Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg
Born	(1935-01-15) January 15, 1935 Brooklyn, New York City, USA
Pen name	dozens[1]
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, editor
Nationality	American
Period	1955–present
Genres	Science fiction, fantasy, anthologies (as editor)
Subjects	Geography, history, nature
Signature
www.robert-silverberg.com

Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is a prolific American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, a Grand Master of SF.^[2][3][4]

Biography

Early years

Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York. A voracious reader since childhood, he began submitting stories to science fiction magazines during his early teenage years. He attended Columbia University, receiving a B.A. in English Literature in 1956. During that time he wrote the juvenile novel Revolt on Alpha C, published by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1955 with the cover notice "A gripping story of outer space".^[1] and he won his first Hugo in 1956 as the "best new writer".^[2] For the next four years, by his own count, he wrote a million words a year, mostly for magazines and Ace Doubles. He used his own name as well as a range of pseudonyms during this era, and often worked in collaboration with Randall Garrett. (The Silverberg/Garrett collaborations also used a variety of pseudonyms, the best-known being Robert Randall.) From 1956 to 1959, Silverberg routinely averaged 5 published stories a month, and had over 80 stories published in 1958 alone. In 1959 the market for science fiction collapsed, and Silverberg turned his ability to write copiously to other fields, from carefully researched historical nonfiction to softcore pornography.

Literary growth

In the mid-1960s, science fiction writers were becoming more literarily ambitious. Frederik Pohl, then editing three science fiction magazines, offered Silverberg carte blanche in writing for them. Thus inspired, Silverberg returned to the field that gave him his start, paying far more attention to depth of character development and social background than he had in the past and mixing in elements of the modernist literature he had studied at Columbia.

The novels he wrote in this period are considered far superior to his earlier work.^{[citation needed]} Perhaps the first book to indicate the new Silverberg was To Open the Sky, a fixup of stories published by Pohl in Galaxy Magazine, in which a new religion helps people reach the stars. That was followed by Downward to the Earth, a story containing echoes of material from Joseph Conrad's work, in which the human former administrator of an alien world returns after the planet's inhabitants have been set free. Other acclaimed works of that time include To Live Again, in which the memories and personalities of the deceased can be transferred to other people; The World Inside, a look at an overpopulated future; and Dying Inside, a tale of a telepath losing his powers.

In 1969 Nightwings was awarded the Hugo for best novella. Silverberg won a Nebula award in 1970 for the short story Passengers, two the following year for his novel A Time of Changes and the short story "Good News from the Vatican", and yet another in 1975 for his novella "Born with the Dead".

Later developments

After suffering through the stresses of a thyroid malfunction and a major house fire, Silverberg moved from his native New York to the West Coast in 1972, and announced his retirement from writing in 1975. In 1980 he returned, however, with Lord Valentine's Castle, a panoramic adventure set on an alien planet, which has become the basis of the Majipoor series—a cycle of stories and novels set on the vast planet Majipoor, a world much larger than Earth and inhabited by no fewer than seven different species of settlers.

Silverberg received a Nebula award in 1986 for the novella Sailing to Byzantium, which takes its name from the poem by William Butler Yeats; a Hugo in 1987 for the novella Gilgamesh in the Outback, set in the Heroes in Hell universe of Bangsian Fantasy; a Hugo in 1990 for Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another.^[2] The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Silverberg in 1999, its fourth class of two deceased and two living writers,^[3] and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him its 21st SFWA Grand Master in 2005.^[4]

Silverberg has been married twice. He and Barbara Brown married in 1956, separated in 1976, and divorced a decade later. Silverberg and science fiction writer Karen Haber married in 1987. They live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Selected works

Novels

By publication date except Majipoor (1980 to present)

Invaders from Earth (1958).

