Tales of Nevèrÿon (Return to Nevèrÿon, #1)

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Tales of Nevèrÿon (Return to Nevèrÿon #1)

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 508 ratings · 39 reviews

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...more

Paperback, 260 pages

Published November 29th 1993 by Wesleyan (first published May 1980)

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Dec 05, 2010 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: metafiction fans, quirky fantasy fans, literary snobs

Complex, confusing brilliance. I feel like I could write a 10-page review and not cover my jumbled thoughts on this book: fantasy but through the lens of literary criticism and language and economic theory, an introduction written by a mathematics professor and linguistics expert who casually mentions she's a fictional character appearing in the last novel in the series, who is then rebuffed in the afterword by another fictional character who disagrees with her translation of the stories and pol...more

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Sep 01, 2011 edward rathke rated it 4 of 5 stars

A novel in stories and novellas set in a prehistorical world where life is changing from barter and trade to a monetary system, where slavery is a fact of life, but only provincially, where written systems are developing, but reading and writing are still quite rare.

These stories deal with power, most clearly, from political to social to sexual to academic. It is a reflective novel, where systems of power and stories tend to be commentary on one another, on themselves, on future stories within t...more A novel in stories and novellas set in a prehistorical world where life is changing from barter and trade to a monetary system, where slavery is a fact of life, but only provincially, where written systems are developing, but reading and writing are still quite rare.

These stories deal with power, most clearly, from political to social to sexual to academic. It is a reflective novel, where systems of power and stories tend to be commentary on one another, on themselves, on future stories within the cycle. It is a world on the cusp of civilisation, yet the only difference seems to be definitional.

The character Gorgik, who stands at the center of the series, even when he is all but a shadow, only briefly mentioned or appears briefly in the action, is introduced here. We follow him from his adolescence to his slavery [which happens, simply, because the great powers of the country change hands--the former ruling house is replaced by a different one] to his freedom [also accidental].

The fall and rise of Gorgik shows how power is rarely in our hands and, even when we're unaware of its mysteries, it controls, very strictly, who we are and what we are allowed to become. Gorgik, through no fault of his, watches his family murdered and spends years as a slave. His freedom, too, comes through no merit of his own, but simply because a noble takes him as her catamite.

And that is reflected throughout the series, the structure and system of power. Also, of importance here, is the way the world changed because of the introduction of money and how that relates, directly, to power, as power becomes a tangible thing. Stories, too, are at the center here, but, most important, not necessarily to this book, but is to the overall series, is the nature of stories and perspective.

There is, truly, a great deal going on here, and I likely missed some points completely. Stories about stories, systems of power, the way the world changes, the way it doesn't, the mysteries of sexuality, what it means to be controlled, to control, what signs and language mean, how we choose them.

It turns many of the fantasy tropes on its head while remaining firmly amongst them. Very impressive, but certainly not for everyone. The stories are low on action and big on ideas.(less)

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Mar 13, 2011 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, discourse

One of those books that should be read over again, as much philosophy of language, money, slavery and sexuality as it is a damn good story, with quotes from Foucault and Derrida to open up the book sections. Actually, it might be more philosophy than story, but I'm not sure. The appendix alone is brilliant, and something I've never seen before in a book like this. I know I read Delany when I was a kid haunting the library sci-fi section, but can't remember it. I'm sure even more of this would ha...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Charlie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoy Delany in general for his ability to mix academic rigor with sci-fi entertainment. The ways in which he weaves philosophy, economics, and political theory into these narratives intrigues me at the same time that the stories themselves engross me. This particular work especially tickled me with the reversal of the typical science fiction concept of projecting current trends into a distant future. Instead, he takes the present and imagines a history for it far richer and more challe...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Pamster rated it 5 of 5 stars

Okay. God. Incredible fantasy that investigates what fantasy actually is, and makes the homoeroticism of sword & sorcery finally explicit, and deals with race, slavery, rebellion, and s/m, and tons of stuff about gender and relation of gender oppression to money, and the relation of general oppression to money, and a bunch of other shit. Jesus, so brill. And there is more to the series - this collects the first 5 stories and there are other novels and novellas and stuff to follow. Totally th...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Ezra rated it 5 of 5 stars

delany is a nut. i read some older edition of this years ago, then this one (one of the recent editions from wesleyan university press)... and its like 20% longer! i think. certainly some radical changes. sometimes the metastructure is a little heavy handed (and getting more so as i progress through the series) but its still totally stimulating, and really just makes me wish more people would take that plunge... give me some formal structures in fiction that actually make sense and are surprisin...more

