"Ringing the Changes"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Short story
Year: 1970
ID: 941
Publication history:
- ????: L'Homme Descend du Songe, Omnibus Mass market paperback, in French as Un personnage en qute de corps
- 1970: Alchemy and Academe, Doubleday Hard cover book
- 1972: The Reality Trip and Other Implausibilities, Ballantine Mass market paperback, ISBN 345-02548-2, 210 pp.
- 1976: Trips, Calmann-Levy Mass market paperback, ISBN 2702101682, 272 pp., in French as Un personnage en qute de corps
- 1979: Needle in a Timestack [2nd Version], Sphere Mass market paperback, 149 pp.
- 1980: Trips, J'ai lu Mass market paperback, ISBN 2-277-21068-4, in French as Un personnage en qute de corps
- 1985: Needle in a Timestack [2nd Version], Ace Mass market paperback, ISBN 0-441-56872-6, 180 pp.
- 1989: Trips, Pocket Mass market paperback, ISBN 2-266-03180-5, in French as Un personnage en qute de corps
- 1995: Trips, J'ai lu Mass market paperback, ISBN 2277210684, 309 pp., in French as Un personnage en qute de corps
- 1996: Chute dans le réel, Omnibus Hard cover book, ISBN 2258040590, 1070 pp., in French as Un personnage en qute de corps
- 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 Un personnage en qute de corps
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
There's a new leisure activity for wealthy thrill-seekers. It's called shunting. A group of people get together in a hospital and swap consciousness for a while, see the world through one of the other shunters' eyes. Then there's an equipment malfunction, and nobody knows which body goes with which consciousness. The technicians repeatedly shunt the minds until the body signals it's a match. But what if the body lies?
Note that shunting also figures in Tower of Glass.