First-Person Singularities: Stories

Robert Silverberg is not just a legend in science fiction circles, he is storytelling royalty at this point. He has been publishing sci-fi for over four decades. His name belongs in the upper echelons with Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, Tiptree, and others.

And in First-Person Singularities, he accepts the challenge of only using stories with first-person narrators. Thankfully, Silverberg is more than up to the task at hand, seizing the opportunity to put the reader in the shoes of all sorts of unexpected personas.

There’s the captain who allows an electronic spirit to share his body. The man whose body was hijacked by an alien presence and then returned to him. The ugly man in a genetically perfect society. The woman living among dinosaurs. The dolphin who falls in love with his researcher.

Yes, some of them are silly concepts, but many of them are wonderfully emotional journeys. “The Secret Sharer,” which closes out the collection, is particularly wonderful, an expansive and personal work about companionship, identity, loss, and risk. That story alone is worth the price of admission.