When the 1971 collection was put together, Delany and his editor gave serious thought to calling it Aye, and Gomorrah, instead of Driftglass.

The other is a page-long prose poem, “The Dying Castles,” which appeared in a 1968 issue of the British SF magazine New Worlds (#200), as under the joint authorship of James Sallis, Samuel R. Delany, and Michael Moorcock.

Another story not included here is a slightly longer piece called “The Desert of Time,” which was commissioned by Omni Magazine to accompany an illustration in the late 1980s.

In some of the tales, such as the opening story in both books, “The Star-Pit,” the narrator’s family and children have been destroyed in a horrific war many years before and many light years away: a war of a sort, which, in the future the story depicts, has become so common that it would seem to be a background reality gotten through for better or for worse by pretty much everyone who currently survives.

And the fantasies, such as “Prismatica,” “Dog in a Fisherman’s Net,” and “Ruins” all deal with the possibilities or the wages of journeying from one's home.