With this volume, the Tor Double series began an experiment and also a format change. Beginning with C.L. Moore’s 1946 story Vintage Season, Tor had Robert Silverberg write a sequel, In Another Country. Depiste the book cover proclaiming it “New!,” the Silverberg piece appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine eleven month prior to its publication in the Tor Double series.  In addition, this volume was published in the standard anthology format rather than tête-bêche, perhaps reflecting the two stories’ relationship to each other as original and sequel.

Vintage Season was originally published in Astounding in the September and October 1946 issues and credited to Lawrence O’Donnell. At various times, this story has been credited to C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Lawrence O’Donnell, or to just C.L. Moore. Tor credits Moore alone for the story.

At its heart, Vintage Season is a mystery story, but not the sort of mystery story written by Agatha Christie or Sue Grafton. It is the sort of mystery story that could only be written as a science fiction novel. Moore introduces Oliver Wilson, who owns a house in an unnamed city. Wilson has been offered good money by three people, Omerie, Kleph, and Klia Sancisco, to rent the house for the month of May. Although they are a little odd, there is no reason he shouldn’t rent the house to them, especially since they agreed to a reasonable rate.

Oliver’s fiancée, Sue, however, wants Oliver to break his contract with the Sanciscos. She has found a couple of buyers, Hallia and Hara, who are willing to purchase the house outright for much more than it is worth, enough money to set the two up very nicely. The one stipulation is that they be allowed to purchase the house immediately, causing Oliver to have to evict his tenants, an action he is unwilling to do.

They mystery, for both Oliver and the reader, is why he suddenly finds himself with renters and potential buyers who are so enthusiastic for the same property and both of whom want to live in the house before the end of the month. Oliver’s task in unraveling the mystery is made easier due to his decision to remain in the house the is renting out to them. This allows him to build a relationship with one of the women, Kleph.

First attracted to Kleph by her beauty, odd dress, and strange mannerisms, Oliver slowly learns a little bit about the Sanciscos, for, although Kleph attempts to avoid giving away any secrets, she fails and provides Oliver with enough information to allow him to form a theory about their origins. One of the interesting aspects of their relationship is that is seems like it has more reason to exist than Oliver’s relationship with Sue. There is a spark between Oliver and Kleph that is missing with Sue.

Through what hints Kleph drops, Oliver is able to reach the conclusion that the Sanciscos, Hallia, and Hara are travelers from the distant future, although she won’t tell him why they are visiting, beyond the fact that they have come to live in the most perfect May that ever existed, which hardly seems to be a reason to visit a specific time, nor does it explain why Hallia and Hara are so insistent on buying the house for a May 31 occupancy nor why the Sanciscos also want to remain to that date.

Moore drops a few hints about the culture of the time travelers, but most are little more than hints. Their world is not important. Instead, the import comes from their reactions to what they see in the time they are visiting. Although they allude to visits to Imperial Rome, the coronation of Charlemagne, and Chaucer’s Canterbury, they don’t share details beyond the fact of those visits, undertaken or planned. They focus on the here and now. At the end of the story, even as the reader understands their purpose in visiting, knows little more of their culture than Oliver and Sue.

Moore carefully builds the story, dropping clues that will allow Oliver to figure out part of what is happening and the reader to fill in additional blanks. Tension comes from Kleph breaking the rules that govern time travel as well as Sue wanting Oliver to go back on his word and take the offer from Hollia and Hara. Everything builds toward the established deadline of May 31. Despite the constant references to that May being the most perfect ever, there is also the sense that something horrific will occur on May 31 that the tourists came to see, but which must be kept from Oliver.

The idea of Chronotourism is rife throughout science fiction, although usually it is told from the point of view of the time traveler rather than an indigenous spectator. Perhaps the most famous version of the story is Michael Moorcock’s 1966 Nebula Award winning novel Behold the Man, in which the destination is the crucifixion.

In Another Country was an original story for the Tor Double line. It is also the fourth of five Silverberg stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series. Silverberg has elected to retell the macro events of Vintage Season from the point of the chronotourists.  Rather than focus on the Sanciscos, Oliver and Sue, or Hollia and Hara, he introduces her own tourists, specifically Thimiroi.

Silverberg’s purpose in writing In Another Country is quite different than Moore’s purpose in writing Vintage Season. Moore provided the mystery and an answer.  Silverberg is looking for a different answer. He wants to learn more about the civilization from which the Sanciscos, Hollia, and Hara come from.

The world Silverberg depicts is much more rife with time travelers than Moore’s world. Moore refers to the five main travelers of her story and indicates there are a few others, mostly not named. Silverberg mentions the travelers Moore discusses, but focuses on other travelers, and makes it very clear they are just a small number of the travelers who have converged on this particular May, coming from a variety of points in time, not just Chaucer’s Canterbury.

Thimiroi appears to be an outlier among the time travelers. While he arrives on a tour, most of the travelers arrive with partners or family members and he tends to be standoffish. While the tour goes to visit a nearby site at which an historically significant figure would be born in the following decades, he decides to just walk around town and take in the atmosphere.

On one of these walks he hears music coming from a house as a woman is playing Debussy on the piano. He applauds her from the street, embarrassing her into stopping, but when he sees her walking down the street a few days later, he strikes up a conversation with her, learning her name is Christine Rawlins. Thimiroi begins to build a relationship with Christine, learning about the modern culture from her, as well as her own aspirations and life. At first careful not to reveal anything more about himself than that he is from another country, he eventually begins to offer her hints of what is to come. His relationship with Christine mirror’s Kleph’s relationship with Oliver in Moore’s story, although there are differences.

While much of what the reader comes to learn of the time travelers’ society comes from Thimiroi’s revelations to Christine, Silverberg also provides information from Laliene, another time traveler with whom Thimiroi may once have been romantically involved. Laliene seems to understand that something is wrong with the way Thimiroi is behaving, and may even have guessed at the cause, and tries to warn him of the consequences of his actions. She provides some of the conflict in the story, although Silverberg is writing more of a travelogue than a conflict-driven story. Eventually, however, the minor differences between Kleph’s behavior and Thimiroi’s becomes important to the denouement of the story.

Although In Another Country stands well on its own, it really works best as a companion piece to Moore’s original story. Silverberg’s references to Kleph and Oliver only hint at the story Moore told and that story needs to be read to most fully appreciate what is happening in the world that Thimiroi is experiencing.

There are some similarities between In Another Country and Silverberg’s Sailing to Byzantium, which was featured in Tor Double #10. Both stories include travelers from the distant future touring places around the world. The travelers in Sailing to Byzantium, which was published five years earlier, visits recreations of historical cities in their own end times and the places are destroyed after a short period. The travelers In Another Country actually travel through time to visit historical events. The travelers in both cases, however, have a jaded reaction to what they are seeing. They may wonder at the beauty of what they are seeing, but there is a sense for all the travelers that what they are experiencing isn’t quite real.

Wayne Barlowe provided the cover.

In addition to the stories, Robert Silverberg also provided an introduction original to this volume.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.