"At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Short story
Year: 1982
ID: 60
Publication history:
- 1982: Playboy August 1982, Magazine
- 1984: The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Arbor House Hard cover book
- 1984: The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Science Fiction Book Club Hard cover book, 243 pp.
- 1985: The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Bantam Mass market paperback, ISBN 0-553-25077-9, 317 pp.
- 1985: The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Gollancz Hard cover book, 284 pp.
- 1987: Det brokiga cocktailpartyt, Korpen Mass market paperback, ISBN 91-7374-186-8, in Swedish
- 1989: The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Gollancz Mass market paperback, 284 pp.
- 2000: The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Peanut Press Online
- 2003: Voile vers Byzance: Nouvelles au fil du temps, tome 3, 1981-1987, Flammarion Trade paperback, ISBN 2080682547, 768 pp., in French as Le cocktail conglomrode
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
This is an early Eighties revisitation to the idea in : future humans are able to change their bodily appearance as the fancy takes them. In this case, the procedure is only available to a privileged class of the super-rich, while the standard underclass is left to their natural forms. The conglomeroid class prefer wildly imaginative shapes: geometric constructs, incongruous mixtures of different animal characteristics. The only constraint is that the body must house a human brain. Worldwide transportation is quick and easy to the overclass, and the favored style of housing seems to be egg-shaped and off the ground. See the cover art to The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party for an idea (but ignore the hatching triceratops, they're in ).