Caliban: A Short Story

By Robert Silverberg

The Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author delivers a prescient tale that “explores the inanity of conformity with a hopelessly superficial future humankind” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
 
He was revived, somehow, and thrust into a brand-new world, one in which humans have evolved to breathe underwater, reproduction is quite uncommon, and everyone has standardized their appearance to conform to the presently favored model.
 
He is a rarity, a throwback, with his short legs, hairy body, lopsided face, and scars. He remembers automobiles, tax returns, a family—all the components of an imperfect world. But here and now, he is an object of fascination to be studied by doctors and politicians, and to be wanted by adventurous women.
 
He keeps telling himself that in a country of the beautiful, the ugly man is king. If only he’d listen . . .
 
Praise for Robert Silverberg and his short stories
 
“When Silverberg is at the top of his form, no one is better.” —George R. R. Martin, #1 New York Times–bestselling author
 
“Silverberg’s creative story premises are matched by a remarkable ability to make his characters sympathetic, whether human or not.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“The short stories in Robert Silverberg’s First-Person Singularities are inventive, sublime, and endlessly entertaining.” —Foreword Reviews
 
“Decades after being originally published, most of these stories are still just as entertaining and powerful as they were when first released. A singularly unique collection.” —Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504086448

Robert Silverberg

<p>Robert Silverberg has won five Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and the prestigious <em>Prix Apollo.</em> He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels -- including the best-selling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics <em>Dying Inside</em> and <em>A Time of Changes</em> -- and more than sixty nonfiction works. Among the sixty-plus anthologies he has edited are <em>Legends</em> and <em>Far Horizons,</em> which contain original short stories set in the most popular universe of Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy and SF writer today. Mr. Silverberg's Majipoor Cycle, set on perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one of the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.</p>

Book preview

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Caliban

A Short Story

Robert Silverberg

Introduction

Now and then I write a story that strikes me as a comic one, although I’m usually chagrined to discover that most other people don’t see it as particularly funny. This is one of that sort. It makes its comic effects not through jokes or farcical horseplay, but through unexpected reversals. (In the country of the beautiful people, the ugly man is king.) But perhaps the comic effect of the piece is in its verbal play (I am the latest Thing) rather than in any inherently funny action.

I wrote it in November, 1970, toward the end of a wonderfully productive year that saw me producing a slew of short stories and three novels and three of the non-fictional books on archaeological and historical themes that I was writing in those days. I was a busy lad back then.

Caliban

They have all changed their faces to a standard model. It is