Return to Nevèrÿon
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''Return to Nevèrÿon'' is a collection of three
sword and sorcery Sword and sorcery (S&S) is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tale ...
stories by American writer
Samuel R. Delany Samuel R. "Chip" Delany (, ) (born April 1, 1942), is an American author and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays (on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society). His ...
: "The Game of Time and Pain", "The Tale of Rumor and Desire", and "The Tale of Gorgik", and "Appendix: Closures and Openings". It is the last of the four-volume
Return to Nevèrÿon ''Return to Nevèrÿon'' is a collection of three sword and sorcery stories by American writer Samuel R. Delany: "The Game of Time and Pain", "The Tale of Rumor and Desire", and "The Tale of Gorgik", and "Appendix: Closures and Openings". It is the ...
series. The collection was first published under the title ''The Bridge of Lost Desire''.


Contents


1987 edition as ''The Bridge of Lost Desire'' (Arbor House)

* "The Game of Time and Pain" * "The Tale of Rumor and Desire" * "The Tale of Gorgik" * “Return...” A Preface by K. Leslie Steiner (Delany)


1988 edition as ''The Bridge of Lost Desire'' (St. Martin's Press)

The first paperback edition was identical in content to the 1988 edition, but with cover art by fantasy and comics artist
Blas Gallego Blas Gallego (born 1941 in Barcelona) is a Spanish artist, painter and illustrator with a career spanning six decades. He has created and drawn comic books and strips, book covers, film posters, role-playing game cards, and portraits, among othe ...
in the style of previous first editions of the series. The cover was the first in the series to represent the main character as dark-skinned; previous covers in the series had substituted white characters for the people of color described in the books.Tucker, Jeffery A. ''A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference'', chapter 3: "The Empire of Signs: Slavery, Semiotics, and Sexuality in the ''Return to Nevèrÿon'' Series", p. 97. Wesleyan University Press, 2004.


1989 edition as ''Return to Nevèrÿon'' (Grafton)

* "The Game of Time and Pain" * "The Tale of Rumor and Desire" * "The Tale of Gorgik" * "Closures and Openings" * "Buffon’s Needle" by Robert Wentworth & Samuel R. Delany


1994 edition as ''Return to Nevèrÿon'' (Wesleyan University Press)

Identical to the 1989 edition, but omits "Buffon's Needle".


"The Game of Time and Pain"

In the tenth and chronologically final tale in the series, “The Game of Time and Pain” (1985), Gorgik has been successful in his political campaign to end slavery officially throughout the land of Nevèrÿon. The political question is how the nation should deal intelligently with this sudden population of freed slaves. This Gorgik narrates to one of his young sexual partners, a barbarian boy named Udrog, when the two find themselves together in an abandoned castle for the night, just before the passing of a funeral procession of one of Gorgik’s major political adversaries. Other than the first tale, this is the only one in which Gorgik is on stage for the majority of the action.


"The Tale of Rumor and Desire"

The last of the tales, “The Tale of Rumor and Desire” (1987) goes back in time to gives portrait of a character called Clodon, whom we have seen before (in “The Tale of Fog and Granite”), but who has been fairly minor till now. During the outlaw days of Gorgik the Liberator, when his rebellion was at its most violent, while Gorgik was a hero to many, he was a villain to many others. In an age and a nation where there is no media, numerous people have taken to pretending they are Gorgik the Liberator, some for good and some for evil, for their own ends. In “Fog and Granite” Clodon does exactly this. “Rumor and Desire” shows a set of mosaic pieces from Clodon’s life before he decided to take on the Liberator’s identity in order to be a more effective highway bandit. As Delany writes in the voice of "K. Leslie Steiner", in the introduction to the entire project (“Return... a preface”, in ''
Tales of Nevèrÿon ''Tales of Nevèrÿon'' is a collection of five sword and sorcery stories by Samuel R. Delany published in 1978. It is the first of the four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series and contains the stories "The Tale of Gorgik," "The Tale of Old Venn, ...
''), the eleventh and final written story, “The Tale of Rumor and Desire”:


"The Tale of Gorgik"

While the events of “Rumor and Desire” take place during, or just after, the events of ''Neveryóna'' (whose main character is a fifteen-year-old girl, Pryn, who runs away from her village to start traveling around Nevèrÿon, and who, for the first third of the novel, falls in with Gorgik’s revolutionary activities when its efforts are centered in Kolhari itself), it has always been published at the end, before a recapitulation of the very first story, "The Tale of Gorgik".


Notes


References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Return to Neveryon 1987 short story collections Fantasy short story collections Short story collections by Samuel Delany American novellas Arbor House books Fiction set in prehistory