Science fiction writers have suggested a variety
of unusual ways to deal with criminals. George
ZEBROWSKI exiled them into outer space in Brute
Orbits (1998), Robert A. HEINLEIN sequestered
them in an isolated part of Earth in “Coventry”
(1940), and Robert SILVERBERG himself resorted to
dispatching them into prehistory in Hawksbill Station (1968). In this short story, he creates another
form of exile—one much closer to home.
The unnamed narrator has been convicted of
coldness, of not sharing his emotions with other
people, thereby branding himself as antisocial. The
reader is supposed to have mixed feelings about
this, because, on the one hand, the character has
apparently purposefully cut himself off from others.
On the other hand, the state that considers such
behavior a crime is itself paternalistic and restrictive. The punishment seems at first to be an enlightened one, and ironic to boot. Since he cares
little for his fellow human beings, the narrator is
sentenced to legal invisibility for one year—though
not a literal invisibility. Rather, his forehead is
marked with a device that announces his punishment, and all other human beings, even other invisibles, are proscribed from talking to him, helping
him, or even hindering him, although there are
some clever ways of getting around the rule to prevent him from inflicting harm on others.
At first he has a feeling of power. No one
charges him admission to events, and no one
prevents him from stealing what he wants or needs
to survive. He no longer has a job, of course, and
his time is his own. But as the days pass, his longing
for human companionship grows increasingly powerful, and before his one-year sentence expires he is
stressed to the point of insanity. Although he is relieved when life returns to normal, he subsequently
acknowledges another invisible person and is rearrested, presumably to be sentenced to another period of ostracism. He now feels he will carry this
sentence as a badge of honor, having recognized
that the state’s punishment for his supposed lack
of human feelings is an even greater inhumanity.
Silverberg’s indictment of a society that seeks
to impose morality is an effective cautionary tale
in the tradition of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949)
by George Orwell. It is also an interesting contrast
to “The VISIBLE MAN” (1975) by Gardner DOZOIS,
in which criminals are hypnotically conditioned so
that they are unable to see anyone else.