Sci-fi Radio (ep11/12) Sundance by Robert Silverberg

Sundance is a 1969 short story by Science Fiction Grandmaster Robert Silverberg which, like a lot of Silverberg’s work, is about several topics at once.

Using a sometimes difficult to follow change of narrative tense and perspective, Silverberg introduces a story where the far future protagonist, Tom Two Ribbons, with an ancestry sensitive to racial and cultural discrimination, finds himself on an alien planet whose odd native indigenous species will be in the way of the soon to arrive human colonists.

Two Ribbons anxiety about this planet sized irony unfolds into a deep spiritual and personal struggle. Channeling the spirit of Piper’s 1962 Little Fuzzy, the question is asked, are the natives intelligent? And if so, is this genocide? Is humanity once again destroying a culture in the name of progress?

Silverberg also mentions a “mind editing” process, where therapy patients, like Two Ribbons, can start anew. This SF instrument has been seen in other Silverberg works and the author uses this in an innovative way as an off stage device.