"normal" reader. Influences Dhalgren is often compared to James Joyce's Ulysses. Delany himself has cited poets W. H. Auden, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Valéry as influences on the book, as well as John Ashbery's poem "The Instruction Manual". Elsewhere he cites Michel Foucault, Frank Kermode, and Jack Spicer. Kenneth R. James has elaborated subtextual ties to mathematician G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form. Literary significance and criticism With over a million sales, Dhalgren is by far Delany's most popular book—and also his most controversial. Critical reaction to Dhalgren has ranged from high praise (both inside and outside the science fiction community) to extreme dislike (mostly within the community). However, Dhalgren was a commercial success, selling a half million copies in the first two years, and over a million copies worldwide since then, with "its appeal reaching beyond the usual SF readership." William Gibson has referred to Dhalgren as "a riddle that was never meant to be solved." Darrell Schweitzer expressed the opinion , "Dhalgren is, I think, the most disappointing thing to happen to science fiction since Robert Heinlein made a complete fool of himself with I Will Fear No Evil." In 2015, Elizabeth Hand characterized the novel as "a dense, transgressive, hallucinatory, Joycean tour-de-force". Theodore Sturgeon called it "the very best ever to come out of the science fiction field". By contrast, Harlan Ellison hated the novel. When the book appeared, Ellison wrote: "I must be honest. I gave up after 361 pages. I could not permit myself to be gulled or bored any further." Delany has speculated that "a good number of Dhalgren more incensed readers, the ones bewildered or angered by the book, simply cannot read the proper distinction between sex and society and the nature and direction of the causal arrows between them, a vision of which lies just below the novel's surface." Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, a stage adaptation of (or sequel to) Dhalgren, was produced at The Kitchen in New York City in April 2010. Publishing history Dhalgren was officially published in January, 1975 (with copies available on bookshelves as early as the first week in December, 1974), as a paperback original (a Frederik Pohl selection) by Bantam Books. The Bantam edition went through 19 printings, selling slightly more than a million copies. A hardcover edition was published by Gregg Press (1977), based on the Bantam paperback edition with many errors corrected, and with