Robert Silverberg

[easygoingman]

Originally Posted by Ian Whates

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 :P


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

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Thadlerian

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?

Try his Majipoor books started in the late '70s, one of the best science fantasy series I've come across. Also stories like Dying Inside, Nightwings, Downward To The Earth and Book Of Skulls are worth investigating.

Never read Face Of The Waters, so I can't commet on that one.

[Dave]

I finished 'The Time Hoppers'. No great revelations later. I thought he could have developed some ideas further.

A question: The other Silverberg book I picked up was 'The Majipoor Chronicles' (of the Lord Valentine trilogy which several people here have now recommended including GOLLUM just above) but it is the second book of the trilogy. It seems to be a stand alone novel; I think the prologue to the book is actually the events of the first book. Should I read it, or wait and read 'Lord Valentine's Castle' first?

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by Dave

I finished 'The Time Hoppers'. No great revelations later. I thought he could have developed some ideas further.

A question: The other Silverberg book I picked up was 'The Majipoor Chronicles' (of the Lord Valentine trilogy which several people here have now recommended including GOLLUM just above) but it is the second book of the trilogy. It seems to be a stand alone novel; I think the prologue to the book is actually the events of the first book. Should I read it, or wait and read 'Lord Valentine's Castle' first?

You really should wait.

I have had the same problem. I have always seen the second book but havent been able to find the first book. Which is why i havent read the series yet.

Plus its not a good idea to read a prologue that tells the story of the first book. Specially not when its his most famous series.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Connavar of Rigante

You really should wait.

I have had the same problem. I have always seen the second book but havent been able to find the first book. Which is why i havent read the series yet.

Plus its not a good idea to read a prologue that tells the story of the first book. Specially not when its his most famous series.

Actually just to clarify, this book is mainly a series of short stories that connects one of the charatcers from Lord Valentine's castle BUT does little to progress the story of the main charatcer from Book 1. Therefore you can actually in this case read that book before getting Lord Valentine.

You will also find in the majipoor books that not all are direct sequels to previous books as they jump around 1,000 years at a time to different Lords in charge of the city.

Here's a comment on Book 2 from the silverberg website:

This the second book in the series begun with Lord Valentine's Castle. This is a collection of stories set on Majipoor connected by short interludes with Hissune (one of the characters from Book 1). As the copyright page says: Portions of this book have appeared in somewhat different form in Omni, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It adds some interesting details to the history and geography of the big planet, but does not really further the story of Valentine.

Cheers....

[Dave]

Thanks for those replies. I know I shouldn't have read the prologue, but I didn't realise that it would spoil the first book in that way. The Majipoor Chronicles does seem to be a number of separate stories - there are memory tapes that Hissune has access to that tell 10-year life stories of random dead people.