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