• Revolt on Alpha C (1955)
• The 13th Immortal (1956)
• Master of Life and Death (1957)
• The Shrouded Planet (1957) (with Randall Garrett, as Robert Randall)
• Invaders from Earth (1958)
• Stepsons of Terra (1958)
• Aliens from Space (1958) (as David Osborne)
• Invisible Barriers (1958) (as David Osborne)
• Starhaven (1958) (as Ivar Jorgenson)
• Starman's Quest (1958)
• The Plot Against Earth (1959) (as Calvin M. Knox)
• The Dawning Light (1959) (with Randall Garrett, as Robert Randall)
• The Planet Killers (1959)
• Lost Race of Mars (1960)
• Collision Course (1961)
• The Seed of Earth (1962)
• Recalled to Life (1962)
• The Silent Invaders (1963)
• Time of the Great Freeze (1964)
• Regan's Planet (1964)
• One of Our Asteroids is Missing (1964, as Calvin M. Knox)
• Conquerors from the Darkness (1965)
• The Gate of Worlds (1967)
• Planet of Death (1967)
• Thorns (1967) Nebula Award nominee, 1967;^[5] Hugo Award nominee, 1968^[6]
• Those Who Watch (1967)
• The Time Hoppers (1967)
• To Open the Sky (1967)
• World's Fair 1992 (1968)
• The Man in the Maze (1968)
• Hawksbill Station (1968)
• The Masks of Time (1968) Nebula nominee, 1968^[6]
• Downward to the Earth (1970) Locus SF nominated, 1971^[7]
• Across a Billion Years (1969)
• Nightwings (1969) Hugo Award winner 1969
• Three Survived (1969)
• To Live Again (1969)
• Up the Line (1969) Nebula Award nominee, 1969;^[8] Hugo Award nominee, 1970^[9]
• Tower of Glass (1970) Nebula Award nominee, 1970;^[9] Hugo and Locus SF nominee, 1971^[7]
• Son of Man (1971)
• The Second Trip (1971)
• The World Inside (1971) Hugo nominated, 1972^[10]
• A Time of Changes (1971) Silverberg's first Nebula winner, 1972; Hugo and Locus SF nominee, 1972^[10]
• The Book of Skulls (1972) Nebula Award nominee, 1972;^[10] Hugo and Locus SF Award nominee, 1973 ^[11]
• Dying Inside (1972) Nebula Award nominee, 1972;^[10] Hugo and Locus SF Awards nominee, 1973^[11]
• The Stochastic Man (1975) Nebula Award nominee, 1975;^[12] Hugo, Locus SF, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards nominee, 1976^[13]
• Shadrach in the Furnace (1976) Nebula nominee, 1976^[13] Hugo nominee, 1977 ^[14]
• Homefaring (1982) (novella), Hugo and Nebula nominee, 1983
• Lord of Darkness (book) (1983)
• Gilgamesh the King (1984)
• Sailing to Byzantium (1984) (novella), Nebula winner 1985
• Tom O'Bedlam (book) (1985)
• Star of Gypsies (1986)
• At Winter's End (1988)
• Project Pendulum (1989)
• Letters From Atlantis (1990)
• The New Springtime (1990) (aka The Queen of Springtime)
• To the Land of the Living (1990)
• Nightfall (1990), Silverberg and Isaac Asimov – expansion of the 1941 novelette "Nightfall" by Asimov
• Thebes of the Hundred Gates (1991)
• The Face of the Waters (1991)
• Child of Time (Gollancz, 1991); US edition, The Ugly Little Boy (Doubleday, 1992), Silverberg with Asimov – expansion and revision of the 1958 novelette "Lastborn" by Asimov^[1]
• Kingdoms of the Wall (1992)
• The Positronic Man (1992), Silverberg with Asimov – based on the 1976 novelette The Bicentennial Man by Asimov
• Hot Sky at Midnight (1994)
• Starborne (1996)
• The Alien Years (1997) Locus SF nominee, 1999^[15]
• The Longest Way Home (2002)
• Roma Eterna (2003)
• The Last Song of Orpheus (2010) (novella)

Majipoor

• Lord Valentine's Castle (1980) Locus winner and Hugo nominee, 1981^[16]
• Majipoor Chronicles (1982)
• Valentine Pontifex (1983)
• The Mountains of Majipoor (1995)
• Sorcerers of Majipoor (1997)
• Lord Prestimion (1999)
• The King of Dreams (2001)
• Tales of Majipoor (2013)

