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= Robert_Silverberg =
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Introduction
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Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is a prolific American
science fiction author and editor. 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 since 2004.
Especially noted Silverberg works include the novella 'Nightwings'
(1969) and the novels 'Downward to the Earth' (1970), 'The World
Inside' (1971), 'Dying Inside' (1972), and 'Lord Valentine's Castle'
(1980; the first of the Majipoor series).
Silverberg has attended every Hugo Award ceremony since the inaugural
event in 1953.
Early life
============
Silverberg was born on January 15, 1935, to Jewish parents in
Brooklyn, New York. 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". He won his first Hugo
in 1956 as the "best new writer".
Career
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In 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. 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
neighbor at the time. (The Silverberg/Garrett collaborations too were
published under 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 slumped due in part to
changing tastes among readers, and also due to the bankruptcy of
several leading magazines of the era. Silverberg adapted by writing
copiously in other fields, from historical non-fiction to crime
fiction and 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" under
many different pseudonyms including about 200 erotic novels published
as Don Elliott. In a 2000 interview, Silverberg explained that the
erotic fiction "... was undertaken at a time when I was saddled with a
huge debt, at the age of 26, for a splendid house that I had bought.
There would have been no way to pay the house off by writing science
fiction ... so I turned out a slew of quick sex novels. I never
concealed the fact that I was doing them; it made no difference at all
to me whether people knew or not. It was just a job. And it was,
incidentally, a job that I did very well. I think they were
outstanding erotic novels."
Literary growth
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In the mid-1960s, many writers in science fiction were moving away
from the adventure, hard science fiction and space opera themes that
often characterized the early years of the genre, and writing stories
with greater literary ambitions, psychological sophistication and
experimental methods (see New Wave science fiction). Frederik Pohl,
then editing three science fiction magazines, offered Silverberg
creative freedom 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--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'. 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 the August 1967 issue of 'Galaxy', Silverberg published a
20,000-word novelette called "Hawksbill Station". This story earned
Silverberg his first Hugo and Nebula story award nominations. 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
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After suffering through the stresses of a major house fire 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. 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.
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'. The Science Fiction and
Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Silverberg in 1999, its fourth class of
two deceased and two living writers, and the Science Fiction and
Fantasy Writers of America made him its 21st SFWA Grand Master in
2005.
Personal life
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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. They live in the
San Francisco Bay Area. 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.
Awards
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Hugo Awards
* 'Most Promising New Author' (1956)
* 'Nightwings' (Best Novella, 1969)
* 'Gilgamesh in the Outback' (Best Novella, 1987)
* 'Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another' (Best Novelette, 1990)
Locus Award
* 'Born with the Dead' (Best Novella, 1975)
* 'Epoch' (Best Anthology, 1976)
* 'Lord Valentine's Castle' (Best Fantasy Novel, 1981)
* 'The Secret Sharer' (Best Novella, 1988)
Nebula Awards
* 'Passengers' (Best Short Story, 1969)
* 'A Time of Changes' (Best Novel, 1971)
* 'Good News from the Vatican' (Best Short Story, 1971)
* 'Born with the Dead' (Best Novella, 1974)
* 'Sailing to Byzantium' (Best Novella, 1985)
* Damon Knight Grand Master Award (2003)
See also
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*
* The Spirit of Science Fiction Bolaño's novel protagonist, Jay
Schrella, wrote a letter to Robert Silverberg
Further reading
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*Sandra Miesel, "Dreams Within Dreams" in Darrell Schweitzer (ed.).
'Exploring Fantasy Worlds: Essays on Fantastic Literature'. San
Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press, April 1985, pp. 35-42. (On the novel 'Son
of Man'.)
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=========
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg
