Enter the magical realm of the most fascinating empire ever created. In the ancient, fabled land of Nevèrÿon, they tell of a gleaming golden city, driven deep beneath the waves of history - the city whose whispered name is Neveryóna. For Pryn, a young girl fleeing her village on the back of a dragon, Neveryóna is the shining symbol of all that is out of reach. It leads her to the exotic port city of Kolhari, where she talks with the wealthy merchant Madame Keyne, walks with Gorgik the Liberator as he schemes against the Court of Eagles - and crosses the Bridge of Lost Desire in search of her destiny.

A novel of myth and literacy, Nevèrÿona tells how young Pryn, who can write in this largely pre-literate land, flees her mountain village on a dragon's back for Neveryon's capital port, Kolhari, to aid Gorgik's rebelllion. Now on the Bridge of Lost Desire, now in Madam Keyne's emotionally embattled gardens, now at an empty, moonlit mansion in Nevèrÿon - Kolhari's old artistocractic neighbourhood - and finally through a journey into the dangerous south, Pryn finds more answers - and questions - about Nevèrÿon's power structure.

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.

Patterns II includes ten scholarly essays on a variety of science fiction themes and topics, as presented at ConStellation, the Forty-First World SF Convention, held at Baltimore, Maryland, from September 1-5, 1983. Included are essays by Merritt Abrash, Rosemarie Arbur, Jared Lobdell, Edward A. Boyno, Constance M. Mellott, Lawrence I. Charters, Thomas P. Dunn, Judith B. Kerman, Philip E. Kaveny, and Janice M. Bogstad on such writers as H. G. Wells, Thornton Wilder, David Gerrold, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Philip K. Dick, and on the film Blade Runner. Includes a comprehensive Introduction by Hassler.

A History of the African American Novel offers an in-depth overview of the development of the novel and its major genres. In the first part of this book, Valerie Babb examines the evolution of the novel from the 1850s to the present, showing how the concept of black identity has transformed along with the art form. The second part of this History explores the prominent genres of African American novels, such as neoslave narratives, detective fiction, and speculative fiction, and considers how each one reflects changing understandings of blackness. This book builds on other literary histories by including early black print culture, African American graphic novels, pulp fiction, and the history of adaptation of black novels to film. By placing novels in conversation with other documents - early black newspapers and magazines, film, and authorial correspondence - A History of the African American Novel brings many voices to the table to broaden interpretations of the novel's development.

This 1979 American Book Award nominee contains five interlocked stories that tell of the slave Gorgik in a long-ago land, and a masked swordswoman narrates an astonishing feminist creation myth.