Short story collections

• Lest We Forget Thee Earth (1958) written under the pen-name Calvin M. Knox
• Needle in a Timestack (1966)
• The Calibrated Alligator (1969)
• Dimension Thirteen (1969)
• The Cube Root of Uncertainty (1970)
• Moonferns & Starsongs (1971)
• Valley Beyond Time (1972)
• The Reality Trip and Other Implausibilities (1972)
• Unfamiliar Territory (1973)
• Sunrise On Mercury (1975)
• The Feast of St. Dionysus: Five Science Fiction Stories (1975), Scribners
• The Best of Robert Silverberg (1976)
• The Shores of Tomorrow (1976)
• Next Stop The Stars (1977)
• Capricorn Games (1979)
• World of a Thousand Colors (1982)
• The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1984)
• Beyond the Safe Zone (1986)
• The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: Secret Sharers (1992)
• Phases of the Moon (2004)
• In the Beginning (2006)
• To Be Continued: The Collected Stories Volume 1 (2006)
• To the Dark Star: The Collected Stories Volume 2 (2007)
• A Little Intelligence (with Randall Garrett) (2009)
• Something Wild Is Loose: The Collected Stories Volume 3 (2008)
• Trips: The Collected Stories Volume 4 (2009)
• The Palace at Midnight: The Collected Stories Volume 5 (2010)
• Multiples: The Collected Stories Volume 6 (2011)
• We Are for the Dark: The Collected Stories Volume 7 (2012)
• Hot Times in Magma City: The Collected Stories Volume 8 (2013)

Forthcoming:

• The Millennium Express: The Collected Stories Volume 9 (2014)

Anthologies edited

• Voyagers in Time (1967)
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964 (1970)
• Alpha 1 (1970)
• Alpha 2 (1971)
• New Dimensions 1 (1971)
• Alpha 3 (1972)
• New Dimensions 2 (1972)
• Alpha 4 (1973)
• New Dimensions 3 (1973)
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973)
• Alpha 5 (1974)
• Mutants (1974)
• New Dimensions 4 (1974)
• Epoch (with Roger Elwood) (1975)
• New Dimensions 5 (1975)
• Strange Gifts (1975)
• New Dimensions 6 (1976)
• Alpha 6 (1976)
• Alpha 7 (1977)
• Alpha 8 (1977)
• New Dimensions 7 (1977)
• Alpha 9 (1978)
• Dawn of Time (with Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph Olander) (1979)
• New Dimensions 11 (1980)
• New Dimensions 12 (1981)
• The Best of Randall Garrett (1982)
• Legends (1998)
• Universe 1 (1990)
• Legends II (1999)
• Far Horizons (1999)
• Tales from Super-Science Fiction (2011)
• Times Three ISBN 978-1-59606-319-8 (2011)

