Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia

I wanted to like this book, but rather than develop characters, a plot, or setting, Delany appears to throw a bunch of interesting ideas into a blender and set to frappe. Delany can do military sci-fi well, witness the ferocious creativity of Babel-17. He is a master of unconventional bodies and sexes, as in “Aye, and Gomorrah…”. But in Triton, a fundamentally unlikeable main character wanders through an interplanetary war without witnessing any of the machinations of power. Triton society places an emphasis on the diversity of sex and gender, yet total gender and sexual reassignment is a state-provided out-patient surgery that is apparently easier than deciding what to wear to dinner. While some of the fragments are interesting, the book itself is an uncomfortable lump of uncooked ideas, without the redeeming literary qualities of Delany’s other works.