Multiples: A Short Story
Aug 2023 · Open Road Media
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31
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About this ebook
For some people, one personality is just never enough. A story of duplicity from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Lord Valentine’s Castle.
Slowly, a climate of acceptance has been growing for people with divided personalities, especially in big cities like San Francisco. There are clubs with mirrors and lights that help people to switch and double, maybe even triple. When, like Cleo, you feel your world has become stale and cramped, they’re the perfect place to meet someone.
But first Cleo has to pretend that she’s a multiple, because they’re notoriously indifferent to singletons and their bland, overly simple selves. When she meets Van, she’s able to pull off her masquerade for a week of bliss with him (and Paul, and Hal, and . . .). Or so she thinks. When Cleo is caught in her lie, she attempts to bow out gracefully. But Van doesn’t want to lose her. In fact, he wants more of her. There could be a whole horde of selves inside of her—and he knows just how to get them out . . .
“In the thoughtful and emotionally evocative title story, ‘Multiples,’ multiple personality ‘disorder’ is normal, and indeed a desired state, creating an effective metaphor for the loneliness experienced by socially isolated individuals.” —SF Site
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
“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
Slowly, a climate of acceptance has been growing for people with divided personalities, especially in big cities like San Francisco. There are clubs with mirrors and lights that help people to switch and double, maybe even triple. When, like Cleo, you feel your world has become stale and cramped, they’re the perfect place to meet someone.
But first Cleo has to pretend that she’s a multiple, because they’re notoriously indifferent to singletons and their bland, overly simple selves. When she meets Van, she’s able to pull off her masquerade for a week of bliss with him (and Paul, and Hal, and . . .). Or so she thinks. When Cleo is caught in her lie, she attempts to bow out gracefully. But Van doesn’t want to lose her. In fact, he wants more of her. There could be a whole horde of selves inside of her—and he knows just how to get them out . . .
“In the thoughtful and emotionally evocative title story, ‘Multiples,’ multiple personality ‘disorder’ is normal, and indeed a desired state, creating an effective metaphor for the loneliness experienced by socially isolated individuals.” —SF Site
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
“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
About the author
Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) sold his first science fiction stories to the lower-grade pulps in the mid-fifties, moved swiftly to the three prestigious magazines (Astounding, Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) and as his style deepened and themes expanded in through the next reached the first rank of science fiction writers. He is regarded as the greatest living writer of science fiction, an SFWA Grandmaster, ex-President (in the 1960’s) of that organization, winner of five Nebulas, four Hugos and many other domestic and foreign awards. Among his famous novels are Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, Downward to the Earth, A Time of Changes; his novella Born with the Dead (1974) is perhaps the finest work of that length published within the genre. Shifting to a predominating fantasy in the late 1970’s (Lord Valentine’s Castle and the attendant Majipoor Series), Silverberg continued to write science fiction and won a Nebula in 1986 for the novella Sailing to Byzantium, and Hugos for the novelettes Gilgamesh in the Outback and Enter a Soldier: Later, Enter Another. He was editor of the long-running original anthology series New Dimensions and of important reprint anthologies such as The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Alpha, and The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction.
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