Casual Shorts & the ISFdb Top Short Fiction # 47: Passengers by Robert Silverberg

Silverberg, Robert. "Passengers." Orbit 4, edited by Damon Knight. NY: G. P. Putnam's, november 1968.

This article is part of my attempt to read all the 155 stories currently (as of 1 November 2022) on the ISFdb's Top Short Fiction list. Please see the introduction and list of stories here. I am encouraging readers to rate the stories and books they have read on the ISFdb.

ISFdb Rating:   8.70/10

My Rating:        8/10

The story is available online at escapepod.org

"There are only fragments of me left now."

It has been three years since the aliens dubbed "passengers" have come to Earth. These aliens do not communicate with humans, but at unpredictable moments they attach themselves to an individual's brain and take over that person, making them act as they please, leaving the host with no clear recollection of what they had done since they'd been "ridden." In those last years human societies have come to adapt to these incidents, and life goes on, but not as it had before.

The story is told through the point of view of thirty-eight year-old New Yorker Charles Roth, after he has woken from being ridden and evidently spending the last three nights with a woman. From Roth we learn little of the passengers, only that they are on Earth and nobody knows anything about them, not even how many passengers there are. Roth has been ridden a few times before, but this time it was different as he catches a glimpse of memory and encounters the woman with whom he had spent the past three days. He tells is that he is permitted this memory, as normally humans have no memory whatsoever of their experiences while being ridden. Etiquette does not permit him to tell the woman, Helen Martin, that they were together while ridden, yet he feels a connection with the woman and takes the risk.

I have always liked this story. For a prolific author this one is patiently written, well thought through. I like Roth's little knowledge of the aliens, the anxiety that notions of free will evoke in him, his struggle to break from a mold, and of course that spectacular ending. I admire how the story is constructed, as the opening plays out in almost real time, sharing with the reader only bits of information at a time, in "fragments," as the narrator opens their story with there being only fragments of him left, drawing us into the text and making us a little uncomfortable with this unusual near-future dystopia.

Here be a bit of a spoiler. Roth clearly tells us that he has been "permitted to remember" details of his time with Helen. The word "permitted" in italics. That ending, as he is again ridden, is told through his point of view, and therefore he is being permitted awareness of his actions in re-entering the bar and abandoning Helen, whom he believes he loves, and whom he believes is the source of escape from the unhappy reality brought on by the passengers. Roth also informs us earlier that the aliens are on Earth, taking humans over simply to torture them, and for no other reason. And what greater torture than to be aware when your love and freedom is being stripped. It is as though the passengers have consciously given him a glimpse of Helen Martin, given him hope for a kind of freedom from his enslaved existence, and then dashing that hope by driving him away from the freedom and love he was just about to grasp. He, like the rest of the planet, have no hope for happiness since the aliens have come to Earth.

(There are here many allegorical lenses through which we can read the story. Post pandemic we can also see the link between the aliens and this sickness which has ridden many, altered many lives and society itself. The pandemic, however, has mostly left us.)

An issue I had when first reading the story many years ago is that the narrator is a thirty year-old male who "rides" a twenty-something year-old girl. There appeared no reason why the difference in their ages was made, so that it appeared only to be a middle-aged man's fantasy. However, I was this time around more conscious of another layer to the story (perhaps because I am now middle-aged?), where Roth is conscious and insecure about his aging body, his performance in the bedroom, upset that the passenger likely did not perform his daily physical exercises while borrowing his body.

"Passengers" received the 1970 Nebula for best science fiction short story. It finished second in voting for the 1970 Hugo for best short story, behind Samuel R. Delaney's "Time Considered As a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones." Interestingly, the story that received the Hugo Award for best short story received the Nebula for best novelette. It would be interesting to know which of the two would have received the Nebula if the two were in the same category. My vote goes to "Passengers," as I do not care for the Delaney story. As of today (August 2024), "Passengers" is #42 on the ISFdb list of short fiction, whereas "Time Considered..." is #291.

For more of this week's Wednesday short stories, please visit Patti Abbott's blog.