Robert Silverberg

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Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg in 2005
Robert Silverberg in 2005
Born (1935-01-15) January 15, 1935 (age 84)
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S.
Pen nameDozens[1]
OccupationNovelist, short-story writer, editor
NationalityAmerican
Period1955–present
GenreScience fiction, fantasy, anthologies (as editor)
SubjectGeography, history, nature

Signature
Website
robert-silverberg.com
Silverberg's novelette "Guardian of the Crystal Gate" was the cover story in the August 1956 issue of Fantastic Stories
Silverberg's short story "Quick Freeze" took the cover of the May 1957 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly

Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is an 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 and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF.[2][3][4] He has attended every Hugo Awards ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953.[5]

Biography[edit]

Early years[edit]

Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York.[6] A voracious reader since childhood, he began submitting stories to science fiction magazines during his early teenage years. He received a BA in English Literature from Columbia University, in 1956. While at Columbia, he wrote the juvenile novel Revolt on Alpha C (1955), published by Thomas Y. Crowell with the cover notice: "A gripping story of outer space".[1] He won his first Hugo in 1956 as the "best new writer".[2]

That year Silverberg was the author or co-author of four of the six stories in the August issue of Fantastic, breaking his record set in the previous issue.[7] 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, who was a neighbour at the time.[8] (The Silverberg/Garrett collaborations also used a variety of pseudonyms, the best-known being Robert Randall.) From 1956 to 1959, Silverberg routinely averaged five published stories a month, and he had over 80 stories published in 1958 alone. In 1959, the market for science fiction collapsed[citation needed], and Silverberg turned his ability to write copiously to other fields, from historical non-fiction to softcore pornography. "Bob Silverberg, a giant of science fiction... was doing two [books] a month for one publisher, another for a second publisher, and the equivalent of another book for a magazine... He was writing a quarter of a million words a month"[9] under many different pseudonyms.[10]

Literary growth[edit]

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.

Silverberg continued to write rapidly—Algis Budrys reported in 1965 that he wrote and sold at least 50,000 words ("call it the equivalent of a commercial novel") weekly[10]—but the novels he wrote in this period are considered superior to his earlier work; Budrys in 1968 wrote of his surprise that "Silverberg is now writing deeply detailed, highly educated, beautifully figured books" like Thorns and The Masks of Time.[11] 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,[12] 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 the August 1967 issue of Galaxy, Pohl published a 20,000-word novelette called "Hawksbill Station". This story earned Silverberg his first Hugo and Nebula story award nominations.[13] An expanded novel form of Hawksbill Station was published the following year. 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[edit]

After suffering through the stresses of a major house fire[14] and a thyroid malfunction, Silverberg moved from his native New York City to the West Coast in 1972, and he announced his retirement from writing in 1975.[15] 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. In a 2015 interview Silverberg said that he did not intend to write any more fiction.[16]

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]

Personal life[edit]

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.[17] They live in the San Francisco Bay Area.[8] Before the age of 30, Silverberg was independently wealthy through his investments and once owned the former mansion of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.[18][14]

Awards[edit]

Hugo Award

  • Most Promising New Author (1956)[19]
  • "Nightwings" (Best Novella, 1969)[20]
  • "Gilgamesh in the Outback" (Best Novella, 1987)[21]
  • "Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another" (Best Novelette, 1990)[22]

Locus Award

  • "Born with the Dead" (Best Novella, 1975)[23]
  • Lord Valentine's Castle (Best Fantasy Novel, 1981)[24]
  • "The Secret Sharer" (Best Novella, 1988)[25]

Nebula Award

  • "Passengers" (Best Short Story, 1969)[26]
  • A Time of Changes (Best Novel, 1971)[27]
  • "Good News from the Vatican" (Best Short Story, 1971)[28]
  • "Born with the Dead" (Best Novella, 1974)[29]
  • "Sailing to Byzantium" (Best Novella, 1985)[30]
  • Damon Knight Grand Master Award (2003)[31]

Bibliography[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Robert Silverberg at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved 2013-03-26. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
  2. ^ a b c "Silverberg, Robert" Archived October 10, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. The Locus Index to SF Awards: Index to Literary Nominees. Locus Publications. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
  3. ^ a b "Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame". Mid American Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions, Inc. Retrieved 2013-03-26. This was the official website of the hall of fame to 2004.
  4. ^ a b "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master" Archived July 1, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Retrieved 2013-03-26.
  5. ^ "Alfies Awards". Locus Online News. 2013. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
  6. ^ "Robert Silverberg". Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. Gale, Cengage Learning. 2008. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
  7. ^ Silverberg, Robert (2006). "Guardian of the Crystal Gate". In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era (Introduction). Subterranean. ISBN 978-1596060432.
  8. ^ a b Horwich, About David (2000-12-11). "Interview: Robert Silverberg". Strange Horizons. Retrieved 2016-12-24.
  9. ^ Child, Lee (2016-10-12). "Lee Child: Celebrating mystery fiction master MacDonald". BBC. Retrieved 2016-10-12.
  10. ^ a b Budrys, Algis (December 1965). "Galaxy Bookshelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 147–156.
  11. ^ Budrys, Algis (December 1968). "Galaxy Bookshelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 149–155.
  12. ^ "Authors : Silverberg, Robert". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 2016-11-04. Retrieved 2016-12-24.
  13. ^ Silverberg, Robert (1968). Hawksbill Station, Berkley, p. 3
  14. ^ a b "Galaxy's Stars". Galaxy Science Fiction. September 1968. p. 194.
  15. ^ http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum/public_html/html/research/findaids/DG0898f.html
  16. ^ http://www.sffworld.com/2015/07/robert-silverberg-interview/
  17. ^ http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/haber_karen
  18. ^ Dirda, Michael (8 November 2016). "Robert Silverberg: The Philip Roth of the science fiction world". The Washington Post. Retrieved 14 November 2016.
  19. ^ "1956 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  20. ^ "1969 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  21. ^ "1987 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  22. ^ "1990 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  23. ^ "Locus Awards 1975". Science Fiction Awards Database. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  24. ^ "Locus Awards 1981". Science Fiction Awards Database. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  25. ^ "Locus Awards 1988". Science Fiction Awards Database. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  26. ^ "1969 Nebula Awards". Nebula Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  27. ^ "1971 Nebula Awards". Nebula Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  28. ^ "1971 Nebula Awards". Nebula Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  29. ^ "1974 Nebula Awards". Nebula Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  30. ^ "1985 Nebula Awards". Nebula Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.
  31. ^ "2003 Nebula Awards". Nebula Awards. Retrieved Feb 13, 2017.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]