Second book by Samuel Delany, second book I positively adore. Thoroughly impressive, I don't think I've highlighted this much in any book in the past year, and it's a really short book at that. Describing it wouldn't do it justice, and so soon after reading it, I can't even try. Everything is beautiful. The language, and language levels. The expanding point of view. (The actual, breaking-the-fourth-wall narrator! Who is not even the only person to break the fourth wall.) The devil-kitty (eight legs, cupped feet for climbing everywhere, and a more complex mind than all the humans on the starting planet. The verb for its movement is "octopeded". Di'k is the star of the show). The simplex-complex-multiplex idea. How he casually does huge, real-feeling background worldbuilding in a sentence or two. It's all so elegant. And of course, the slavery. I don't think I've ever seen a better, more heart-breaking take on slavery in science fiction. (And that's young Delany! No wonder that brain of his makes his nonfiction books sometimes too dense to read. What a mind.) Oh also, the fact that a highly multiplex sentient computer manipulates reality just to make a joke about Oscar Wilde and his lover is so Delany. (It's very rewarding if the names Alfred, Bosie and Oscar in combination mean something to you, I expect it's a bit confusing otherwise, but in that case you just share the protagonist's confusion.) And that's just setting the reader up for literary allusions, of which there are many – some called out, some just put in. Invictus quotes,