"The Millennium Express"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Short story
Year: 2000
ID: 740
Publication history:
- 2000: Playboy January 2000, Magazine
- 2001: Year's Best SF 6, Eos Mass market paperback, ISBN 0061020559, 496 pp.
- 2001: Destination 3001, Flammarion Hard cover book, ISBN 2080679392, 449 pp.
- 2003: Destination 3001, J'ai lu Mass market paperback, ISBN 2290325783
- 2004: Phases of the Moon, iBooks Trade paperback, ISBN 0743498011, 623 pp.
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
For the turn of our millennium, Silverberg delivers a wildly imaginative story chock full of bizarre wonders casually tossed off as only a master could. I can't recall ever reading a view of the future like this one, fascinating from the opening paragraph to the last.
A lot has changed since the last turn of a millennium — in the year 2999, the Earth is a warm planet from pole to pole, and many of the old coastal cities lie flooded. The small population remaining lives a life of ease, with technology they don't have to even think about making real work of any kind unnecessary. But as the next millennium approaches, the great achievements of the past are being destroyed. The beautiful towers of underwater Istanbul, the Washington Monument, the Sistine Chapel, all wiped from the face of the planet by some hideous vandalism. Strettin Vulpius takes it upon himself to find out what deranged individual or group would do such things.