"A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple"
by Robert Silverberg
Form: Novelette
Year: 1992
ID: 664
Publication history:
- 1991: After the King, Hard cover book
- 1993: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Tenth Annual Collection, St Martins Trade paperback
- 1993: Best New Science Fiction 7, Robinson Trade paperback
- 1996: Les Eléphants d'Hannibal, Denol Mass market paperback, ISBN 2-207-30579-1, in French as Longue nuit de veille au temple
- 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.
- 2001: Les Elphants d'Hannibal, Gallimard Mass market paperback, ISBN 2070417298, 365 pp., in French as Longues nuit de veille au tepmle
Other resources:
[None on record]
Comments:
Written at Martin Greenberg's request for After the King, a tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien. Two interesting things about this story: Silverberg has never actually read The Lord of the Rings, only The Hobbit, and it is in fact a science fiction story, not fantasy.
Thousands of years in the future, the earth worships the memory of three alien beings who visited during times of great trouble fifteen hundred years in the past. The high priest of the religion is Diriente, Warder of the great temple devoted to the aliens. One evening the groundskeeper comes to him with news of a great discovery beneath the lowest levels of the building, a discovery which will call into question everything that is believed about the saviors of the human race.