science fantasy
Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being scientif ...
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
by
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 ...
, his first published novel. It first appeared in shortened form as an
Ace Double
American company Ace Books began publishing genre fiction starting in 1952. Initially these were mostly in tête-bêche format with the ends of the two parts meeting in the middle and with a divider between them which functioned as the rear cover ...
F-173 together with ''
Second Ending
''Second Ending'' is a science fiction novel by northern Irish writer James White, published in June 1961. It first appeared in ''Fantastic Stories of Imagination'' edited by Cele Goldsmith and publish by Ziff Davis.James White.
From the 1968 edition onwards, Delany's original text has been restored, as the first edition was shortened by about fifteen pages for publication in the Ace Double format."Afterword", A, B, C: Three Short Novels, Delany, 2015, section III. Although the later editions are often described as "revised", Delany did only routine copyediting to his original text. "My personal sense is that this was no sort of rewrite. There was no revising of incident, characters, setting, or structure."Clute and Nicholls 1995, p. 315.
Plot introduction
In a post-atomic future, when civilization has regressed to something near the Middle Ages or even before, a young student and poet, Geo, takes a job as a sailor on a boat. He travels with a strange passenger, a priestess of the goddess Argo, who is heading toward a mysterious land of mutants and high radiation, called Aptor. The journey is presumably made to recapture a young priestess of Argo: her daughter (her little sister in the Ace Double version), who has been kidnapped by the forces of the dark god Hama.