Review: Passengers

Passengers by Robert Silverberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Imagine if there were aliens that could control at will the bodies and actions of unwilling humans... how would this affect society? How would this change our behaviours and interactions? How would your life plans change if you knew that you could be personally hijacked and manipulated at any time, without warning?

These are fairly interesting questions and it's probably a pretty good metaphor for something that went over my head. But instead this story is actually a bit of a love at first sight, or rather, it's a love-after-a-3-day-sex-binge narrative... which is generally not a gripping storyline anyway, but is decidedly a terrible focus for a short (short) story.

Well, the other main let down for me is that this doesn't need to be a scifi and given the extremely basic narrative it could as easily have been a fantasy story. Replace the alien passengers, with demonic possessions, or telepathic fairies.... you'd have the same story.

"Many die that way, but never their passengers." - paraphrased, but this quote suggested to me that while the passengers may cause the death of the body which they control, they are themselves not harmed in that event. An interesting concept to explore especially if the story had focused more on the aliens.

Also, I wonder... given how little the in-story narrator knew about the passengers... whether it is even possible to know if it is true that the passengers are not harmed or even killed when their host body dies.

In reference to the number of passengers present on Earth, the narrative mentions: "Millions maybe? Maybe five? Who can tell?" - paraphrased again, but this is also another missed storytelling opportunity in my opinion. There are experiments which could be devised to figure this out, and to figure out the difference between genuine possessions and people just acting out because it'll be mistaken for possession, and so on, and so forth.

It's an interesting initial idea but basically abandoned by this lazy storyline.

You can listen for free on the "escape pod" podcast, episode #369. That narrator is a bit bland, but easy enough to listen to.

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