Corona.docx

“Corona” -- A well told story that involves that old notion of telepaths (the other is that it would bring people closer together a la George R. R. Martin’s “A Song for Lya”): that peoples’ thoughts would be too horrible to listen into. Here, Delany refines the notion in that Lee, a telepathic nine year old black girl finds the fears she picks up in others’ minds horrible enough to motivate constant suicide attempts. (It’s understandable that Delany, the first major sf writer, would actually include blacks and other nonwhites in his sf, especially since, before the sixties, blacks were rare as sf characters.) There are elements here that I’ve found in most of the other sf works of Delany I’ve read (two novels and three novellas): music (here musician Bryan Faust and his transforming song “Corona”) and the combination of high and low life types, here somewhat muted with ex-con, half literate Buddy and the clever (innately smart with additions of telepathically gleamed experience) Lee. Basically, this is a friendship born of a brief encounter between Lee and Buddy where they talk of the power of “Corona” and where Lee expresses sympathy for the brutality Buddy has suffered in prison – she also wants him to stop thinking about it so she stops feeling his fear. Buddy, when released from the hospital where Lee is incarcerated, goes to see Faust perform so Lee can have the experience.