| The Jewels of Aptor | |
|---|---|
Cover of first edition paperback |
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| Author(s) | Samuel R. Delany |
| Cover artist | Jack Gaughan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction |
| Publisher | Ace Books |
| Publication date | 1962 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 156 pp |
| ISBN | N/A |
| OCLC Number | 1625608 |
The Jewels of Aptor is a 1962 science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany, and is Delany's first published novel. Prior to this, he had sold a pair of articles to Seventeen Magazine, only one of which was printed. A year before that, two prize stories had appeared in the national student magazine, Literary Cavalcade. The book first appeared as an Ace Double F-173 together with Second Ending by James White. Later editions had a restored and revised text, as about a third of the text was originally excised by Ace Books[1][2][3]
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 with a strange passenger, a priestess of the goddess Argo, who is heading toward a mysterious land of mutants and high radiation, called Aptor, presumably to recapture a young priestess of Argo, her daughter, who has been kidnapped by the forces of the dark god Hama.