Search Worlds Without End

Sixteen year-old Ewan Mao knows one thing for certain: according to prophecy, it's his destiny to kill the evil tyrant whose dark reign has terrorized Britain for as long as he can remember. Although he's just a normal boy, deep down Ewan is confident that he has exactly what it takes to be a hero. But when Ewan's big moment comes and his best friend, the clever and talented Oliver Abrams, defeats the villain for him, Ewan's bright future crumbles before his eyes.

Five years later, while Ewan is living at home and working a minimum wage job, Oliver has a job as an Unusual in the government's Serious Magical Crimes Agency, the life he and Ewan always dreamed of. A routine investigation leads him and his partner, Sophie Stuart, to uncover a dangerous and powerful cult... one that seems to have drawn his former best friend into a plot to end the world.

A deftly plotted, hysterically funny journey through magical London and beyond, A Hero at the End of the World expertly walks the fine line between satire and sincerity. Its sensitive depiction of a broken friendship and wry takedown of unfairly great expectations will appeal to all readers of modern fantasy.

A sexual plague leaves its survivors terrified of human contact. The government so fears sensuality that even the Joy of Cooking is banned. Sex is a capital crime. Only the "carnals" - the sexual dissidents of the future - dare speak of love. In this postmodern Eden we meet a feminist physician who speaks only of the past, and her daughter, Emma, who dreams of real butter and rebuilt Subarus and is sick of hearing about life before the plague. Set in a New York besieged by scarcities of every kind, a place of burnt-out buildings, abandoned streets and junk yards, In the Garden of Dead Cars takes Emma on a journey both dangerously criminal and filled with self-discovery.

Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell.

But not quite what the police had expected.

Dolores Claiborne has a confession to make...

She will take her time. Won't be hurried. Will do it her way, sparing neither details nor feelings. Hers or anyone else's.

This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth that takes you to the edge of darkness.

Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell and you'd better pay attention--or else.

It started off like an ordinary day for Dr. Jeffrey Brewster, assistant professor of psycho-sociology at Columbia University. He'd been six weeks old when the first crude satellites were flung into space back in 1957. During his childhood there had been Moon rockets and the space stations -- then the joint American-Russian-manned expedition to the Moon in 1965, right after the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship. Mars and Venus had been reached as he grew up and a permanent base was established on the Moon in 1973. Now the day's papers reported that an expedition was ready to leave for Callisto, moon of Jupiter. But Dr. Brewster had a class to make and he was late.

That was when the telephone rang and Mari, his wife, said, "Long distance from Washington."

The caller was Colonel Chasin of Unsecfor -- United Nations Security Force, the global and international army that policed the world in these days of relative peace and harmony. Chasin explained that a serious matter had come up, something ...

The year is 2021. The Cold War has stalemated into an "eternally frozen peace." The major geopolitical groups--America, Russia, Europe, Latin/South America, and Asia--have completely isolated from each other. There is no communication, no trade, no cultural exchange of any kind.

A minority of humans have developed powers of telepathy. As the narrator explains, "The total breakdown of intercontinental communication coincided with a sudden upwelling of psi powers among humanity--as if the blockade of Europe and the confiscation of amateur radio equipment had somehow impelled evolution to provide some new means of communication."

In the North American bubble, John Amory rails against the restrictions of an overly conservative society. ("The real Amory had to stay hidden. He never dared express an opinion not carefully tailored to the expectations of his co-workers.") He fancies himself an intellectual and an artist, but he is forced to work for a television studio where art is dictated by ratings, advertising and "an amorphous, anonymous tyranny--public opinion".

Amory's life is upended when he is approached by an emissary of alien archaeologists who want to collect Earth's most precious literature, films, music and paintings. But Amory soon begins to suspect they are actually preparing an invasion army. Using the powers of telepaths and the influence of television, can he find a way to unite the nations of Earth in time to save us all?

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 28, May-June 2019.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Nebula Award-nominated Short Story

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 27, March-April 2019.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

The Danu. The "little people." Everyone who is Irish knows of this mystical race. Many doubt they ever existed. However, there are as many today who claim that they are still among us. What if the Danu were not myth but were based on historical evidence?

Song of Ireland is Juilene Osborne McKnight's tale of the coming of the Celts to Eire and what they find there: a land of abundance and beauty that the Celts would make their own. But the Danu have secrets of their own, and those who wish to conquer find that it is not only their sword hands being challenged but their hearts. And the coming battle to claim a new world may change both races forever.

