The
seventh volume of Subterranean Press’s Collected Stories of Robert
Silverberg, We Are For the Dark,
covers a four year period, from 1987-90.
Containing ten stories ranging from short stories to novellas,
including the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning “Enter a Soldier,
Later: Enter Another” demonstrates that Silverberg was not willing to
rest on his laurels, but rather was adding to his legacy in the late
1980s.
Reading
these stories in close proximity drives home just how much Silverberg
was using history as the basis of his stories.
“Enter a Soldier, Later:
Enter Another” posits a virtual reality program which allows
recreations of Francisco Pizarro and Socrates to debate each other.
“A Sleep and a Forgetting” looks at a world in which Temujin
became a Christian living in Istanbul rather than the conqueror Ghengis
Khan, and “To the Promised Land” created a word in which Rome
didn’t fall (and led to a lengthy series of stories collected in
Silverberg’s Roma Eterna).
Silverberg also returns to his 1966 novel The Gate of Worlds with
"Lion Time in Timbuctoo," pointing out that his interest in
alternate history is not something he discovered in the late 1980s, but
is something which has long been part of his career.
History isn’t the only thing Silverberg was using as his muse in the
80s. he was also keeping up
with technological advancements, as demonstrated not just with the
virtual reality concepts in “Enter a Soldier, Later: Enter Another,”
but also in the ideas which he used in the much darker “Chip
Runner,” about a young boy who is allowing his body to waste away,
despite the efforts of both his parents and psychiatrist.
Silverberg
also pays tributes to other authors in the stories included in We
Are For the Dark. Most obvious is his Isaac Asimov tribute, “The
Asenion Solution,” which includes references to Asimov’s The
Gods Themselves. “In
Another Country” is a sequel to C.L. Moore’s Vintage
Season. Perhaps the
least obvious tribute story is “The Dead Man’s Eyes,” which uses
the same concepts as those used by Silverberg’s friend and one-time
collaborator Randall Garrett in his 1964 Lord Darcy story “The Eyes
Have It.”
Originally
published more than thirty years after Silverberg broke into publishing,
these stories included in We Are for the Dark are indicative of
the mature author Silverberg has become and form an interesting
counterpoint to not only the earlier collections issues by Subterranean,
such as To Be Continued, but also Haffner Press's recently
published Tales from Super-Science Fiction, which includes
several of the stories that a younger Silverberg honed his craft
on.
Silverberg has published numerous stories after those collected in We Are For the Dark, leaving enough work for potentially several
more volumes from Subterranean Press and including works which are in
every way as strong, entertaining, and as those collected in the seventh
volume. With luck all will
be published and Silverberg will continue to add to his oeuvre before
the project is complete.
