Does Barry N. Malzberg haunt the science fiction genre? Or does the science fiction genre haunt Barry N. Malzberg?

In a genre that claimed to be the ultimate storehouse of innovation yet enforced strict narrative rules and codes of conduct, Malzberg stuck out like a forked tongue, composing works of bona fide literature that dwarfed the efforts of his contemporaries and established him as one of science fiction’s most dynamic enfant terribles.

Originally published in 1975, Galaxies is a masterwork of the Malzberg canon, which includes over fifty novels and collections. Metafictional, absurdist, and sardonic, the book mounts a concerted attack against the market forces that prescribed SF of the 1970s and continue to prescribe it today. At the same time, the book tells a story of technology and cyborgs, of bureaucracy and tachyons, of love and hate and sadness ...

Despite his deviant literary antics, Malzberg could not be ignored by the SF community, winning the first annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award and receiving nominations for numerous other accolades in the genre.

Galaxies is among the works listed in acclaimed SF editor David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, published in 1985. With an introduction by Jack Dann, this special anti-oedipal paperback edition ushers Malzberg’s genius into the twenty-first century.

BARRY N. MALZBERG is an American writer, editor and agent. His prolific career has spanned numerous genres, most notably crime and science fiction. Malzberg was particularly active in the SF scene of the early seventies, although he became disillusioned with the market forces defining the field and has rarely published SF works since. His most recent activity in the field has been in the form of advice columns for writers in the quarterly magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Malzberg won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel Beyond Apollo in 1973. Over the years, his writing has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, among others.