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Aug 09, 2010 Phoenixfalls rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cities, fantasy, fantasy-challenge, male-author, class, gender, language, race, sex-sexuality, storytelling, writing, metafiction, author-of-color, sword-and-sorcery, short-fiction, queer-protagonists

This is a substantial work. It consists of five stories of varying lengths, a preface, and an appendix. The preface and the appendix profess to be authored by a K. Leslie Steiner and a S.L. Kermit respectively, but it is fairly clear that these people are characters in the metafictional work, as is Delany himself. The appendix is titled "Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus, Part Three," indicating its place as the third entry in another series of Delany's which starts with Trouble...more This is a substantial work. It consists of five stories of varying lengths, a preface, and an appendix. The preface and the appendix profess to be authored by a K. Leslie Steiner and a S.L. Kermit respectively, but it is fairly clear that these people are characters in the metafictional work, as is Delany himself. The appendix is titled "Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus, Part Three," indicating its place as the third entry in another series of Delany's which starts with Trouble on Triton, a science fiction novel that is also (thematically at least, though maybe also through some bending of space and time; I have not read that work so I couldn't say for sure) a preface to the Nevèrÿon tales. And the structure gets no easier within the tales themselves; they follow Gorgik and Norema alternately, but as narrative is an important theme (THE theme, really) of the work, there are threads of other peoples' stories weaving throughout Gorgik and Norema's sections.

I think that reading Catherynne M. Valente (In the Night Garden) and Octavia E. Butler (Wild Seed) earlier this year prepared me well for this work; if you have bounced off of either of those authors because you found them boring or confusing, I doubt this is for you. Delany sacrifices story to philosophy far more than either of them did, as is fitting for a work of metafiction, but the bits that made my brain hurt are my favorites, so overall I loved this work. I don't exactly know where it's going yet, but I'm positive I want to be along for the ride.

"Return. . . a preface by K. Leslie Steiner" -- This is a demanding piece to start the volume off with. It's very much the sort of preface an academic would write - as it should be, as K. Leslie Steiner is "your average black American female academic, working in the largely white preserves of a sprawling midwestern university, unable, as a seventies graduate student, to make up her mind between mathematics and German literature." Steiner is relevant to the story at hand because she is the translator of the Culhar' fragment ("a narrative fragment of approximately nine hundred words" which may be "the oldest writing known. . . by a human hand")which is the supposed inspiration for Delany's Nevèrÿon tales. I didn't quite know what to make of the preface on first reading, but that's okay -- it's mainly there to indicate to the casual reader that this is no standard sword-and-sorcery epic.

"The Tale of Gorgik" -- This first tale is a much easier entry into the volume, as it hews most closely to sword-and-sorcery tropes. A young boy is born into poverty, ends up enslaved, rises out of slavery through the strength of his character and a hefty dose of luck, and ends up with a respected position heading a garrison of soldiers after a brief stint at court. Of course, in this culture the civilized are dark-skinned and the barbarians (who usually become enslaved) are light-skinned; Gorgik's main duties at court are as catamite to a noblewoman AND her eunuch steward; most of the nobles have been slaves at some point due to dramatic shifts in political fortune (though not all have developed an aversion to slavery as a result); and so on, as Delany plays with the ideas of power and race and class and gender and sexuality. Still, this tale can be read pretty much straight, as the tale of Gorgik's development into the person that stands at the center of these tales. It also serves to introduce us to Nevèrÿon, the titular city on the brink of civilization, which has been playing with the idea of coined money for three generations and has had writing for a bit longer even than that. It is interesting to note that very early on the Child Empress (whose ascension to power resulted in Gorgik's enslavement) changes the city's name to Kolhari, and Kolhari it remains through the end of the volume (and likely further).

"The Tale of Old Venn" -- This second tale is the one where Delany makes his theme of narrative explicit; though it serves as a tale of Norema's childhood the same way "The Tale of Gorgik" is the tale of Gorgik's childhood, it is mainly there for the conversations between Norema and the wise woman Old Venn. This was my favorite tale, as I was fascinated by the way Old Venn explained the central concept and the various examples she used. Those examples also give us a picture of some of the "barbarian" cultures, the ones that are still skeptical of the idea of writing though they seem to have embraced coined money quite well, despite the way it has completely upended the way their societies function.

"The Tale of Small Sarg" -- This third tale was a bit of a letdown for me. Small Sarg comes from an even more barbaric culture than Norema, one without writing or coined money at all. He is a prince in his land, but a slave in Nevèrÿon. A middle-aged Gorgik purchases him and beds him; he has a conversation with a young girl, and the story ends. It felt like a necessary placeholder, and while it too addresses the issues of slavery, gender roles, and sexuality, it just didn't quite satisfy after "The Tale of Old Venn."