{Now + n, Now - n} was first published in 1972 in the Anthology Nova 2 by Walker & Co.

Since then, it has appeared numerious times: Unfamiliar Territory: 1973, Infinite Jests: The Lighter Side of Science Fiction: 1974, Beyond the Safe Zone: Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: 1986, To the Dark Star: 2011, First-Person Singularities: 2017, Niddele in a Timestack and Other Stories: 2019

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Coming Attraction - (1950) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• The Mindworm - (1950) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Pedestrian - (1951) - short story by Ray Bradbury
• Common Time - (1953) - short story by James Blish
• Crucifixus Etiam - (1953) - short story by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• Mother - (1953) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• The Nine Billion Names of God - (1953) - short story by Arthur C. Clarke
• Or Else - (1953) - short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Warm - (1953) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• Down Among the Dead Men - (1954) - novelette by William Tenn
• The Father-Thing - (1954) - short story by Philip K. Dick
• Dreaming Is a Private Thing - (1955) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• The Game of Rat and Dragon - (1955) - short story by Cordwainer Smith
• The Gift of Gab - (1955) - novella by Jack Vance
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• World of a Thousand Colors - (1957) - short story by Robert Silverberg
• The Man Who Lost the Sea - (1959) - short story by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Wind People - (1959) - short story by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Thousands of years in the future, the earth worships the memory of three alien beings who visited during times of great trouble fifteen hundred years in the past. The high priest of the religion is Diriente, Warder of the great temple devoted to the aliens. One evening the groundskeeper comes to him with news of a great discovery beneath the lowest levels of the building, a discovery which will call into question everything that is believed about the saviors of the human race.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien (1992), edited by Martin H. Greenberg. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection (1993), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Hot Times in Magma City: 1990-95 (2013).

Three thousand years after Earth's colonization of the planet Borthan, stories of self-serving hypocrisy that occurred among the first arrivals have bred a culture that forbids emotional sharing and denies the naturally human concept of 'self.' Kinnall Darival breaks the strict code of the Covenant to record the sordid details of his rebellious life from the days of his royal youth to self-appointed prophet of love.

Depressed and lonely after an ugly divorce, Denise goes to Jamaica to get her groove back. The hotel where she stays stages sea turtle races daily, and given the nature of the turtles, it's a completely random event. The turtles have no inclination to go one direction over another, so you can never tell which turtle will wander to the finish line first. But there's a tall, handsome man who always wins his bets.

This novelette originally appeared in Amazing Stories, May 1991. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection (1992), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection We Are for the Dark: 1987-90 (2012).

Scattered throughout the globe of human-occupied space is evidence of a civilisation that bestrode the galaxy before humanity was born. Now, a strange device has been discovered that shows the details of that great civilisation. The details include a star map and hints that the High Ones are not extinct after all. The map beckons, and humans, being what they are, will follow. To the next great step in human destiny - or ultimate disaster.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1969. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• World's Best Science Fiction: 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr
• Another World: Adventures in Otherness (1977) edited by Gardner Dozois
• Supermen (1984) edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh

The story is included in the collections:

• Moonferns and Starsongs (1971)
• Sunrise on Mercury and Other Science Fiction Stories (1975)
• Ringing the Changes (1997)
• To the Dark Star: 1962-69 (2007)

Read the full story for free at the Bean website.

This novelette originally appeared in Omni, May 1986. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The 1987 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. The story is included in the collections The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992) and Multiples: 1983-87 (2011).

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 2007. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collection The Millennium Express: 1995-2009 (2014).

This short story originally appeared in Omni, May 1983. It has been anthologized and collected many times.

It was the basis for the 1995 TV-movie Amanda and the Alien.

