Letters from Atlantis

As usual, Silverberg does a fine job with the style of writing of this novella. Its literary device is a series of letters from Roy to his love, Laura. They are both time travelers from our future to the distant past.

Stephen Hawking famously said, "If time travel is possible, where are all the tourists from the future?" In Letters from Atlantis, the time travelers are disembodied entities, living hidden in the minds of people who lived twenty thousand years ago. Roy is embedded in the mind of a prince who senses his presence, and tries to exorcise him as a demon. Roy eventually reveals himself, explains who he is, and they become friends. Roy learns that the people of Atlantis are interstellar refugees from a world whose sun went nova. There really is not a story line per se.