"Trips"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Novelette
Year: 1974
ID: 1207
Publication history:
- 1974: Final Stage, Charterhouse Hard cover book
- 1975: The Feast of St. Dionysus, Scribner's Hard cover book
- 1976: Trips, Calmann-Levy Mass market paperback, ISBN 2702101682, 272 pp., in French
- 1976: The Feast of St. Dionysus, Gollancz Hard cover book, 255 pp.
- 1978: The Best of Robert Silverberg Volume 2, Gregg Hard cover book
- 1978: Lost Worlds, Unknown Horizons, New English Library Mass market paperback
- 1979: The Feast of St. Dionysus, Berkley Mass market paperback, ISBN 0-425-04174-3, 210 pp.
- 1980: Trips, J'ai lu Mass market paperback, ISBN 2-277-21068-4, in French
- 1986: Beyond the Safe Zone, Donald I Fine Hard cover book, 472 pp.
- 1987: Beyond the Safe Zone, Warner Mass market paperback, ISBN 0-446-30173-6, 565 pp.
- 1987: The Feast of St. Dionysus, New English Library Mass market paperback, 255 pp.
- 1989: Beyond the Safe Zone, Warner Mass market paperback, 565 pp.
- 1989: Trips, Pocket Mass market paperback, ISBN 2-266-03180-5, in French
- 1995: Beyond the Safe Zone (The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 3), HarperCollins UK Trade paperback, ISBN 0-586-21371-6, 605 pp.
- 1995: Beyond the Safe Zone, Grafton Mass market paperback, ISBN 0586213716
- 1995: Trips, J'ai lu Mass market paperback, ISBN 2277210684, 309 pp., in French
- 1998: Not the Only Planet, Lonely Planet Mass market paperback
- 2000: Alexandria Digital Literature, Alexandria Digital Online
- 2000: Fictionwise, Fictionwise Online
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
Chris Cameron is a very restless man. Fortunately for him, he can travel. I mean really travel, hopping from one version of Earth to another, quickly sussing out the differences and seeing what there is to see. Here's a world where FDR died early and the US never entered World War II, so Germany overran Europe. Here's a world where Asians, not Europeans, colonized North America. Here's a world that's a radioactive slagheap. In each world, Cameron looks up Elizabeth Dudley, his wife in his world. Not all Elizabeths love him. After many trips, he returns to his own world, his own Elizabeth. Or does he?
There is no explanation of the mechanics of inter-dimensional travel. It does not seem to require any sort of device, and the transition is very quick. It was written specially for Final Stage, which is a collection of
stories (the time travel story, the robot story, etc), and fulfils the role of alternate world story quite nicely.