This short story orginally appeared in Science Fiction Age, September 1997. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 3 (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collections Phases of the Moon (2004), The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades (2012), and The Millennium Express: 1995-2009 (2014).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1986) - essay
• Capricorn Games - (1974) - novelette
• The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV - (1974) - shortstory
• Ishmael in Love - (1970) - shortstory
• Trips - (1974) - novelette
• Schwartz Between the Galaxies - (1974) - novelette
• Many Mansions - (1973) - novelette
• Good News from the Vatican - (1971) - shortstory
• In the Group - (1973) - shortstory
• The Feast of St. Dionysus - (1973) - novella
• Caught in the Organ Draft - (1972) - shortstory
• {Now + n, Now - n} - (1972) - novelette
• Caliban - (1972) - shortstory
• Getting Across - (1973) - novelette
• Breckenridge and the Continuum - (1973) - novelette
• In the House of Double Minds - (1974) - novelette
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame - (1973) - shortstory
• The Wind and the Rain - (1973) - shortstory
• A Sea of Faces - (1974) - shortstory
• What We Learned from This Morning's Newspaper - (1972) - shortstory
• Ship-Sister, Star-Sister - (1973) - novelette
• When We Went to See the End of the World - (1972) - shortstory
• Push No More - (1972) - novelette
• Some Notes on the Pre-Dynastic Epoch - (1973) - shortstory
• In Entropy's Jaws - (1971) - novelette
• Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine - (1973) - shortstory
• The Mutant Season - (1973) - shortstory
• This Is the Road - (1973) - novella

Locus and Nebula award winning and Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1974. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4 (1975), edited by Terry Carr, Nebula Award Stories Ten (1975), edited by James Gunn, The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IV (1986), edited by Terry Carr. It is included in the collections Born With the Dead: Three Novellas (1974), Phases of the Moon (2004) and Trips: 1972-73 (2009). The story is half of Tor Double #3: Born With The Dead/The Saliva Tree (1988, with Brian W. Aldiss).

For Born with the Dead:

His wife was among the rekindled dead now. He'd heard that she was on a plane to Zanzibar with five other rekindled dead. As a "warm" he was not really allowed to make contact with her. The dead liked to stay in their cold-cities. But he'd loved her so much when she was alive, he just had to try.

Contents:

• Born with the Dead - (1974) - novella by Robert Silverberg
• Thomas the Proclaimer - (1972) - novella by Robert Silverberg
• Going - (1971) - novella by Robert Silverberg

A woman attends a very strange party that includes a billionaire, a mind reader, a Byzantine Duke, and a man who has lived 1000 years, from whom she tries to find the secret to a long life.

The 1970's are a period of creative ferment in the field of science fiction, and the three young men whose original novellas are included in this book are among the most highly regarded of the newer writers. All three belong unarguably to the literary generation of the 1970's. Aside from one story by Dozois that appeared in 1966, none of their work saw print professionally before 1970. They are still young.... Yet they are no novices; as evidence of this volume shows, their writing is skillful, evocative, thoughtful, occasionally profound. "And Us, Too, I Guess," by Geo. Alec Effinger, "Chains of the Sea," by Gardner R. Dozois, and "The Shrine of Sebastian," by Gordon Eklund, are published here for the first time any-where.

Despite the relative sparseness of their output to date, Effinger, Dozois, and Eklund have all been spoken of as potential winners of science fiction's highest awards for literary achievement. This book is a showcase for their talents, and the high quality of these three short novels will provide great reading pleasure and excitement.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• And Us, Too, I Guess - novella by George Alec Effinger
• Chains of the Sea - novella by Gardner Dozois
• The Shrine of Sebastian - novella by Gordon Eklund

The crew of the XV-ftl was looking forward to shore leave, vacation, and a chance to see their families after a month in space. But once they brought back the news that they had discovered aliens, they were doomed to another, and longer, journey. Accompanying them on the return were several technical experts, who seemed to be more interested in squabbling with each other than meeting the first alien race in the history of humankind. But face to face with the blue humanoid Norglans, everyone began to realise just how important these first meetings could be - for they could make the difference between peaceful coexistence in space and interstellar war!

