Robert Silverberg

[Ian Whates]

No-one mentioned Dying Inside yet?

Ehm.. Yes, actually... Twice so far in this thread. With your mention, that's three.

There again, it's a classic book and fully deserves the exposure!

 

[GOLLUM]

OH OK then I didn't see those posts, thanks for the heads up Ian...

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

He still looked very dapper at the Worldcon in Japan,he was the first author I spotted on checking in to the hotel.

 

[Fried Egg]

I've just finished "Book of Skulls" and whilst I did think it was very good, I wouldn't really have classified it as science fiction.

 

[iansales]

The protagonist of Dying Inside is too unlikeable to really enjoy the book. A Time of Changes, OTOH, I remember as very good indeed. And if you don't want to think too much, there's always Lord Valentine's Castle and its sequels - they're fun reads. A lot of Silverberg's fiction, I find can be very cold, as if churned out by the numbers. But he has written some very good stuff.

 

[Connavar]

I just heard from by bookstore that my omnibus with Nightwings and The Man in The Maze who was stuck in the shipping is coming in this week.

I can finaly read this author.

The Man in The Maze, i have high hopes cause its sounds so interesting.

It really sucks to see that an author that have several classic works in SF and Fantasy have several of them out of print. My omnibus is second hand and more expensive than a new collection.....

 

[HardScienceFan]

Con

Nightwings is an amazing tale of redemption & love

 

[flygin]

I just mooched Dying Inside. It arrived yesterday. I think it's next on the reading pile, once I finish the Amber Chronicles.

 

[D_Davis]

I have Downward to the Earth to read. This will be my first book by the author. Looking forward to it.

 

[j d worthington]

For those just encountering Silverberg, you have a lot of treats ahead of you, from very meaty novels such as Thorns and Dying Inside, to short tales such as "Flies" and "Good News from the Vatican". He has his share of less-than-successful tales, it's true, but considering how prolific he has been and how long he's been writing... they're very few....

 

[easygoingman]

Both are very good; Man in the Maze was actually the first of his I read, but personally I'd go for Nightwings, which is one of my all-time favourite Silverbergs.

If you're looking for other recommendations, Downward to the Earth is another that I thought was fabulous. Even though I guessed the 'big reveal' early on, it still didn't stop me enjoying what was an excellent evocation of an alien world and the humans interacting with that environment. Dying Inside is another must-read -- totally different and very intense, but quite superb. Then there's Thorns... (sigh)

I've only recently read 'Downward to the Earth' and it was a very good story, showing a very strange world (even if the cover of the book had elephants on it!), a guilty past and how the interactions the humans had had with the aliens and how significant they were. Well worth reading.

 

[Connavar]

Heh i just saw with my omnibus that Downward to the Earth is in it too i forgot that when i ordered it


Im just about to finish The Man in the Maze and i enjoy it so far. Interesting worlds,characters. I like Dick Muller. The tricks they used.....

Robert Silverberg is the kind of author i like apparently. He impressed me with the characters and dialouge .

As soon i can i will try Nightwings.

 

[AE35Unit]

Agberg wrote so many books its unreal. Then he retired and then much later he came back and wrote even more stuff-quite a fertile mind. A pity his later stuff is mostly fantasy tho-last one I read was Hot Sky at Midnight which was very good SF
Never read any early classics,can someone recommend any?

 

[GOLLUM]

Having read several of his books including the entire Majipoor series and recently meeting the man at WorldCon in Japan I continue to be an avid fan!!

 

[Connavar]

I was alittle dissapointed with the end of The Man in the Maze.

Spoilers :


After all they did to Muller by making him take the final mission, you didnt get to see what happened with The Radio aliens after his visit. I wanted to know just to see if it was worth messing with the poor guy.



Spoilers end


Other than that it was a good read.

 

[AE35Unit]

I quite enjoyed his Queen of New Springtime series,wouldn't mind reading those again.

 

[Dave]

I've been trying to get hold of Up the Line for quite some time, but have been unable to locate a copy. I did find two books by him second hand and I'm reading The Time Hoppers at the moment. It is a reasonably good read, though he fails to imagine the information technology revolution, which would have made a CrimeSecs job much easier. I'm not finished yet so don't spoil. It is the first Silverberg book I've read, and probably not his best, so I may well pick up some of these other recommendations now.

 

[Anatedhrai]

Spielberg's great period was the decade from Thorns in 1967 and Shadrach in the Furnace in 1976. Then he retired for four years, as Ian Whates says above. Although he had slowed down from his 50s/early 60s workrate but he was still immensely prolific. He published EIGHT novels between 1970 and 1972 - admittedly, novels then could be half the length they have to be now, but that's still impressive. I've read most of them.admittedly many of them twenty-five years plus ago. You can also add the large amount of short fiction he wrote at the time, including award-winners like "Born With the Dead", "The Feast of St Dionysus" (both novellas), "Good News From the Vatican", "Passengers", "Sundance" and more.

Most of his novels and stories before that ten years are admitted hackwork, with some exceptions. Lord Valentine's Castle ended his retirement. I read it at the time and if I remember quite enjoyed it. It's twice as long as any previous novel, and as Ian W says lower in intensity and more pitched towards the marketplace. I'm a lot less interested in his later work, though I've read some good latterday short fiction by him.

Silverberg should be credited for being one of the writers in SF who took advantage of the greater freedom for dealing with sex - many of those late 60s/early 70s novels are quite explicit. On the other hand, this goes with the kind of 60s sexual politics that you have to make allowances for, which dates parts of the novels horribly. I read Son of Man fairly recently, and that aspect made me want to throw the book across the room at times. He has some homosexual characters in some of these novels.He deals with the subject quite frankly, though not without a certain queasiness I find.

Still, for fluency, style and intensity, which are all good things for me, Silverberg deserves his place in the pantheon, even if (as Ian S says) he can be facile and cold at times. I'd say that eight-novel spurt in 70-72 - which included some of his very best novels - is one of the genre's great examples of both quality and quantity combined. Others might include Philip Dick in the mid 60s, and Dan Simmons in 1988-89.

 

[Thadlerian]

Hmm... I just finished my first Silverberg book: The Face of the Waters. The only term I can use to describe that book would have to be "intensely mediocre". Even though it was a seafaring (I love the seafaring theme) SF, there was almost nothing in it to interest me. Nothing in it was particularly original, either. Lots and lots of crazy sea monsters, but none of them really challenging, or even strange.

It felt, all in all, like a Solaris for Extremely Unambitious Beginners, with a touch of inverse-colour Dune.

But people here seem to be saying that Silverberg wrote his best stuff in the 60-70s. Have anyone else read The Face of the Waters? It was written in 1991. Could you tell me if his earlier books are better?

 

[AE35Unit]

Face of the Waters is not a good Silverberg starting point. I read it and enjoyed it but wasnt like 'Woa, thats great', you know?

I havent really read any of his earlier classic stuff but Hot Sky at Midnight is a good late one