Tales of Nevèrÿon
A group of interrelated stories taking place in an ambiguous distant past setting that on the surface resembles sword-and-sorcery. As always, Delany works his magic by drawing you in with vivid sensory immediacy, and then opening up uncountable doors of thought into language, semiotics, politics, economy and technology. The first in an addictive and haunting series, it also forms, along with many of his other works, part of a larger work he calls Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus. If that intimidates you, don't worry about it. Enjoy the story and take time to reflect on all the thoughts it invites. You can go back and read the appendices later.
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What Hacker News says
- The Neveryon books and 'Times Square Red, Times Square Blue' are my favorite Delany.
My introduction to Delany was randomly stumbling on the first Neveryon book in the stacks of a university library, being intrigued by the (wholly untrue) intro about Linear B translations of ancient stories, and then getting completely sucked in by the storytelling. The world needs more pan-sexual barbarians, IMO.
The Neveryon story about the invention of writing and its complex set of unintended consequences was perhaps my favorite in the series. ("The Tale of Old Venn" in Tales of Neveryon.)
- The short stories in Driftglass were pretty good, and relatively tame. Read them at 13 or 14.
The sex in Tales of Neveryon is basically off-screen, with heavy allusions.
