"The Pleasure of Their Company"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Novelette
Year: 1970
ID: 892
Publication history:
- 1970: Infinity 1, Lancer Mass market paperback, as The Pleasure of Our Company
- 1971: Moonferns and Starsongs, Ballantine Mass market paperback, ISBN 345-02278-5, 244 pp.
- 1981: The Songs of Summer, Pan Mass market paperback, ISBN 0330263153
- 1982: Les Chants de l'été, J'ai lu Mass market paperback, ISBN 2277213926, 245 pp., in French as Sauve qui peut!
- 1997: Ringing the Changes (The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 5), HarperCollins UK Trade paperback, ISBN 0-586-21373-2, 359 pp.
- 2002: Le Chemin de la nuit: Nouvelles au fil du temps, tome 1, 1953-1970, Flammarion Trade paperback, ISBN 2080682350, 727 pp., in French as En bonne compagnie
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
Thomas Voigtland is the deposed president of Bradley's World, democratically elected but now fleeing a violent coup in a spaceship. The uprising came so quickly there was not time to bring anyone else, not his family, not his trusted advisors. He is alone with the personality cubes he brought: his wife, his son, and his best friend, as well as the reconstuctions of such historical personalities as Plato, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Goethe, and others. With company like that, the journey should pass enjoyably. But there's the nagging guilt that running away from the revolution was not the right thing to do.