Recurring themes in Delany's work include
mythology, memory, language, and
perception. Class, position in society, and the ability to move from one social stratum to another are motifs that were touched on in his earlier work and became more significant in his later fiction and non-fiction, both. Writing itself (both prose and poetry) is also a repeated theme: several of his characters—Geo in
The Jewels of Aptor, Vol Nonik in
The Fall of the Towers, Rydra Wong in
Babel-17, Ni Ty Lee in
Empire Star, Katin Crawford in
Nova, the Kid, Ernest Newboy, and William in
Dhalgren, Arnold Hawley in
Dark Reflections, John Marr and Timothy Hasler in
The Mad Man, and Osudh in
Phallos—are writers or poets of some sort. Delany also makes use of repeated imagery: several characters (Hogg, the Kid, and the sensory syrynx player, the Mouse, in
Nova) are known for wearing only one shoe; and nail biting along with rough, calloused (and sometimes veiny) hands are characteristics given to individuals in a number of his fictions. Names are sometimes reused: "Bellona" is the name of a city in both
Dhalgren and
Trouble on Triton, and "Denny" is a character in both
Dhalgren and
Hogg (which were written almost concurrently despite being published two decades apart).
Following the 1968 publication of
Nova, there is not only a large gap in Delany's published work (after releasing eight novels and a novella between 1962 and 1968, Delany's published output virtually stops until 1973), there is also a notable addition to the themes found in the stories published after that time. It is at this point that Delany begins dealing with sexual themes to an extent rarely equalled in serious writing.
Dhalgren and
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such as
Equinox (originally published as
The Tides of Lust, a title that Delany does not endorse),
The Mad Man,
Hogg and
Phallos can be considered
pornography, a term Delany himself endorses. Novels such as
Trouble on Triton and the thousand-plus pages making up his four-volume
Return to Nevèrÿon series explore in detail how sexuality and sexual attitudes relate to the socioeconomic underpinnings of a primitive—or, in
Trouble on Triton's case, futuristic—society. Even in works with no science fiction or fantasy content to speak of, such as
Atlantis: Three Tales,
The Mad Man, and
Hogg, Delany pursues these questions by creating vivid pictures of New York City, now in the Jazz-Age, now in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, private schools in the 1950s, Greece and Europe in the 1960s, and—in
Hogg—generalized small-town America.
Phallos details the quest for happiness and security by a gay man from the island of Syracuse in the second-century reign of the Emperor Hadrian.
Dark Reflections is a contemporary novel, dealing with themes of repression, old age, and the writer's unrewarded life.
Delany has also published several books of literary criticism, with an emphasis on issues in
science fiction and other
paraliterary genres, comparative literature, and
queer studies.
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