The Secret Sharer
by Robert Silverberg
In The Secret Sharer, Captain Adam of the Sword of Orion, a ten-kilometer-long Megaspore ship needling through spacetime, opens his chronicle as “no one at all,” but will end his tale transformed by his passage through the heavens.
On the fourth virtual day of the young commander’s first mission he discovers that one of the ship’s disembodied passengers, a “matrix,” has broken free from her storage circuit and killed one of the Orion’s cryo-sleepers. With a ship-wide hunt for the fugitive matrix underway, the Captain makes a decision that will not only endanger his life in the Service, but irrevocably change his perceptions of the universe itself.
Against an imagined backdrop of technology so advanced that it courts the theological, Robert Silverberg transmutes Joseph Conrad’s story of the same name into a science fictional foray into the heart of cosmic darkness. This edition includes:
- A frontispiece paying tribute to the story's literary predecessor
- Illustrations by Tom Canty
- The novella’s starwalk sequence
The story portrays two souls whose chosen pathways of escape from loneliness result in a collision—and communion—of spirits.
1 edition available
Editions
In The Secret Sharer, Captain Adam of the Sword of Orion, a ten-kilometer-long Megaspore ship needling through spacetime, opens his chronicle as “no one at all,” but will end his tale transformed by his passage through the heavens. On the fourth virtual day of the young commander’s first mission he discovers that one of the ship’s disembodied passengers, a “matrix,” has broken free from her storage circuit and killed one of the Orion’s cryo-sleepers. With a ship-wide hunt for the fugitive matrix underway, the Captain makes a decision that will not only endanger his life in the Service, but irrevocably change his perceptions of the universe itself. Against an imagined backdrop of technology so advanced that it courts the theological, Robert Silverberg transmutes Joseph Conrad’s story of the same name into a science fictional foray into the heart of cosmic darkness. This edition includes: * A frontispiece paying tribute to the story's literary predecessor * Illustrations by Tom Canty * The novella’s starwalk sequence The story portrays two souls whose chosen pathways of escape from loneliness result in a collision—and communion—of spirits.