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"Passengers"
by Robert Silverberg

• Publishing Data • Preview • Background • Navigation Guide • Further Exploration •
Publishing Data

Originally published in Orbit #4, 1968
Winner of the Nebula for Best Short Story

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Preview
Alien wraiths called Passengers randomly take over the bodies of humans for several days at a time. One such human remembers the sexual encounter he had with an inhabited woman and then meets her and attempts to have a real relationship.
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Background
  • The story illustrates a principle theme in Silverberg's fiction. Thomas Clareson states that this theme "grew out of the existentialist view of human isolation and anguish in an indifferent universe where vast, incomprehensible forces act in a meaningless, random manner." To illustrate this theme Silverberg describes acts of "psychic cannibalism" (6)
  • Joseph Francavilla writes that "metaphorically, the aliens represent an unknowable, ambiguous, and capricious fate" (66)
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Navigation Guide
What motivates the Passengers?
How have humans adapted to the activity of Passengers in their midst?
Why does Charles contemplate the possibility that Descartes' dictum Cogito ergo sum (I think; therefore, I am) is no longer valid?
Why does Charles remember his Passenger-induced encounter with Helen?
Why does Charles want to pursue a real relationship with Helen?
Why does Helen react as she does to Charles' revelation that they had coupled while controlled by Passengers?
Why does Helen change her mind about Charles' overtures?
What is the significance of what the next Passenger does with Charles?
 
 
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Further Exploration
Saturn bulletSources

Clareson, Thomas D. "Introduction" in Elkins and Greenberg: 1-13.

Elkins, Charles L., and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. Robert Silverberg's Many Trapdoors: Critical Essays on His Science Fiction. Westport: Greenwood, 1992.

Francavilla, Joseph. "Repetition with Reversal: Robert Silverberg's Ironic Twist Endings." in Elkins and Greenberg: 59-72.
 
 
 
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