the Liberator and bring him to heel as well as to distract the people from the “plague” that moves among them, the government invites Gorgik to join the ruling council as a minister — so that he must learn to conclude his battle as a politician rather than as an armed rebel. A high point of the story is the Master's attempt, as a young man, to travel throughout Nevèrÿon and collect material for a biography of the Barbarian genius Belham, dead a generation before, whose name is connected with many of the land's architectural wonders. Even as the Young Master learns how provisional his attempts at gathering information are (and his attempts double the young smuggler's attempts to gather like information about Gorgik), the readers by this time will have seen a good deal of what was involved in the creation of these monuments and will presumably bridle at the cursory way, with the best of intentions, our young scholar overlooks any and all contributions of various women intellectuals, such as Venn and Pryn's great aunt, to some of these accomplishments — contributions whose import we have seen first hand. A second high point involves the return of the Mummer, from “The Mummer’s Tale,” who offers a devastating critique of the Master's current set of philosophical dialogues, which is set up to suggest a similar order of critique which Socrates might easily have made of Plato, the older philosopher's presumably sympathetic and accurate amanuensis. The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals was the first novel-length treatment of AIDS to appear from a major U.S. publisher (Bantam Books). References Further reading Tucker, Jeffery A. A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference, chapter 3: "The Empire of Signs: Slavery, Semiotics, and Sexuality in the Return to Nevèrÿon Series". Wesleyan University Press, 2004. 1985 short story collections Fantasy short story collections Short story collections by Samuel Delany Novels about HIV/AIDS American novellas Novels set in prehistory