Search Results for: Robert Silverberg

A Fascinating, Ordinary 1950s SF Novel: Robert Silverberg’s Collision Course

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Collision Course by Robert Silverberg. First Edition: Avalon Books, 1961. Jacket design by Ed Emshwiller (click to enlarge) Collision Course by Robert Silverberg Avalon Books (224 pages, $2.95 in hardcover, 1961) Robert Silverberg needs no introduction to readers of Black Gate, I should think — author, over six or seven decades, of dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, editor of rows of reprint and original anthologies, winner of four Hugo Awards, five Nebula Awards, and numerous career awards…

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 John W. Campbell Memorial Award: Beyond Apollo, by Barry N. Malzberg (plus Special Award to Robert Silverberg for Dying Inside)

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Beyond Apollo (Random House, 1972, Pocket Books, 1979, Carrol & Graf, 1989). Covers by Roger Hane, Don Maitz, and unknown Two separate awards were established in 1973 in memory of the profoundly influential long time editor of Astounding/Analog, John W. Campbell, Jr., who had died in 1971. We have already covered the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (which has just been renamed the Astounding Award), which went to Jerry Pournelle. The John W. Campbell Memorial Award is…

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Vintage Treasures: Conquerors from the Darkness by Robert Silverberg

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1979 Ace edition, paired with Master of Life and Death. Cover by Frazetta. Robert Silverberg’s novella “Spawn of the Deadly Sea” appeared in the April 1957 issue of Science Fiction Adventures. He expanded it to novel length in 1965, retitling it Conquerors from the Darkness in the process. It wasn’t one of Silverberg’s more successful novels, at least from a commercial standpoint. Today it’s considered a juvenile, and it was reprinted only a handful of times, including a 1979 Ace paperback in which it…

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New Treasures: First-Person Singularities by Robert Silverberg

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A new book by SF grandmaster Robert Silverberg is a cause for celebration. It took a while for the cake and balloons to arrive, but we’re now ready to celebrate his collection First-Person Singularities. It gathers stories spanning the last six decades, all told in first person singular. Here’s Kirkus Reviews. The sheer diversity of storylines is nothing short of extraordinary. In “House of Bones,” a time traveler is marooned more than 20,000 years in the past and is forced to…

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Silverberg’s “When We Went to See the End of the World”

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Robert Silverberg was born on January 15, 1935. In 1956, he won a Hugo for being the Most Promising New Author, nearly two decades before the John W. Campbell, Jr. Award debuted. He has subsequently won two Hugo Awards for Best Novella and one for Best Novelette. Silverberg has also received two Nebula Awards for Best Short Story, two more for Best Novella, and one for Best Novel. He has won or been nominated for numerous other awards. Silverberg was…

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No Slimy Monsters, No Princesses: The Bantam Spectra Omnibus Robert Silverberg

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Robert Silverberg practically introduced me to science fiction. His novel Collision Course was one of the first SF novels I ever read, and he’s one of the first authors I collected. Like a lot of Campbell-era SF, Collision Course is about humans thrusting out into space in an aggressive age of empire-building, and our first encounter with an equally aggressive alien race with the same dreams. The copy I read was the 1977 Ace edition with a cover (by an uncredited artist) that casually gave…

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When Men Were Men and Aliens Were Green and Up to No Good: The Pulp Tales of Robert Silverberg

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Robert Silverberg’s career as a science fiction writer spans over six decades. His first short story, “Gorgon Planet,” appeared in the February 1954 issue of Nebula Science Fiction, when he was 19 years old, and his first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, was published in 1955. He won a Hugo in 1956 for “Best New Writer,” and for the next few years — until the market for SF magazines collapsed in 1959 — he was extraordinarily prolific, routinely publishing five stories a month,…

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Sample the Finest Short Stories of a Science Fiction Great: The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades

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William Schafer’s Subterranean Press is one of the most prolific and accomplished small presses in the industry. It has produced countless books by Dan Simmons, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, James Blaylock, Robert McCammon, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neal Barrett, Jr., Steven Erikson, Neil Gaiman, Jack Vance, and many others. I don’t typically report on them here, however. While we’re always happy to promote small press publishers at Black Gate, we like to make sure you can obtain the great books we’re telling you…

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Vintage Treasures: Worlds Imagined: 14 Short Science Fiction Novels, Compiled by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg

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I bought a fine anthology of science fiction novellas on eBay last week for 5 cents. With $3.99 shipping, that brought the whole thing to $4.04 — about 28 cents per novella. Pretty sweet deal. The anthology is Worlds Imagined, published by Avenel in April 1989, and edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg. Excuse me, ‘Compiled by,” not edited by. I guess Silverberg and Greenberg didn’t feel comfortable with the title of editors, for merely selecting the fiction….

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Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg

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I have a real fondness for novellas. Like many other readers, I think they’re the perfect length for SF and fantasy — long enough to develop and explore a fascinating new setting, but short enough to keep the narrative fast-paced and lean. Unfortunately, there aren’t many outlets for novellas these days. Economic realities have squeezed the page counts of print magazines, and most online magazines don’t publish them at all (Rashida J. Smith’s GigaNotoSaurus being the notable exception). Perhaps that’s…

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