Alien Archives
Eighteen Stories ofExtraterrestrial Encounters
BY
Robert Silverberg
THREE ROOMS PRESS
New York, NY
ALIEN ARCHIVES
EIGHTEEN STORIES OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENCOUNTERS
BY Robert Silverberg
© 2019 by Agberg, Ltd.
Individual Stories: Copyright ©1954, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1974, 1981, 1983, 1992, 1996, 1997, 2020 by Agberg, Ltd.
ISBN 978-1-941110-80-5 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-941110-81-2 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938484
Pub Date: October 29, 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For permissions, please write to address below or email [email protected]. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy or electronically reproduce part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Three Rooms Press, 561 Hudson Street, #33, New York, NY 10014.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
BISAC Coding:
FIC028090 Science Fiction Alien Contact
FIC029000 Science Fiction Short Stories (single author)
FIC028000 Science Fiction General
BOOK COVER AND INTERIOR DESIGN:
KG Design International | www.katgeorges.com
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For Peter and Kat,who showed up late but were worth waiting for.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: A PLURALITY OF WORLDS by Robert Silverberg
THE SOUL-PAINTER AND THE SHAPESHIFTER
INTRODUCTION: A PLURALITY OF WORLDS
BY ROBERT SILVERBERG
HERE IS AN ASSORTMENT OF stories about human interactions with alien beings, some of them in far corners of the universe, some right here on Earth. (One of them, in fact, takes place in a California suburb a fifteen-minute drive from where I live.) I wrote these stories, the oldest one in 1954 and the most recent almost half a century later, with two beliefs held firmly in mind:
1)We are not alone. The universe is full of non-human life-forms.
2)We are never going to encounter any of these alien beings.
It may seem irrational of me to have written a whole book of stories about things that I don’t believe are going to happen, but I remind you that these are science fiction stories, and the essence of science fiction is what if—which is why some people like to call science fiction “speculative fiction” instead. I do indeed doubt that any of the events depicted in this book, or anything remotely like them, will ever take place. But what if—what if—
***
BACK IN FAR-OFF 2004 I wrote an essay for one of the science fiction magazines titled “Neque Illorum Ad Nos Pervenire Potest,” which is Latin for “None of us can go to them, and none of them come to us.” The phrase was that of the twelfth-century philosopher Guillaume de Conches, writing about the supposed inhabitants of the Antipodes, the lands that lay beyond the fiery sea that was thought to cut Europe off from the as yet unexplored Southern Hemisphere. I used it to express my belief that we are never going to have any close encounters with the inhabitants of other solar systems. They’re just too far away. Despite the best efforts of such people as my friends, the brothers Jim and Greg Benford, who even now are working to drum up interest in an interstellar voyage, the distance even to the nearest star is so great that only by magical means (a faster-than-light drive, for instance) are we likely to get to an extrasolar planet and return.
“It’s disheartening,” I wrote, back then. “I’ve spent five decades [six, now] writing stories about other worlds and other intelligent lifeforms, and I don’t like the idea that I’ve simply been peddling pipe dreams all this time. I do believe . . . that the universe is full of populated worlds. I do want to know what those alien races look like, how they think, what kind of cities they live in. I’d love to read alien poetry and look at alien sculptures. I might even want to risk dinner at a five-star alien restaurant. But none of that is going to happen . . . The speed of light is going to remain the limiting velocity not just for us, but for all those lively and interesting people out there in the adjacent galaxies, and that puts the kibosh on the whole concept of a galaxy-spanning civilization.”
That there are worlds out