A thousand years in the future, the earth has been conquered by an alien race and covered by a single sea. Dovirr Stargan, who is disgusted with the servility of his life on the floating city of Vythain, longs to become one of the Sea-Lords, who roam the sea as powerful protectors of the cities. Dovirr gets his wish, but the return of the alien race brings unexpected and critically dangerous crises to his new life as he learns the real, sometimes terrible, significance of power.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1969) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Shark Ship - (1958) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth (variant of Reap the Dark Tide)
• Polity and Custom of the Camiroi - (1967) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Coming-of-Age Day - (1965) - shortstory by A. K. Jorgensson
• Heresies of the Huge God - (1966) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Streets of Ashkelon - (1962) - shortstory by Harry Harrison
• The Totally Rich - (1963) - novelette by John Brunner
• Impostor - (1953) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• Road to Nightfall - (1958) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World - (1968) - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• Psychosmosis - (1966) - shortstory by David I. Masson
• The Cage of Sand - (1962) - novelette by J. G. Ballard
• A Deskful of Girls - (1958) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• On the Wall of the Lodge - (1962) - novelette by James Blish and Virginia Kidd
• Masks - (1968) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• Keepers of the House - (1956) - shortstory by Lester del Rey
• Journey's End - (1957) - shortstory by Poul Anderson

This short story originally on Omni Online, December 1996, and was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1997. It can also be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Immortals (1998), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Phases of the Moon (2004), The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades (2012), and Hot Times in Magma City: 1990-95 (2013).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Gundersen returned to Holman's World seeking atonement for his harsh years as colonial governer. But now this lush, exotic planet of mystery was called by its ancient name of Belzagor, and it belonged once again to its native alien races, the nildoror and the sulidoror. Drawn by its spell, Gundersen began a harrowing pilgrimage to its mist-shrouded north, to witness a strange ritual rebirth that would alter him forever.

David Selig was born with an awesome power - the ability to look deep into the human heart, to probe the darkest truths hidden in the secret recesses of the soul. With reckless abandon, he used his talent in the pursuit of pleasure. Then, one day, his power began to die...

Dying Inside is a vivid, harrowing portrait of a man who squandered a remarkable gift, of a superman who had to learn what it was to be human.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1975) - essay by Robert Silverberg and Roger Elwood
• ARM - (1975) - novella by Larry Niven
• Angel of Truth - (1975) - novelette by Gordon Eklund
• Mazes - (1975) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• For All Poor Folks at Picketwire - (1975) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Growing Up in Edge City - (1975) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Durance - (1975) - shortstory by Ward Moore
• The Ghost of a Model T - (1975) - novelette by Clifford D. Simak
• Planet Story - (1975) - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
• Graduation Day - (1975) - shortstory by W. Macfarlane
• Timetipping - (1975) - shortstory by Jack Dann
• Encounter with a Carnivore - (1975) - shortstory by Joseph Green
• Lady Sunshine and the Magoon of Beatus - (1975) - novella by Alexei Panshin and Cory Panshin
• "...For a Single Yesterday" - (1975) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• Bloodstream - (1975) - shortstory by Lou Fisher
• Existence - (1975) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• Interface - (1975) - novella by A. A. Attanasio
• Blooded on Arachne - (1975) - novelette by Michael Bishop
• Leviticus: In the Ark - (1975) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Cambridge, 1:58 A.M. - (1975) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Run from the Fire - (1975) - novelette by Harry Harrison
• Waiting for the Universe to Begin - (1975) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• But Without Orifices - (1975) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• Aimez-Vous Holman Hunt? - (1975) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• Nightbeat - (1975) - shortstory by Neal Barrett, Jr.
• Uneasy Chrysalids, Our Memories - (1975) - shortstory by John Shirley
• The Dogtown Tourist Agency - (1975) - novella by Jack Vance

The universe of the mind is a limitless expanse of wonders, filled with worlds and secrets that cannot be fully explored within the pages of a single novel. Avid readers of science fiction have long appreciated the myriad joys of returning to fictional galaxies already experienced; delighting in the ever-unfolding mysteres of Frank Herbert's Dune or Asimov's Foundation series, for example.

In Far Horizons--edited by acclaimed author Robert Silverberg-- a veritable "Who's Who" of science fiction's most beloved and highly honored writers once again revisit the remarkable worlds they created and made famous.

Ursula K. Le Guin sends representatives of the Ekumen into the violent later years of a planetary civil war. Dan Simmons once again billiantly mixes allegory and space adventure in his dangerous, religion-dominated cosmos of Hyperion. Greg Bear reexplores his artificial universe, "The Way", from Eon, Eternity and Legacy.

Orson Scott Card recounts the momentous first meeting of his time-and-planet-hopping protagonist Ender Wiggin with Ender's computer based, soon to be companion, Jane.Gregory Benford rockets us back to the Galactic Center, Anne McCaffrey's Ship Who Sang sings again, and Joe Haldeman's Forever War rages on eternally. Here, also, are new stories by David Brin, Nancy Kress, Frederik Pohl, and Robert Silverberg himself--each venturing further into univestigated corners of familiar galaxies to delve into the perilous mystery of being human.

