Like the rest of the Neveryon series, The Bridge of Lost Desire has all the trappings of a standard sword-andsorcery story. That this is not really a sword-and-sorcery tale becomes evident very quickly — as in the earlier volumes. To begin with, the stories are not in chronological order; the first one, "The Game of Time and Pain," actually occurs last while the last one, "The Tale of Gorgik," comes first. (In fact "The Tale of Gorgik" was published in 1979 in a shorter version.

Delany's habit of rewriting his works after they have already appeared in print marks yet another assault on the idea of the conventional text.)

Not only is the relationship among the individual tales complex, but Delany constantly forces metafictional problems upon the reader. Each tale is preceded by a lengthy epigraph: one from a critical work on Lacan, one from...