If one were to analyze my library of books, you’d come to the immediate conclusion that my favorite science-fiction author is Robert Silverberg. I have everything the man has written, including books he wrote under assumed names. I idolize the man and what he has accomplished. Never known as a hard-science-fiction writer, Silverberg’s books always dealt with character first, technology as an afterthought, which is quite rare in this genre. I know of no other writer who has tackled so many genres with such mastery, with the possible exception of Dan Simmons, but he needs more time under his belt before he can hold a candle to 76 year-old Silverberg.
For whatever reason, Robert Silverberg was never considered one of the Big Three. Those three are Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Silverberg never got the respect he was due. Fortunately, the Los Angeles Times has taken notice, writing up an excellent profile and interview that finally pays homage to one of the greats.
The New Wave Silverberg and the others were riding didn’t last long — “Star Wars,” he thinks, killed it. “A huge new audience came into science fiction,” he says, “wanting books that reflected those films. There were millions of them — they came to dominate the audience. We were having a quixotic literary revolution that had no commercial possibilities.”
Still, what makes the late 1960s and early 1970s novels by Silverberg and others so powerful is not just that so many first-rate minds were drawn to the genre. It’s also the way these authors address the social and political issues of the day by de-familiarizing them.
They were, of course, not the first sci-fi writers to do this. “Look at H.G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine,’ ” Silverberg says. “It travels 800,000 years into the future, and ends up with the class system of 19th century Britain. You pretend you’re writing about the future, but your feet are planted right here.”
These days, Silverberg is content. But of the major sci-fi writers of the period — Le Guin, Dick, the late J.G. Ballard and Thomas M. Disch — Silverberg, who has won the Hugo and Nebula awards five times each, remains the least known. Besides “Dying Inside” and his 1971 novel “A Time of Changes,” which Tor has also reissued, many of his books are only marginally in print.
