Robert Silverberg (born 1935 in Brooklyn) is an American writer and editor and one of the most prolific and decorated figures in science fiction. Born to Jewish parents in New York, he was a voracious reader as a child and began sending stories to genre magazines while still a teenager. His long and varied career traces how American science fiction moved from commercial adventure toward work with greater psychological and literary ambition.
His early years were marked by remarkable output. After studying English literature at Columbia University, he won his first Hugo Award in 1956 and published hundreds of stories and novels, many under pseudonyms. When the science fiction market weakened at the end of the 1950s, he turned to nonfiction and erotic novels, work he later described as a practical necessity given a large debt he carried at a young age. In the mid-1960s, with encouragement from editor Frederik Pohl, he returned to the genre with more careful character work, richer social settings and touches of the modernist literature he had studied.
From that period come novels such as Thorns, Dying Inside and The World Inside, along with the novella Nightwings, which won a Hugo. After a period away from writing, he returned in 1980 with Lord Valentine's Castle, the start of the Majipoor cycle, a series set on a planet far larger than Earth. His Hugo and Nebula awards, his induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and his naming as a SFWA Grand Master in 2005 all reflect his standing in the field. His legacy lies in the breadth of his output and in the example he set for later writers of craft and ambition.
Key works
- Revolt on Alpha C (1955), a juvenile novel written while he was a university student.
- Thorns (1967), a novel of a complex colonial setting that marked his mature period.
- Dying Inside (1972), a tale of a telepath losing his powers.
- Downward to the Earth (1970), a novel about a former human administrator who returns to an alien world after its inhabitants are freed.
- Lord Valentine's Castle (1980), the first book of the Majipoor series.
Where to start
Dying Inside 1972
Dying Inside is a short novel about David Selig, a man secretly able to read other people's thoughts, who struggles with loneliness and the decline of his own relationships. It is accessible and fast to read, and shows the intimate, psychological approach with which Silverberg approaches science fiction.
Next: Good News from the Vatican. Good News from the Vatican, a Nebula-winning short story, is a brief and sharp next step that shows the author's ironic humor and religious reflection.
Works in Filopedia
- Good News from the Vatican 1971
- Dying Inside 1972
Books to read
- Starman's Quest EnglishGutenberg
Curiosities
A record output
By his own count, for several years he wrote about a million words a year. In 1958 alone he had more than eighty stories published.
A rivalry in the library
Isaac Asimov recounted that the two would phone each other on visiting libraries to compare how many of their books were on the shelves, and that there were always more by Asimov.
Teachers and influences
Influenced by
- Jack Vance 1916–2013
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.