The Jewels of Aptor

1962 novel by Samuel R. Delany

The Jewels of Aptor

First edition

Author| Samuel R. Delany
Cover artist| Jack Gaughan
Language| English
Genre| Science Fantasy
Publisher| Ace Books

Publication date

| 1962
Publication place| United States
Media type| Print (Paperback)
Pages| 156 pp
OCLC| 1625608

The Jewels of Aptor is a 1962 science fantasy novel by Samuel R. Delany, his first published novel. It first appeared in shortened form as an Ace Double F-173 together with Second Ending by 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.[1][2][3][4]

## Plot introduction

[edit]

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.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "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."
2. ^ Barbour 1979, p. 163.
3. ^ Pringle 1990, p. 171.
4. ^ Clute and Nicholls 1995, p. 315.

## Sources

[edit]

* Barbour, Douglas (1979). Worlds Out Of Worlds: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany. Frome, Somerset, UK: Bran's Head Books Ltd. ISBN 0-905220-13-7.
* Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter (1995). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2 ed.). New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-13486-X.
* Pringle, David (1990). The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction. London: Grafton Books. ISBN 0-246-13635-9.
* Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. p. 137\. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.

## External links

[edit]

* The Jewels of Aptor at Standard Ebooks
*   * The Jewels of Aptor at Project Gutenberg (original Ace Double text)
* The Jewels of Aptor public domain audiobook at LibriVox
* The Jewels of Aptor title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

* v
* t
* e

Samuel R. Delany

Stand-alone novels|

* The Jewels of Aptor (1962)
* The Ballad of Beta-2 (1965)
* Empire Star (1966)
* Babel-17 (1966)
* The Einstein Intersection (1967)
* Nova (1968)
* Equinox (1973)
* Dhalgren (1975)
* Trouble on Triton (1976)
* Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984)
* They Fly at Çiron (1993)
* The Mad Man (1994)
* Hogg (1995)
* Phallos (2004)
* Dark Reflections (2007)
* Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2012)

The Fall of the Towers|

* Captives of the Flame (1963)
* The Towers of Toron (1964)
* City of a Thousand Suns (1965)

Return to Nevèrÿon|

* Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
* Neveryóna, or: The Tale of Signs and Cities (1983)
* Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)
* Return to Nevèrÿon (1987)

Short stories|

| Stories|

* "Aye, and Gomorrah..." (1967)
* "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (1968)

|

Collections|

* Driftglass (1971)
* Distant Stars (1981)
* The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction (1983)
* Driftglass/Starshards (1993)
* Atlantis: Three Tales (1995)
* Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories (2003)

Nonfiction|

* Heavenly Breakfast (1979)
* The Motion of Light in Water (1988)
* The Straits of Messina (1989)
* Silent Interviews (1995)
* Longer Views (1996)
* Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)
* Shorter Views (2000)

This article about a 1960s science fiction novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page.

|

* v
* t
* e

*[OCLC]: Online Computer Library Center number
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template