Early in the twenty-third century, young Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins serves as a space pilot for a team of archaeologists investigating…
a long-extinct galactic civilization. Marvelling at the monuments left on distant planets, Hutch and her colleagues confront the natural hazards of new worlds and stay one step ahead of human colonizers, as the archaeologists unravel a secret that may be the key to human survival. Some strong language. 1994
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.