Ever since I was in High School (too many years ago to be mentioned here), I've been a fan of Robert Silverberg's work. His Majipoor Series held me mesmerized as I turned the pages, as they did for so many millions of other readers, and Lord Valentine's story is one that I still remember fondly to this day. Of course, every author has their "hits" and "misses" with their readers. In my opinion, one of Silverberg's "misses" was his SON OF MAN, which I also remember quite vividly all these years later, but for all the wrong reasons.

However, as I was rummaging through the deep dark recesses of my As-Yet-Unread Bookshelves earlier this week, I managed to catch a glimpse of THE CONGLOMEROID COCKTAIL PARTY sitting there among so many other titles and I said to myself, "Well, why not a collection of short stories from the man who wrote the Majipoor Series?" So I pulled this book out of the stack, brushed off the dust and took a good long look at the very colorful and intriguing cover art of my particular paperback copy: a blue cat-like being with some sort of curved fan sticking out of her back, standing out sharply against an intriguing deep orange background and with a gathering of baby Triceratops sprouting from their eggs at her feet. Yes, I knew, this was the next book I would read.

So, I flipped through the title pages, read the Table Of Contents (16 tales in all), read the Introduction (written by Silverberg himself in July of 1983) and I learned something about Robert Silverberg that I didn't know - these sixteen short stories were a sort-of homecoming for him. He had written short stories in the past and had always found them draining, exhausting, detailed work, not worth the massive effort that it took to produce them. He had taken years off from writing short stories, concentrating instead on writing novels (which he found much easier to produce given their greater length) and, only after a good bit of prodding by some very famous editors (Ben Bova and Harlan Ellison, just to drop a few names), was he talked into giving short stories one more try.

Well, one more try turned into nearly twenty successful short stories, all written between the years of 1980 and 1982 in a frantic spurt of creativity, and thus he had himself enough to fill his own collection. Enter, THE CONGLOMEROID COCKTAIL PARTY, on to the science fiction scene in 1984 - a superb collection of fiction that ranges from near future tales to far future tales and just a bit of everything in between.

I started off fast and finished this book even faster - the stories were of a quality that kept me spellbound as I turned each page feverishly. Many of the tales told in this volume are of time travel and the pitfalls that can be found when attempting such a feat. One story in particular, "Jennifer's Lover," explains how it might take many attempts to foul up past history before getting the hoped-for result but that persistence might just pay off in the end. Another favorite of mine, "The Pope Of The Chimps," tells the tale of human research into simian interaction and how a quasi-religion develops very quickly and with quite dastardly results. "The Trouble With Sempoanga," seems almost an eerie precursor to the wide-spread AIDS epidemic, only told in the far future and on a different scale. Remember, back in the early 1980's, when this particular story was written, AIDS was still a mysterious and often misunderstood plague-like disease that had most of the world scared to death, and with good reason. "Waiting For The Earthquake," is a tale of a man on a quest to find his roots and re-live his past through a grand travel spree in an effort to recapture some of those happier times just before a great cataclysmic event is about to shatter the planet he calls home and everything that lives there. "The Changeling," is about a man on a trip to Mexico who stumbles upon a gateway to a parallel universe and suddenly finds himself with a new wife, a different job, and no way to get back to what he used to call home. "At The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party," is about a far future where people can shed their bodies at any time, seemingly on a whim, for some grand new shape or design and a party where many of these Conglomeroids have gathered to discuss what new shape an unborn child should be born in. "Gianni," tells of a new technology that allows us to go back in time and "scoop" out some of the more talented individuals at the brinks of their deaths, only to nurse them back to health in the future and release their magical talents for creating music, poetry, literature, etc., on to the masses...and what can go wrong once it's tried out for the very first time. "Not Our Brother," is a mystical trek to Mexico that gets one art collector enthralled in a religious celebration and brings him face to face with something that isn't altogether of this Earth, at least not the plane that we human beings currently inhabit.

There are several more wonderful stories in this Collection, and all of them were very enjoyable. If only I had known how much I would have enjoyed this book all those years ago when I first purchased it and stacked it within the deep dark recesses of my As-Yet-Unread bookshelves - it wouldn't have taken me this long to pull it down from there and enjoy the ride.

Pick this one up, whether you are a fan of science fiction, time-travel, religious mysticism or just good story telling. Robert Silverberg has proven himself a successful writer in this genre for more than just a few decades now. THE CONGLOMEROID COCKTAIL PARTY is a collection of his shorter work that only serves to strengthen that success.

Table of Contents
Introduction (1983)
The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve
The Pope of the Chimps
The Changeling
The Man Who Floated in Time
The Palace at Midnight
A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa
At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party
Our Lady of the Sauropods
Gianni
The Trouble with Sempoanga
How They Pass the Time in Pelpel
Waiting for the Earthquake
Not Our Brother
The Regulars
Jennifer's Lover
Needle in a Timestack