The Jewels of Aptor is a 1962 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as "Chip" is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society.His science fiction novels include Babel-17, The Einstein...

, 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

James White (author)

James White was a Northern Irish author of science fiction novellas, short stories and novels. He was born in Belfast and returned there after spending his early years in Canada. After a few years in the clothing industry, he worked at Short Brothers Ltd. from 1965 until taking early retirement in...

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Later editions had a restored and revised text, as about a third of the text was originally excised by Ace Books

Plot introduction

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.