Welcome to Majipoor

Blurb

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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.