Perhaps the greatest concentration of science fiction talent ever in one volume, Far Horizons is an unprecedented masterpiece -- one that reopens vast empires of imagination and adventure to new explorations and appreciations. It is a major SF event, sure to bring unparalleled joy to the hearts of serious fans everywhere.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Old Music and the Slave Women - novella by Ursula K. Le Guin
• A Separate War - novelette by Joe Haldeman
• Investment Counselor - novelette by Orson Scott Card
• Temptation - novella by David Brin
• Getting to Know the Dragon - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Orphans of the Helix - novelette by Dan Simmons
• Sleeping Dogs - novelette by Nancy Kress
• The Boy Who Would Live Forever - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• A Hunger for the Infinite - novelette by Gregory Benford
• The Ship That Returned - novelette by Anne McCaffrey
• The Way of All Ghosts - novelette by Greg Bear

First-Person Singularities, stories by science fiction Grand Master Robert Silverberg, features eighteen tales written over the course of his forty-year career, all told in the first-person singular. Inspired by W. Somerset Maugham's Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular, a fiercely realist collection from the 1930s, Silverberg takes on the challenge, offering up his own unique sci-fi twist and "running the gambit of singularity."

Every story in First-Person Singularities offers a one-of-a-kind narrator: a dolphin feeling the pangs of love for a human being; a computer eager to convince us of its sanity; a Greek god who has surreptitiously survived into modern times; an alien visitor living in disguise in a New York City hotel. Even a pudgy, timid Henry James gets the Silverberg treatment as the witness/narrator of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds! Each story features a special introduction by Silverberg himself, providing the inside scoop on his experience writing for and publishing with the greatest science fiction magazines of the past and present.

Table of Contents

• The "I"s of Robert Silverberg - essay by John Scalzi
• Foreword - essay
• Ishmael in Love - (1970) - short story
• Going Down Smooth - (1968) - short story
• The Reality Trip - (1970) - short story
• The Songs of Summer - (1956) - short story
• The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James - (1996) - novelette
• Push No More - (1972) - novelette
• House of Bones - (1988) - short story
• Call Me Titan - (1997) - novelette
• Our Lady of the Sauropods - (1980) - short story
• There Was an Old Woman - (1958) - short story
• The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV - (1974) - short story
• Caliban - (1972) - short story
• Passengers - (1968) - short story
• Now Plus N, Now Minus N - novelette
• The Iron Star - (1987) - novelette
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame - (1973) - short story
• The Secret Sharer - (1987) - novella
• To See the Invisible Man - (1963) - short story

This Nebula Award-winning short story originally appeared in the anthology Universe 1 (1971), edited by Terry Carr., and can also be found in:

• Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (1972), edited by Lester del Rey
• Nebula Award Stories Seven (1973), edited by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
• The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer

It is also included in the collections:

• Unfamiliar Territory (1973)
• The Best of Robert Silverberg (1976)
• Beyond the Safe Zone (1986)
• Something Wild is Loose: 1969-72: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Vol. 3 (2008)

PRISONER'S BASE...

Hawksbill Station, in the gray and utterly barren Cambrian era, was the ideal prison enclave for an authoritarian government too civilized to execute men for subversion, and too cowardly to allow them freedom. A billion years of impassable time was sufficient insulation for even the most dangerous ideas. But this exile was a ticket to despair and madness, with death the only pardon...

Then a newcomer dropped form the one-way time transit device that had deposited them all here---a man who knew nothing of the world he had come from and found out too much of the world he was in...

The stranger bore a threat to the very existence of HAWKSBILL STATION.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, August 1967. The story can also be found in the anthologies Best SF: 1967 (1968), edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss, World's Best Science Fiction: 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, and Criminal Justice Through Science Fiction (1977), edited by Martin Harry Greenberg, Joseph D. Olander. It is included in the collections The Reality Trip and Other Implausibilities (1972), The Best of Robert Silverberg (1976) and To the Dark Star: 1962-69 (2007). Is is half of Tor Double #26: Press Enter/Hawksbill Station (1990). The novella was eventually expanded to the full novel Hawksbill Station (1968).