Non-fiction

• Treasures Beneath the Sea (1960)
• Sir Winston Churchill (1961, as Edgar Black)
• First American into Space (1961)
• Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations (1962)
• Philosopher of Evil (1962, as Walter Drummond)
• The Fabulous Rockefellers (1963)
• Sunken History: The Story of Underwater Archaeology (1963)
• How to Spend Money (1963, as Walter Drummond)
• Fifteen Battles That Changed the World (1963)
• Empires in the Dust: Ancient Civilizations Brought to Light (1963)
• Home of the Red Man: Indian North America Before Columbus (1963)
• The History of Surgery (1963, as L. T. Woodward)
• The Great Doctors (1964)
• Man Before Adam: The Story of Man in Search of His Origins (1964)
• Akhnaten: The Rebel Pharaoh (1964)
• 1066 (1964, as Franklin Hamilton)
• The Loneliest Continent: The Story of Antarctic Discovery (1964, as Walker Chapman)
• The Man Who Found Nineveh: The Story of Austen Henry Layard (1964)
• Great Adventures in Archaeology (1964)
• Socrates (1965)
• Scientists And Scoundrels: A Book of Hoaxes (1965)
• Men Who Mastered the Atom (1965)
• Niels Bohr: The Man Who Mapped the Atom (1965)
• The Old Ones: Indians of the American Southwest (1965)
• The Great Wall of China (1965)
• The World of Coral (1965)
• The Crusades (1965, as Franklin Hamilton)
• Antarctic Conquest: The Great Explorers in Their Own Words (1966, as Walker Chapman)
• The Long Rampart: The Story of the Great Wall of China (1966)
• Rivers: A Book to Begin On (1966, as Lee Sebastian)
• Forgotten by Time: A Book of Living Fossils (1966)
• Frontiers in Archeology (1966)
• Kublai Khan: Lord of Xanadu (1966, as Walker Chapman)
• Leaders Of Labor (1966, as Roy Cook)
• Bridges (1966)
• To the Rock of Darius: The Story of Henry Rawlinson (1966)
• The Hopefuls: Ten Presidential Campaigns (1966, as Lloyd Robinson)
• The Morning of Mankind: Prehistoric Man in Europe (1967)
• The Golden Dream: Seekers of El Dorado (1967, as Walker Chapman)
• The Auk, the Dodo and the Oryx (1967)
• The World of the Rain Forests (1967)
• The Dawn of Medicine (1967)
• The Adventures of Nat Palmer (1967)
• Challenge for a Throne: The Wars of the Roses (1967, as Franklin Hamilton)
• Men Against Time: Salvage Archeology in the United States (1967)
• Light for the World: Edison and the Power Industry (1967)
• The Search for Eldorado (1967, as Walker Chapman)
• Sophisticated Sex Techniques in Marriage (1967, as L. T. Woodward)
• Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archeology of a Myth (New York Graphic Society, 1968); reprint (Ohio University Press, 1986) – Silverberg's fourth-most widely held work in WorldCat libraries
• The World of the Ocean Depths (1968)
• The Stolen Election: Hayes vs. Tilden, 1876 (1968, as Lloyd Robinson)
• Four Men Who Changed the Universe (1968)
• Sam Houston (1968, as Paul Hollander)
• The South Pole: A Book to Begin On (1968, as Lee Sebastian)
• Stormy Voyager (1968)
• Ghost Towns of the American West (1968)
• Vanishing Giants: The Story of the Sequoias (1969)
• Wonders of Ancient Chinese Science (1969)
• The Challenge of Climate: Man and His Environment (1969)
• Bruce of the Blue Nile (1969)
• The World of Space (1969)
• If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem (1970)
• The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (1970)
• Mammoths, Mastodons and Man (1970)
• The Mound Builders (1970)
• The Pueblo Revolt (1970)
• Clocks for the Ages: How Scientists Date the Past (1971)
• To The Western Shore: Growth of the United States 1776–1853 (1971)
• Before The Sphinx: Early Egypt (1971)
• Into Space: A Young Person's Guide to Space (1971, with Arthur C. Clarke)
• The Realm of Prester John (1972)
• The Longest Voyage: Circumnavigation in the Age Of Discovery (1972)
• John Muir, Prophet Among the Glaciers (1972)
• The World Within the Ocean Wave (1972)
• The World Within the Tide Pool (1972)
• Drug Themes in Science Fiction (1974)
• Reflections and Refractions: Thoughts on Science Fiction, Science and Other Matters (1997)

Asimov's Science Fiction: Reflections

• "Big-Endians/Little-Endians". Asimov's Science Fiction 36 (8): 6–8. August 2012. Retrieved 2013-10-20.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)

See also

References

Further reading

Sandra Miesel, "Dreams Within Dreams" in Darrell Schweitzer (ed). Exploring fantasy Worlds: Essays on Fantastic literature San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, April 1985, pp. 35–42. (On the novel Son of Man).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert Silverberg.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Robert Silverberg

• Official website
• Robert Silverberg at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Robert Silverberg biography at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
• Complete list of sci-fi award wins and nominations by novelist