Robert Silverberg

Infobox Writer
name = Robert Silverberg


imagesize = 200px
caption = Robert Silverberg at the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention
pseudonym =
birthdate = birth date and age|1935|1|15
birthplace = Brooklyn, New York City
deathdate =
deathplace =
occupation = Novelist, short story writer
nationality = American
period = 1955—Present
genre = Science Fiction, Fantasy
subject =
movement =
influences =
influenced =


website =

Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is a prolific American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Life and work

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 an A.B. in English Literature in 1956. His first published novel, a children's book called "Revolt on Alpha C", appeared in 1955, and he won his first Hugo the following year for "best new writer". For the next four years, by his own count, he wrote a million words a year, mostly for magazines and Ace Doubles. 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.

In the mid-1960s, science fiction writers were starting to become 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 books Silverberg wrote during this time were widely considered to be a quantum leap forward from his earlier work. 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".

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 planet much larger than Earth and inhabited by no less than six different species of planetary settlers.

Silverberg received a Nebula award in 1986 for his novella "Sailing to Byzantium", which takes its name from Yeats' poem; a Hugo in 1990 for ""; and in 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Silverberg has been married twice. He married his first wife, Barbara Brown, in 1956. The couple separated in 1976 and divorced a decade later. Silverberg married science fiction author Karen Haber in 1987. The couple resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2007, Silverberg was elected president of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association.

elected bibliography

Novels

*"Revolt on Alpha C" (1955)
*"The Thirteenth Immortal" (1956)
*"Master of Life and Death" (1957)
*"The Shrouded Planet" (1957) (with Randall Garrett, as Robert Randall)
*"Collision Course" (1958)
*"Invaders from Earth" (1958)
*"Aliens from Space" (1958) (as David Osborne)
*"Invisible Barriers" (1958) (as David Osborne)
*"Starman's Quest" (1958)
*"The Dawning Light" (1959) (with Randall Garrett, as Robert Randall)
*"Lost Race of Mars" (1960)
*"The Seed of Earth" (1962)
*"Recalled To Life" (1962)
*"The Silent Invaders" (1963)
*"Regan's Planet" (1964)
*"Conquerors from the Darkness" (1965)
*"The Gate of Worlds" (1967)
*"Planet of Death" (1967)
*"Thorns" (1967)
*"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)
*"Downward to the Earth" (1969)
*"Across a Billion Years" (1969)
*"Nightwings" (1969)
*"Three Survived" (1969)
*"To Live Again" (1969)
*"Up the Line" (1969)
*"Tower of Glass" (1970)
*"Son of Man" (1971)
*"The Second Trip" (1971)
*"The World Inside" (1971)
*"A Time of Changes" (1971)
*"The Book of Skulls" (1972)
*"Dying Inside" (1972)
*"The Stochastic Man" (1975)
*"Shadrach in the Furnace" (1976)
*"Homefaring" (1982) (novella)
*"Lord of Darkness" (1983)
*"Gilgamesh the King" (1984)
*"Sailing to Byzantium" (1984) (novella)
*"Tom O'Bedlam" (1985)
*"Star of Gypsies" (1986)
*"At Winter's End" (1988)
*"The New Springtime" (1990) (aka "The Queen of Springtime")
*"To the Land of the Living" (1990)
*"Nightfall" (1990) (with Isaac Asimov)
*"Thebes of the Hundred Gates" (1991)
*"The Face of the Waters" (1991)
*"The Ugly Little Boy" (1992) (with Isaac Asimov)
*"Kingdoms of the Wall" (1992)
*"The Positronic Man" (1992) (with Isaac Asimov)
*"Hot Sky at Midnight" (1994)
*"Starborne" (1996)
*"The Alien Years" (1997)
*"The Longest Way Home" (2002)
*"Roma Eterna" (2003)

