Tales of Neveryon

I read "Tales of Neveryon" on the airplane. I hate flying, I get nauseous, yet reading this book turned it into a delight. I don't remember another time when I savored the words so much (Storm Constantine comes close in "Wraeththu"). I usually like action & plot, scifi, space opera, and epic fantasy, and I don't like stories, so this was a surprise. I don't know how, or what it is about it, but it was simply pleasurable to read. Here's a random paragraph: "What a glorious and useless thing to know, she thought, yet recognizing that every joy she ever felt before had mere been some fragment of the pattern sensed dim and distant, which now, in plurality, was too great for laughter - it hardly allowed for breath, much less awe! What she had sensed, she realized as the words she could not hold away any longer finally moved in, was that the world in which images occurred was opaque, complete, and closed, though what gave it its weight and meaning was that this was not true of the space of examples, samples, symbols, models, expressions, reasons, representations and the rest - yet that everything and anything could be an image of everything and anything - the true of the false, the imaginary of the real, the useful of the useless, the helpful of the hurtful - was what gave such strength to the particular types of images that went by all those other names; that it was the organized coherence of them all which made distinguishing them possible." The sentences are long, the paragraphs can go on for several pages, but the language just flows... Also, make sure to read the Appendix, it's a crucial part of the book. It talks about discovering ancient tablet and deciphering the language, uncovering the story that inspired the collection of these tales. (Edit: This completely passed me by at first, but the Appedix is also written by Delany and also entirely fiction.) This book is what made me a Delany fan. I wasn't crazy about "Babel-17" or "Nova," it's amazing how different his writing styles are. I'm yet to make another attempt to conquer "Dhalgren." But I loved "The Einstein Intersection" - it has the same musical, magical, haunting quality to it as "Tales of Neveryon." Just writing this review and quoting the book left me a little breathless, made me want to read it again, and get the rest of Neveryon books!

Before anyone indulges in the luxury of on-line criticism, one should at least know (and respect) the correct spelling of the authors name. Samuel R. Delany (like the literal French for "of the New York", abbreviated), by his own admission, wrote Tales of Neveryon partly in repsonse to his own consumption of the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and Fritz Liebers (occasionally in collaboration with L. Sprague deCamp) Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser fantasy/fiction swords/sorcery stories. The French critics epigraphs which open the stories display SRDs depth of knowledge of literary criticism, although those critics and analysts of literature and society may no longer be popular. SRD also demonstrates his knowledge of archeology, ethnology, mathematics, physics, astronomy, and seamanship to a degree in all of the four (actually five, including Triton) books that are explicity about Neveryon, which itself is an intriguing "pun" or translation of a supposedly factual (it is, sadly, not) lost text or codex from repositories in Istanbul, Turkey (from which, only in 1906, the original proof by Archimedes for the volume and the area of the sphere were found in palimpsest form). SRD indulges in the use of arcane terminology, as well, not in a bombastic way, but in a manner that will make you curious to research the meaning of the word. The tales, overall, are delightful, fascinating, and relevant to modern times in more ways than any individual could express. One leads into the other in a logical fashion, except perhaps the last book, alternatively titled "The Bridge of Lost Desire" or "Return to Neveryon", and all four (excluding Triton, which I have not as yet read) make a cohesive and interlocked whole experience and pleasurable, thoughtful reading.

If you're a big reader of fantasy, you might notice that sometimes the writers try to use their fantasy stories to make some sort of philosophical point, maybe try to comment on male/female relationships, or something equally weighty. More often than not, these come off as heavy-handed and clumsy, oversimplifying their point hideously to make sure everyone "gets it" and then hammering the same point home over the course of several books to the point of tediousness. Those type of books annoy the heck out of me. So it's nice to see someone actually doing it right with this book. Delany's fantasy world isn't strictly fantasy, per se (it has elements but is more like the world right when writing was first invented) but it's certainly not our world. So he creates this detailed world, shows it to us and then proceeds over the course of the stories in this book to make comments on our world and use the characters and situations to explore similar situations in the "real world". All of this is done without him standing up and screaming "Look! I'm being didactic!" and most of the time unless you're looking for the specific commentary, you won't even notice, that's how subtle it tends to be. Even better, Delany tends to just make his point and move, without laboring over the same idea in story after story. His ideas are different, too, than what you'd normally find in fantasy, it's not the usual "men and women don't understand each other" he looks into things like currency, the origins of feminism and the sexual nature of slavery. And even without the intellectual angle to these tales, they're entertaining in their own right, Delany's characters and settings are enormously exciting, and while there's not an overarching plot to the stories, characters do carry over from tale to tale and develop over time. And for all his examinations, Delany never forgets the most important thing about a story . . . keeping it interesting. His world is rendered with enough detail to fill several books and fortunately there were three other Neveryon books after this one. But those who think fantasy can't ever be smart should start here and see what else can be done with the genre. As fun as it is, it can't always boil down to "good versus evil."

"Tales from Neveryon" examines many facets of human existence, from gender roles to marriage (the slight hint of S & M mentioned by a previous reviewer) to the way the devlopment of the concept of money has changed us. When you read this book you get a chance to step outside of human culture. For the first time you see, objectively, the forces at work within society and within us. You see the way the past shapes the present, and the way your preconceptions shape the way you perceive the world.This is an incredible book, well worth the time taken to read and understand its many complexities.

...is what its author has called it, and that it is. The first novella in this book, Tale of Gurgik, I took as a quirky, Fantasy revision on coming-of-age stories like Dickens and Stendhal. Gurgik, an aristocrat, becomes a slave for six years and then stumbles back into bourgeois civilization. This story treats his acclimatization to the strange cultures of freedom and wealth. Tale of Old Venn is a sort of fantasy-novel introduction to literary criticism, played out in metaphors between an old woman and her disciple and friend. This story was my favorite; it introduces Delany's theories on the transition from currency to credit. The Tale of Small Sarg is an elegant and heartwarming portrayal of SM. (Sam Gamgee and Frodo will never look the same again!) I can't remember the names of the other stories and don't have the book on me at the moment (I've been lending it to everyone I know), so I'll defer to someone else for the rest. These synopses are to the actual stories roughly what velveeta is to gruyere, of course, a gross oversimplification. Delany's outlandish metaphors (those little rubber balls!) and surprisingly lucid forays into parts philosophic transform what could've been a preachy exercise in po-mo orthodoxies into an absolutely magical experience that must be read to be believed.The reader of this book will benefit from a bit of background in poststructuralism, but it's not necessary; in fact the story about Venn made more sense of Derrida than Derrida does himself. Delany would make a great addition to an introductory course on postcolonialism and semiotics. In fact, I wish I'd read this before I'd ever tried to tackle those people...