broadcast system, and Lorq gets an idea of where another nova star might be.
Ruby Red arrives on Vorpis to warn Lorq about Prince’s intentions. She intends to trap Lorq in a net but one of Sebastian’s animals scares her away. The Roc departs Vorpis for a destination in the Pleiades, and the scene ends with another tarot reading.
In the City of Dreadful Night, Lorq brings the crew to a house belonging to his friend Yorgos Setsumi. After dropping off the Mouse’s old mentor, Leo, they go to a bar to buy a drug known as “the bliss” and return to the house to have a party. But Prince and Ruby Red show up, and Prince attacks Sebastian. A fight between Lorq and Prince breaks out, featuring a dialogue exchange between Lorq and Prince that illustrates the central tension in the story:
“Prince, what are you trying to do?”
“Keep things as they are.”
“Stasis is death.”
Prince wants to maintain the Draco system’s dominant power structure and Red-shift Limited’s control over the Outer Colonies. If Lorq is successful in his quest, his action would favor the Pleiades, liberate the miners of the Outer Colonies, and the old power structure of the Draco elite would collapse.
During the fight, Lorq uses the Mouse’s syrynx to confuse Prince and Ruby, sending them into sensory overload. The crew takes off in the Roc to the Outer Colonies and the Mouse reports he saw Ruby leaving with Prince. Katin tells the Mouse about the history of the Holy Grail symbol and the inability of writers to finish Grail narratives. The scene ends with another tarot sequence.
The last part of Nova takes place in the Outer Colonies where Lorq finds another star going nova and the final confrontation with Prince and Ruby Red takes place. In an aside, Katin explains the history of Ashton Clark and how cyber stud work solved the problem of labor alienation.
Lorq makes his final stand against Prince and Ruby on The Black Cockatoo ship. Both siblings are disabled from the sensory overload of the previous fight; Prince is a corpse kept alive in a tank monitored by Ruby. After killing the siblings, Lorq takes The Black Cockatoo into the nova. Tyÿ pulls the Roc away and orders the crew to unplug from their sensory panels, but Katin continues to observe the nova.
Afterward, Katin describes the sensory overload he experienced when looking at the nova. However, in contrast to Dan, he will recover because he looked at the nova only as the ship pulled away from it. Lorq survived the ordeal and managed to retrieve seven tons of Illyrion. He has resolved his conflict with the Red siblings but set up a political and economic shift in the galaxy with an uncertain outcome. He dismisses the Mouse and Katin from service, the Roc’s crew disperses, and the adventure comes to a close.
A final conversation between the Mouse and Katin ends the novel, indicating that perhaps Katin has been the author of Nova all along.
