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 a 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. In 1973, he won the first annual John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which is presented to the best SF novel of the year by a distinguished committee of SF experts, authors, and critics. Thereafter he received nominations for the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, among others.
Galaxies is among the works listed in acclaimed SF editor David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, published in 1985. With a foreword by Jack Dann, this anti-oedipal edition ushers Malzberg's genius into the twenty-first century.