At first, I thought Passengers was one of those pulp magazine shorts that imagines our world with one change.  These can be funny or dark what-ifs, where one concept lasts through a short story, even if it might not make a whole novel.

In Robert Silverberg’s Passengers,  invisible, powerful alien consciousness can possess humans. They seem to do this for kicks, having their human hosts take dangerous or dramatic actions that no one would choose to do. The world goes on around this horror, with human drivers constantly on the alert for ridden drivers who want to race or crash, and no one speaks of the embarrassment of being ridden at work and doing unspeakable things in front of colleagues.

Our protagonist, Charles, awakens after being ridden and knows he’s been with a beautiful woman. This is a pretty great outcome, since when passengers ride humans, the humans can do any horrible thing imaginable. A steamy tryst with an attractive stranger is pretty much the best outcome one could hope for in this world.

This is where the worldbuilding works perfectly — sure, there are aliens possessing humans for nefarious, disturbing purposes, but people still have meetings and commutes and annoying bosses. Look, I would have loved this as a short story in a collection just for the new social etiquette around never mentioning the horrors. Anyway, having been possessed at work, while somewhat embarrassing, will give our protag an extra day to himself. Would I have accepted this so well, before we all worked through the pandemic? While war is declared via knockoff Twitter and I still have to go to work?

Hot Sky at Midnight interlude: After reading Passengers, I fell down a Robert Silverberg rabbithole and requested basically everything with his name from interlibrary loan. Hot Sky at Midnight is a fascinating retro  look at specfic about climate change, but it has, uh, some issues with women and women’s bodies that kept me from really enjoying it. Anyway, there’s a similar, deeply relatable vibe in Hot Sky at Midnight as characters on a failing and overheated planet still get up and go to work.

But back to Passengers. Walking around on his extra day off,  he sees and recognizes the woman from his steamy (possessed) weekend.  There’s a lot about freedom and whether our protagonist is really himself or just being allowed to think that by the invisible, omnipresent riders.  When he meets Helen, and gets to know her, he considers why he might be able to remember her. She has no memory of their time together, and is a little put off when he breaks social convention to talk about their time together, but still seems to feel some interest and connection to him.

Our protag wears her down, and is just about to go home with her — consensually, with her awake and interested in him — when he gets a passenger and pops into another storyline.

But this time, his passenger is starting a new romance with another man. It’s definitely the twist ending of a pulp magazine short. Readers of scifi and specfic can already see the signs and already know that he’ll be taken over before he can be with Helen. But there’s another layer

Certain men today pretend they don’t understand why a woman might not like something or why something might be different for women. (Why do you girls complain about catcalling? I would love if a woman shouted sexual compliments at me on the street! And you also hate it when your boyfriend doesn’t tell you you’re pretty? I guess women are just never happy!) Would Charles also recognize this man when he’s back to himself? What if the man recognizes and pursues him, just as he’s done to Helen? Will he understand then why she wanted to avoid him?

PS: I was delighted to find this vintage copy of Moonferns and Starsongs at a used-book shop, but you can get Robert Silverberg’s Passengers free on Kindle Unlimited and tell me what you think of it!