Ringing the Changes

Form: Short story

Year: 1970

Publication history:

• ???? : L’Homme Descend du Songe (pb) , Omnibus (France) (in French "Un personnage en quête de corps")
• 1970 : Alchemy and Academe (hc) , Doubleday
• 1972 : The Reality Trip and Other Implausibilities (pb) , Ballantine, 210 pp., ISBN 345-02548-2
• 1976 : Trips (pb) , Calmann-Levy (France), 272 pp., ISBN 2702101682, 23 (in French "Un personnage en quête de corps" tr. Jacques Chambon)
• 1979 : Needle in a Timestack [2nd Version] (pb) , Sphere, 149 pp., 7823-9
• 1980 : Trips (pb) , J'ai lu (France), ISBN 2-277-21068-4, 1068 (in French "Un personnage en quête de corps")
• 1985 : Needle in a Timestack [2nd Version] (pb) , Ace, 180 pp., ISBN 0-441-56872-6
• 1989 : Trips (pb) , Pocket, ISBN 2-266-03180-5, 5353 (in French "Un personnage en quête de corps" tr. Jacques Chambon)
• 1995 : Trips (pb) , J'ai lu (France), 309 pp., ISBN 2277210684, 1068 (in French "Un personnage en quête de corps" tr. Jacques Chambon)
• 1996 : Chute dans le Réel (hc) , Omnibus (France), 1070 pp., ISBN 2258040590 (in French "Un personnage en quête de corps")
• 1997 : Ringing the Changes (The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 5) (tpb) , HarperCollins UK (UK), 359 pp., ISBN 0-586-21373-2
• 2002 : Le Chemin de la nuit: Nouvelles au fil du temps, tome 1, 1953-1970 (tpb) , Flammarion (France), 727 pp., ISBN 2080682350, 32 (in French "Un personnage en quête de corps")

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.