In Starboard Wine, Samuel Delany explores the implications of his now-famous assertion that science fiction is not about the future.

Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a text's specific "difference", we begin to see the quality of its particulars.

Through riveting analyses of works by Joanna Russ, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Thomas M. Disch, Delany reveals critical strategies for reading that move beyond overwrought theorizing and formulaic thinking.

Throughout, the author performs the kinds of careful inquiry and urgent speculation that he calls others to engage in.