"Crossing into the Empire"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Short story
Year: 1995
ID: 196
Publication history:
- 1996: David Copperfield's Beyond Imagination, Harper & Row Hard cover book
- 2000: Lion Time in Timbuctoo (The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 6), Harper & Row Trade paperback, ISBN 0006512208, 390 pp.
- 2000: Lion Time in Timbuctoo (The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 6), Voyager Trade paperback, ISBN 0006512208, 400 pp.
- 2003: Realms of Fantasy June 2003, Magazine, 82 pp.
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
This is a very strange story, hard to explain. In Chicago, from time to time, in an almost predictable pattern, the ancient city of Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul appears. Hard to explain, but it sort of makes sense in the story. Certain people are licensed to cross over into the past, including the entrepreneur Mulreany, who trade modern trinkets for ancient baubles that he can sell on the artifact circuit. But competition is stiff between the traders, and many of the people of the old city are suspicious of visitors.