In his four-volume series Return to Nevèrÿon, 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—through a collection of loosely connected stories and novellas. This 3rd volume, first published in 1985, gathers the stories, “The Tale of Fog and Granite”; “The Mummer’s Tale”; “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals, or, Some Informal Remarks toward the Modular Calculus, Part Five”; and 2 appendices.

In “The Mummer’s Tale” and “The Tale of Plagues…” the Bridge of Lost Desire is an important place, where artists, warriors, philosophers, thieves, and hustlers cross their paths. Yet “The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals” weaves the story of a plague devastating Nevèrÿon with notes recounting the spreading of AIDS in New York, as witnessed by Delany—it is thus the first work of American fiction to deal with the epidemics.