Tom O'Bedlam

Here, from the famed author of The Majipoor Trilogy, is his long-awaited major work of science-fiction and fantasy that brings him into the mainstream of the great practitioners of imaginative literature.

It is A.D. 2103. Tom O’Bedlam, like the wandering character in the medieval ballad, “Tom O’Bedlam’s Song,” feigns madness as a sane means of survival in a high-tech, post-industrial world. Only Tom knows that his “insanity” is his way of coping with the extraordinary powers he possesses—powers that enable him to send his mind out across unimaginable gulfs of space, touring other worlds and capturing them in his unconsciousness.

When a star probe that has been journeying to Proxima Centauri—four light years from Earth—sends back images of life, it becomes clear that this is the same shimmering green world of Tom’s imagination, the same images he has telepathically transmitted to others. Sometimes threatening, sometimes beyond belief, the distant worlds that communicate with Tom are ultimately revealed not as a threat but a salvation, and Tom O’Bedlam, “poor Tom,” as he likes to refer to himself, has become their designated instrument and representative on Earth.

Realism and fantasy, faith and disbelief combine to make *Tom O’Bedlam* Robert Silverberg’s masterwork.