[The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg 05] • The Palace at Midnight - 1980–82 - The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume Five

Somehow, for all my outward pretence of cold-eyed professionalism, all my insistence that writing is simply a job like any other, I’ve discovered to my surprise and chagrin that there’s more than that going on around here, that I write as much out of karmic necessity and some inescapable inner need to rededicate my own skills constantly to my—what? My craft? My art? My profession? I wrote these stories because the only way of earning a living I have ever had has been by writing, but mainly, I have to admit, I wrote these stories because I couldn’t not write them. Well, so be it. They involved me in a lot of hard work, but for me, at least, the results justify the toil. I’m glad I wrote them. Writing them, it turns out, was important for me, and even pleasurable, in a curiously complex after-the-fact kind of way. May they give you pleasure now too.

—Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

Table of Contents

Introduction

Our Lady of the Sauropods

Waiting for the Earthquake

The Regulars

The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve

A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa

How They Pass the Time in Pelpel

The Palace at Midnight

The Man Who Floated in Time

Gianni

The Pope of the Chimps

Thesme and the Ghayrog

At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party

The Trouble with Sempoanga

Jennifer’s Lover

Not Our Brother

Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory

Dancers in the Time-Flux

Needle in a Timestack

Amanda and the Alien

Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake

The Changeling

Basileus

Homefaring