Tales of Nevèrÿon
Samuel R. Delany
Wesleyan University Press
In his four-volume series Return to Neveryeon, Hugo and Nebula award-winner Samuel R. Delany appropriated the conceits of sword-and-sorcery fantasy to explore his characteristic themes of language, power, gender, and the nature of civilization.  Wesleyan University Press has reissued the long-unavailable Neveryeonvolumes in trade paperback.The eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to Neveryeon's four volumes chronicle a long-ago land on civilization's brink, perhaps in Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean.  Taken slave in childhood, Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister of state, finally abolishing slavery.  Ironically, however, he is sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude.  Does this contaminate his mission -- or intensify it?  Presumably elaborated from an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in translators' and commentators' introductions and appendices, forming a richly comic frame.