"In the House of Double Minds"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Novelette
Year: 1974
ID: 500
Publication history:
- ????: Tous les chemins mnent l'homme, Omnibus Mass market paperback, in French as La maison des doubles esprits
- 1973: Vertex April 1973, Magazine
- 1975: The Feast of St. Dionysus, Scribner's Hard cover book
- 1976: SF Digest #1, Magazine
- 1976: The Feast of St. Dionysus, Gollancz Hard cover book, 255 pp.
- 1977: Dertien Dwaalwegen, Meulenhoff , ISBN 90-290-0667-6, 320 pp., in Dutch as In het Huis der Tweevoudige Geesten
- 1979: The Feast of St. Dionysus, Berkley Mass market paperback, ISBN 0-425-04174-3, 210 pp.
- 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.
- 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
- 1998: Voyage au bout de l'esprit, Omnibus Mass market paperback, ISBN 2258049202, 904 pp., in French as La maison des doubles esprits
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
The House of Double Minds is a place where children are trained to become Oracles. Promising candidates are chosen from the population at large and have the connection between the right and left hemispheres of their brains severed. They are taught to function in this state, and those that don't go crazy become Oracles, who are highly regarded, though their exact function is society is unclear. There's a lot of emphasis placed on the functional differences between the sides of the brain, and some of the story seems to be based on case studies of people who have had the two separated in brain traumas.
Although the story is quite intriguing, and the characters believable and well-developed, the lack of a background bothers me some. The society outside the House appears to have some high technology, but I just feel I need more justification for such extreme practices as are commonplace here. This, written in November of 1973, was the very last short story Silverberg wrote before his hiatus of the 1970s.