A - Short Works
According to the introductory notes in Voyagers in Time, the original magazine appearance of this story was "mutilated by an overly zealous editor," and made its debut "as it was originally written" in that collection. It's a nifty little time-travel paradox story. In the 28th Century, the Earth has been rid of disease, so germ-ridden time travelers from the past are quarantined at a prison on the moon where they can't infect the world's unprotected population.
The story is available for purchase electronically at the Alexandria Digital Literature for $0.75. It is the only Silverberg story currently available there (though they display his name prominently on their banner ads). Silverberg has written an introduction on their site about the genesis of the story, including its indebtedness to Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps".
Silverberg's preferred title for this story is "Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake". Alice K. Turner, fiction editor at Playboy, called it "The Affair".
More than ten thousand years into the future, people bore easily, so they start recreating great historical figures for their amusement. When they tire of that, they start making fictional and mythical characters. At their distant remove, it's pretty much the same thing. So they make Adam and Eve, Pan, Odysseus, the Minotaur, Salome, and many others. But eventually the people became bored with the myths, too. It is only later that they discover that having myths is maybe a good thing.
This story has been worked into the novel The Alien Years. It is the opening section where Mike Carmichael battles the brush fires started by the aliens.
Became part of The World Inside.
Amanda always expected that when she fell in love, it would be with a musician or an artist--at the very least a human. Then she meets an alien on the run from the FBI and shelters him.
This short story was made into a movie in 1995 starring Baywatch beauty Nicole Eggert and featuring Michael Dorn and Stacey Keach. It's a kind of cheesy made-for-cable movie which tries to be a comedy but doesn't always succeed. Robert Silverberg makes a brief nonspeaking appearance as a talk show guest at the end. He's the one sitting next to Amanda, making funny faces at her. Special effects are minimal (the alien's pretty corny looking)--no big-budget blockbuster here. If you feel the need to purchase it, avoid the places that sell it for $80 or more. I got it under $20 from Videoflicks. You can see some stills from the movie here or check out the Internet Movie Database entry.
This story later became Chapter 8 of Majipoor Chronicles.
The dream-speaker Tisana plays a small but pivotal role in Lord Valentine's Castle, being the first to openly proclaim Valentine's true identity. Here we get an episode from early in her life concerning the training and testing undergone by dream-speakers on Majipoor.
A sequel to "Nightwings", and Part 2 of the novel. The Earth has been conquered in a single night, and the former Watcher, now Guildless, leaves Roum to join the guild of Rememberers, whose headquarters is in the city of Perris. Outside Roum, he meets a masked Pilgrim who turns out to be the deposed Prince of Roum, his eyes plucked out by the jealous Gormon (who was in fact an advance spy for the invaders) in retaliation for stealing Avluela. Together, the two walk from Roum to Perris, where the Watcher is apprenticed to the Rememberers and given the name of Tomis. The Prince remains incognito as a hanger-on in the Rememberers' Hall as Tomis learns the mysteries of Earth's past, including the secret of the invaders' ancient grudge against Earth. Meanwhile, the Prince (up to his old tricks) seduces the Rememberer Olmayne and involves Tomis in a knot of treachery that could betray both to the invaders. The story continues in "To Jorslem".
Later expanded as Invisible Barriers and published under a pseudonym.
The 1974 bibliography in F&SF lists this as "Appropriation". I'm not sure which is correct.
A story written in honor of Isaac Asimov while he was still alive. Near the end of the 21st century, a group of physicists are puzzled and amazed by the sudden appearance of stable plutonium-186, an element which should not exist, let alone be stable. The lowest weight for a stable isotope of plutonium is 244. The problem is, when the impossible substance decays it produces positrons, the antimatter equivalent of electrons, which seek out normal electrons and annihilate them. The scientists calculate that eventually the Pu-186 will destroy the universe if something isn't done. One of them seeks out Ichabod Asenion, a brilliant physicist who had suddenly withdrawn from science to raise bromeliads, for a solution to the problem. All in all, a very Asimovian story.
This is an early Eighties revisitation to the idea in "Caliban": future humans are able to change their bodily appearance as the fancy takes them. In this case, the procedure is only available to a privileged class of the super-rich, while the standard underclass is left to their natural forms. The conglomeroid class prefer wildly imaginative shapes: geometric constructs, incongruous mixtures of different animal characteristics. The only constraint is that the body must house a human brain. Worldwide transportation is quick and easy to the overclass, and the favored style of housing seems to be egg-shaped and off the ground. See the cover art to The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party for an idea (but ignore the hatching triceratops, they're in "Our Lady of the Sauropods").
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Last updated October 21, 2002
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