F - Short Works
Became part of The Shrouded Planet.
A fun story about a farmer on a distant planet. He has an orchard full of trees which produce a highly-valued hallucinogen. The kicker is that the trees are carnivorous.
A story Silverberg refers to as "tricky and difficult" in the Conglemoroid Introduction. Reichenbach is a time traveler from some year after 2187, jaunting to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, where he meets Ilsabet, a fellow time traveler. They fall in love and jaunt through the ages, visiting the great moments of history (mostly disasters), until old-fashioned jealousy rears its ugly head. I'm sure Silverberg is well aware of the similarity of this scenario with CL Moore's classic "Vintage Season".
This story is also Chapters 7-11 of To the Land of the Living. The title is a phrase borrowed from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".
This is a story written in late 1971 and early 1972 which is fascinating and very moving even if you're never sure what's "real" and what isn't. John Oxenshuer is the sole survivor of the first American expedition to Mars. His crewmates were killed in a sandstorm, the bodies never recovered. Oxenshuer, though considered a hero for his efforts to rescue the others and his solo return to Earth, is wracked with guilt and self-doubt. He packs up his camping gear and heads out into the Mojave Desert alone to get his head straight, but he bumps into a weird religious cult with a hidden city in the desert. Their religion is a melding of Christianity and Dionysian revelry. They seek union with Jesus through indulgence in wine, dancing, wrestling, and sex, and they have a completely peaceful community. They welcome the astronaut, but he isn't sure he wants what they offer.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the people of the Aldryne system struggle against the repressive Empire and its fleets of star destroyers. Their only weapon, aside from the strength of the people themselves, is the legendary Hammer of Aldryne. But does the Hammer actually exist, or is just a legend?
A spacewrecked man is saved by aliens, who repair his body and give him the ability to soak up other people's feelings. They send him back to Earth with instructions to seek out human emotions for them to study, but things don't go as planned. System-wide space travel seems to be pretty common in the story, but there's no FTL.
A population of telepathic humans live in underwater cities scattered throughout the Earth's oceans, taking refuge from the nuclear devastation that covers the land. Or does it?
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Last updated October 21, 2002
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