Majipoor series

*"Lord Valentine's Castle" (1980)
*"Majipoor Chronicles" (1982)
*"Valentine Pontifex" (1983)
*"The Mountains of Majipoor" (1995)
*"Sorcerers of Majipoor" (1997)
*"The Seventh Shrine" (novella, 1998)
*"Lord Prestimion" (1999)
*"The King of Dreams" (2001)
*"The Book of Changes" (novelette, 2003)
*"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (novelette, 2004)

hort story collections

*"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 Best of Robert Silverberg" (1976)
*"The Shores of Tomorrow" (1976)
*"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)
*"Something Wild is Loose: The Collected Stories Volume 3" (2008)
*"Trips: The Collected Stories Volume 4" (2009)

Anthologies edited by Robert Silverberg

*"Voyagers in Time" (1967)
*The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964 (1970)
*"Alpha 1" (1970)
*"Alpha 2" (1971)
*"Alpha 3" (1972)
*"Alpha 4" (1973)
*The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973)
*"Alpha 5" (1974)
*"Alpha 6" (1975)
*"Epoch" (with Roger Elwood) (1975)
*"Strange Gifts" (1975)
*"Alpha 8" (1976)
*"Alpha 9" (1978)
*"Dawn of Time" (with Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph Olander) (1979)
*"Legends" (1998)
*"Legends II" (1999)

Non-fiction

*"Treasures Beneath The Sea" (1960)
*"First American Into Space" (1961)
*"Sir Winston Churchill"(1961, as Edgar Black)
*"Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations" (1962)
*"Empires In The Dust: Ancient Civilazations Brought To Light" (1963)
*"The Fabulous Rockefellers" (1963)
*"Fifteen Battles That Changed The World" (1963)
*"The History Of Surgery" (1963)
*"Home Of The Red Man: Indian North America Before Columbus" (1963)
*"Sunken History: The Story Of Underwater Archaeology" (1963)
*"1066" (1964, as Franklin Hamilton)
*"Akhnaten: The Rebel Pharaoh" (1964)
*"Great Adventures In Archaeology" (1964)
*"The Great Doctors" (1964)
*"The Lonliest Continent: The Story Of Antarctic Discovery" (1964, as Walker Chapman)
*"Man Before Adam: The Story Of Man In Search Of His Origins" (1964)
*"The Man Who Found Nineveh" (1964)
*"Antarctic Conquest: The Great Explorers In Their Own Words" (1965, as Walker Chapman)
*"The Crusades" (1965, as Franklin Hamilton)
*"The Golden Dream: Seekers Of El Dorado" (1965)
*"The Great Wall of China" (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)
*"Scientists And Scoundrels: A Book Of Hoaxes" (1965)
*"Socrates" (1965)
*"The World Of Coral" (1965)
*"Men Against Time: Salvage Archaeology in the United States" (1967)
*"Challenge For A Throne: The Wars Of The Roses" (1967, as Franklin Hamilton)
*"Light for the World: Edison and the Power of Electricity" (1967)
*"The Morning of Mankind: Prehistoric Man in Europe" (1967)
*"The Search for Eldorado" (1967, as Walker Chapman)
*"Sophisticated Sex Techniques in Marriage" (1967, as L.T. Woodward)
*"The World of the Rain Forests" (1967)
*"Four Men Who Changed the Universe" (1968)
*"Ghost Towns of the American West" (1968)
*"Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth" (1968)
*"Sam Houston" (1968, as Paul Hollander)
*"The South Pole: A Book to Begin On (1968, as Lee Sebastian)
*"The Stolen Election: Hayes vs. Tilden, 1876" (1968, as Lloyd Robinson)
*"Stormy Voyager" (1968)
*"Mound-Builders of Ancient America" (1968)
*"The Challenge of Climate: Man and His Environment" (1969)
*"Clocks for the Ages: How Scientists Date the Past" (1971)
*"Into Space: A Young Person's Guide to Space" (1971, with Arthur C. Clarke)
*"To the Western Shore: Growth of the United States 1776-1853" (1971)
*"John Muir, Prophet Among the Glaciers" (1972)
*"The Realm of Prester John" (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)

External links

* [http://www.majipoor.com/ The Quasi-Official website]
*
* [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theworldsofrobertsilverberg/ The Worlds of Robert Silverberg] A Yahoo discussion forum frequented by Silverberg