"The Tale of Potters and Dragons" -- This fourth tale returns to Norema, now a secretary in Nevèrÿon. She embarks on a business trip for her employer and encounters Raven, a traveler from an Amazonian culture who is by turns amused and apalled at the odd gender roles she has encountered in Nevèrÿon. Norema has a run-in with politics and sees some of the concepts she discussed with Old Venn in action. There's a hefty dose of irony about this tale, and I would not have minded if it had been twice as long.

"The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers" -- This fifth and final tale is where Gorgik and Norema's paths finally cross. Gorgik and Small Sarg have been getting into trouble; Raven and Norema have been mostly staying out of trouble, and the men stumble onto the women's campsite and share a meal. Much is revealed to the reader, rather less is revealed to the characters, and again, the tone is ironic. There is actually some action in this tale, and again, Delany packs a whallop thematically into not very many pages.

"Appendix: Some Informal Remarks Towards the Modular Calculus, Part Three by S.L. Kermit" -- In this final segment we jump back out to the world of academia, where Kermit gives the history of the Culhar' fragment and makes Steiner's role in its translation more explicit. This section brings the theme as laid out in "The Tale of Old Venn" back to the forefront and wraps it all up with an appeal to Derrida. It didn't have any emotional impact, but it did its job well and (just as all the other sections) left me wanting more.(less)

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Jun 30, 2010 Joy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

A deeply engaging book. Here, the idea of money has the power to radically change civilizations- and, once changed, the civilized have a hard time imagining life without this centrally organizing idea. Delaney's book imagines a time when the world, perhaps a fictional one, was changing-- perhaps, becoming modern? Instead of painting with broad or generalizing strokes, he examines this change through the lives of several central characters, a gay man who was formerly a slave and his barbarian lov...more

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May 23, 2012 Quentin rated it 4 of 5 stars

An epic fantasy where there is so much more going on than at first glance. The stories in this collection float around Gorgik, a slave who is freed from hard labor through a sexual dalliance with a noble woman, and eventually becomes a revolutionary figure. But along the way, there are stories about what happens to relations between men and women when money takes over in a gift/barter economy, the cultural forms that build up during class formation in state societies, and all other fascinating a...more

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Jul 30, 2009 Ellen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, reviewed, read-2009, fantasy

I thought it was time to take a brief hardcore-sword-and-sorcery-with-superfluous-diacritics break from all that murder mysteryin'.

Hmmm... I don't quite know what to say about this book. I was just sort of skimming along for most of it and just when I started to be able to connect everything up it ended. It definitely deserves a reread, though I probably won't get around to that for a while.

The creation myth that everyone mentions in discussions about this book is pretty freaking awesome indeed....more

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Mar 28, 2009 AT rated it 5 of 5 stars

Delany uses the scaffolding of genre fiction to launch a dense and satisfying expedition into language, commerce, sexuality and culture. The stories in this project dance between adventure fiction and philosophical essay, and while that's a very weird and potentially off-putting idea I find myself returning to them again and again.

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Sep 13, 2010 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Delightful - using the tropes of sword and sorcery fantasy to explore postmodern questions of gender, slavery, economics, and the meaning of power. Chapter epigraphs by Foucault and Derrida, female ships' captains, mysterious bouncing rubber balls, and a slave revolt! I'll definitely be reading the other 3 books in the series.

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Oct 05, 2012 Andre rated it 3 of 5 stars

A very litterary sword and sorcery novel with anthropological discussions. It has interesting characters, the world created breathes well and the overall reading experience is a contrasting experience between the gritty-dirty-stylish world and the academic/scholarly-litterary writing. I found the preface and appendix to be off-putting though.

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Jul 25, 2011 Jed Mayer rated it 4 of 5 stars

A peculiar mixture of Jacques Derrida and Robert E. Howard, this series of cunningly linked tales explores the origins of civilization, of stories, and of the very notion of origins. For those who like their escapist literature highly self-reflexive, this is top shelf stuff.

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May 02, 2013 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, fantasy, glbt, poc, bechdel

It took me some time to get in to this book, and the first story was hard as I wasn't used to Delany's style, but this was a brilliant book in parts, and took the fantasy trope and did something different with it.

It references various psychological theories in passing, and I'm sure there was lots that I didn't "get" as such, in fact I felt like I was only really grasping half of what it was all about. I imagine this is a book studied on English Literature courses as it has so many layers of mea...more

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Aug 07, 2009 Charles rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

Beautifully and lovingly written. The stories are really more literary fiction than anything. If you ask me. Great world building detail, but the action was rather slim. Enjoyable if you're in the right kind of mood.

