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Having pushed the sci-fi genre into new terrain over the first two decades of his career, Delany turned to an even more seemingly blighted genre to present his most thoughtful and theory-heavy sequence of works: the barbarian novel. If you actually dive into any of the Neveryon works, you won't be fooled for long. Delany's main conceit is to take the moment of coalescence of civilization out of hazy pre-history as the perfect test chamber in which to study the foundations for all of our societal conventions -- economics, culture, politics, everything that's still with us today. He has much to say about all of this, all the while toying with the audience over the fact that he's induced them to read ostensible pulp, or else has enticed them to read critical theory by way of pulp.

Incidentally, this is also a markedly feminist work, not just for having strong female characters (which is just a basic necessity of writing a good book, not necessarily a feminist one!), but for its actual interrogation of gender roles and social constructs. As well as for choosing its theoretical epigraphs for each section almost entirely from female thinkers and philosophers, which given the usual male-domination of the discourse definitely did not happen by accident.