Search Results for: Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg on the First Year of Galaxy Science Fiction

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Galaxy magazine was founded in 1950; its legendary first editor was H.L. Gold. At the time Astounding Science Fiction, under John W. Campbell, was the leading SF magazine, publishing such writers as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak, and H. Beam Piper. Within a single year, Gold wrestled the mantle of leadership away from Campbell, making Galaxy the top magazine in the industry. In his first two years Gold published some of the most memorable SF of the century,…

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Robert Silverberg on the Tragic Death of John Brunner

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Six months ago, I wrote about an unusual find I made online: The Great Steamboat Race, an enormous and ambitious historical novel written by none other than John Brunner. Brunner, of course, was a highly regarded SF and fantasy writer, beloved even today for Stand on Zanzibar, The Complete Traveller in Black, and many other novels. He died in 1995, at the World Science Fiction convention. The Great Steamboat Race was an enigma. I’d never seen a copy before, never…

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Robert Silverberg on Cannon Propulsion in Space

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In my Sunday article on The Art of The Original Science Fiction Stories magazine, I called out the bizarrely goofy February 1959 cover (right), illustrating “Delivery Guaranteed” by Calvin M. Knox (Robert Silverberg). It’s the kind of gonzo image that only could have fit on a 1950s science fiction digest; but I was dying to know if Bob’s story actually had an intrepid couple piloting a cannon-powered wooden raft in space, and how the cover came about. Bob was gracious enough to…

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Robert Silverberg, Gregory Benford, Dave Truesdale and Others Sign Petition Calling for Changes to SFWA

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Word of a new controversy inside the hallowed walls of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) is hardly news — the organization is known for regular rows. Less than a year ago, in fact, we reported that SFWA Bulletin Editor Jean Rabe resigned amidst a controversy over a series of sexist and rather tasteless articles. As a consequence, the membership of SFWA demanded additional oversight of the Bulletin and the new President, Steven Gould, promised the organization’s officers would take a…

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Oz Reviews The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg

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This novel came out in 1972 under the Signet Science Fiction imprint, which is quite misleading. There is nary a hint of sci-fi in its pages. Rather, The Book of Skulls is a deeply compelling psychological study, a book full of mystery and existential dread. The story is told by four narrators: Eli, Ned, Oliver, and Timothy, Harvard college students who are the book’s protagonists. Each of the forty-two chapters is prefaced by the name of one of the four,…

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New Treasures: Robert Silverberg’s Tales of Majipoor

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Robert Silverberg’s last post at Black Gate was “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?” (which, as I recall, generated a lot of debate, including an intriguing counter-argument by Jerry Pournelle.) His post seemed like a good excuse to finally get around to reading Lord Valentine’s Castle, the first novel in his Majipoor Cycle. It’s one of the few major fantasy series I haven’t tried, and I’ve long been intrigued by its science fantasy setting. Majipoor is a vast world, much…

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How Galaxy Magazine Saved Robert Silverberg from a Life of Smoking

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I’ve been neglecting Galaxy magazine in my recent Vintage Treasures articles. I’ve covered some of the great fiction in Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Worlds of If, but the truth is that Galaxy was on its last legs by the time I started reading science fiction and fantasy in 1976, and it folded in 1979. But I’m not wholly ignorant of the contribution Galaxy made to the field, especially under the editorship of H.L. Gold (1950 – 1961) and Frederik…

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New Treasures: Tales From Super-Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg

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You really have to admire the team at Haffner Press. These guys must work night and day. Hot on the heels of their last release just two months ago — the gorgeous Kuttner collection Thunder in the Void — they’ve now published Tales From Super-Science Fiction, a thick anthology of fourteen stories from the legendary 50s SF magazine Super-Science Fiction. I’m not sure how they do it. As usual the team at Haffner is firing on all cylinders, and both the marketing…

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Robert Silverberg on “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?”

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In a post on his blog last week, Canadian science fiction author Robert Sawyer asked “Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered?” When I broke into the business 55 years ago you could count the number of full-time science fiction writers who could pay the rent and eat regular meals on the fingers of one oddly proportioned hand. Poul Anderson, Gordy Dickson, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Robert Sheckley, maybe Jack Vance, and….well, who else? Jack Williamson? Perhaps he had begun…

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Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

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Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg (Stark House, March 8, 2024). Cover by Jeff Jordan Barry N. Malzberg has had an enormously prolific career. He published his first science fiction story the August 1967 issue of Galaxy magazine, and over the next six decades has produced an astounding 500+ short stories, dozens of novels, eleven anthologies, and nearly two dozen collections. These days he’s well known as a genre historian and critic. That’s him on the back…

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