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Jul 28, 2011 Ruby Hollyberry rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi, not-owned

Tried many times to read this and could never finish it. Eventually recycled. "Stars in my Pocket" was amazing but I have not been able to embrace any other books by the author.

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Aug 09, 2007 Qiana rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy, black-lit

I have a love/hate relationship with Delany. He is utterly unappreciated by African-American critics, mainly because he rarely chooses to discuss race explicitly, but his explorations of power and desire are vivid, creative, and insightful. Although I can't seem to digest any of his "cyberpunk" writings, this sword-and-sorcery series Return to Neveryon is my kind of fantasy read. The masters are dark-skinned and the slaves are white (heh) and as the people of Neveryon discover the value of curre...more

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Jul 17, 2009 Khgates rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-ben-collection, 2009

While I didn't DISLIKE the book, I just felt like it was so much work. The storyline alone was good, and the theory was good, but mixed together they made for a heavy novel (can I call it a novel?) about things I just felt too exhausted to delve into. The characters were as simple as the concepts were overly complex. Perhaps under different circumstances....

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Aug 12, 2011 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-books

I came across this book at random in a small bookstore in Stratford-upon-Avon in England. It looked interesting, so I bought it and read it on the flight back to the States. This novel sparked a love affair with the writings of Samuel R. Delany - both fiction and non-fiction, across multiple genres - that continues to this day.

One of the best reasons to read the Return to Neveryon series, though, are the appendices in each book in which he shows us the inspiration behind his creative process, hi...more

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Dec 05, 2010 James Debruicker rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's pulp fantasy, but overloaded with philosophical weight. Imagine halfway between Conan the Barbarian and Derrida.

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Nov 06, 2012 Rob marked it as to-read

See also:
• http://io9.com/5481558/20-great-infod...

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Nov 22, 2007 Tracey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: libraryread

The first & third tale deal with the same character, Gurgik. He's a pretty standard fantasy/Conan type protagonist - street waif turned mine slave turned nobility's pet before he goes out on his own. Some interesting castle politics & a splash of sex (nothing explicit).

The second and fourth tales remind me very much of Urusula K. LeGuin. The protagonists are female and living in a society just learning about writing & business. A main topic seems to be "How is a society affected (fo...more

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Jun 02, 2011 megan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminist, gender, narrative-and-ideology, on-reading, on-writing, queer, scifi

magnificent. endlessly rich.
lucky for me there are three more plus a prequel/prologue.

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Feb 05, 2008 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Finished reading Tales of Neveryon by Samuel Delany which I really enjoyed. Rich (with depth) characters that examined social and sexual constructs without being overbearing. I especially like the ideas surrounding reflections and the distortion that occurs in a reflection of a reflection and then the application beyond visual elements like an endless game of telephone. Forgot to pull out quotes as I was so engrossed with the actual reading.

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May 04, 2011 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved it. An interesting hermeneutic tale about language, master/slave relationships (in a historical sense, a BDSM sense, and a larger conceptual sense), and memory. Not a traditional fantasy novel, and a fun read.

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Apr 12, 2008 Icky A. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: radical-sci-fi

My favorite Delaney book (sorry Dhalgren). A pre-history tale about the rise of civilization. There's a great dom/sub story about a slave turned warrior general. Sometimes Delaney's psychedelic/sexual speculations go a little too into lalaland for me, but this book has a nice balance between ideas about culture and power, sexuality, action and story.

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Jul 02, 2008 Leonard Pierce rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Delany's Neveryona tales, a return to genre writing after the brilliant departure of Dhalgren, are fantasy stories on the surface, but also provide him with a platform from which to launch speculative, very philosophical material about the nature of freedom, sexuality, and even literary theory. Very odd, but quite worthwhile.

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Feb 17, 2010 Quigui marked it as wishlist

Tales of Nev

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Jul 01, 2009 Meghan rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was really engaged in the first Tale this book begins with and from there, my interest declined significantly. Delany presents some pretty opposing views of gender, the creation, slavery, and the world in general which allowed for some defining of my own viewpoints. Overall, I wasn't very pleased with it.

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About Samuel R. Delany

Samuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7t...more Samuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales.

Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.

Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.

Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.

Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.

In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.(less)

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Quotes from Tales of Nevèrÿon

“Fire, slavery, cloth, coin, and stone - these are the basis of civilized life. Sometimes it happens that one or another of them gets hopelessly involved in the most basic appetites of a woman or a man. There are people I have met in my travels who cannot eat food unless it has been held long over fire; and there are others, like me, who cannot love without some mark of possession. Both, no doubt, seem squally strange and incomprehensible to you, 'ey, barbarian?” — 4 people liked it

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