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction, November 1983 and was published as a chapbook that same year. The story can also be found in the anthology The 1984 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. It is included in the collections Pluto in the Morning Light (1992), The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992), Sailing to Byzantium (2000) and The Palace at Midnight: 1980-82: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Vol. 5 (2010).

This short story originally appeared in Playboy, February 1990. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (2015), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Several decades into the future, the long series of corporate and government decisions that favored short-term profit over long-term solutions to ecological problems and polution has left the Eath in a state of disaster, almost uninhabitable. The icecap have melted and many coastal communities have been flooded out. The ozone layer is destroyed. There are some areas that are livable with breathing masks and injections that protect the skin from the now-deadly rays of the sun but the refuge, for all who can afford it, has become the near-space orbital colonies built and run by private companies and open only to those who are willing and able to pay.

Valparaiso Nuevo is one of these colonies. Run by a shadowy dictator known only as the Generalissimo, it is haven and a center of action for hustlers, conspirators and people looking for an edge. Victor Farkas, operative of the megacorporation Kyocera-Merck Ltd., is blind but gifted with hypersensitive "blindsight." He comes to the habitat in search of a renegade geneticist of legendary skill. Back on Earth, Nick Rhodes, head of Samurai Industries, which is attempting to breed humans that can thrive in the horrendous conditions expected to prevail on Earth struggles with his conscience as he manipulates genetic structures and lives. Paul Carpenter works for a Japanese mega-corporation, seeking promotion and survival, but loses his job as a ship captain after a mutiny. Rhodes introduces him to an acquaintance of his girlfriend Isabelle. Jolanda is a talented sculptor, a passionate lover and a secret plotter. She embroils Carpenter in a scheme to take over Valparaiso Nuevo along with Enron, an Israeli spy, Farkas, and Rhodes. Their goals are individually motivated but the deadly combination of ambition, distrust, greed, stupidity, and lust leads to a dramatic conclusion that replicates in miniature the history of man's destruction of his own living space on the planet. A bleak picture of future Earth and a complex plot peopled with dark, rich characters, comes together as one of Silverberg's finer novels.

This novella originally appeared in Omni Online, May 1995, and was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, Mid-December 1995. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection Hot Times in Magma City: 1990-95 (2013).

This short story originally appeared in Terry's Universe (1988), edited by Beth Meacham. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection (1989), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias (1994), edited by Kim Stanley Robinson. The story is included in the collections The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992) Multiples: 1983-87 (2011) and First-Person Singularities (2017).

Science fiction legend Robert Silverberg reflects on some of his earliest, least-reprinted tales in this new Planet Stories collection! Between 1956 and 1958, Silverberg contributed dozens of short stories and novellas to the digest pulps, each written in the bombastic, high-adventure style of the original Planet Stories magazine. Since then, those tales have re-appeared only rarely (and sometimes never again) in long out-of-print paperback anthologies.

This volume, the first of three to come this year, features seven hard-to-find classic Silverberg novellas:

• Slaves of the Star Giants
• Spawn of the Deadly Sea
• The Flame and the Hammer
• Valley Beyond Time
• Hunt the Space-Witch!
• The Silent Invaders
• Spacerogue

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Introduction to In Another Country - (1990) - essay
• In Another Country - (1989) - novella
• The Way to Spook City - (1992) - novella
• They Hide, We Seek - (1990) - novella
• This Is the Road - (1973) - novella

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Infinity Two (1971), edited by Robert Hoskins. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #1 (1972), edited by Terry Carr, and Modern Science Fiction (1974), edited by Norman Spinrad. The story is included in the collections The Reality Trip and Other Implausibilities (1972), Unfamiliar Territory (1973), Beyond the Safe Zone (1986) and Something Wild is Loose: 1969-72 (2008).

This story originally appeared in Ace Double D-286 in 1958. It was expanded from the novella We, the Marauders (1958).

Earth's colony on Ganymede is under attack. The people of Earth demand reprisal, and the United Nations must take action to protect the interests of the people.

But Ted Kennedy is worried. He has been to Ganymede and seen the "people"; and knows a truth too terrifying to reveal. Only he can convince the leaders of Earth that they are victims of a hoax. His life may be forfeit, but he is determined to live long enough to stop the INVADERS FROM EARTH

The village of Jespodar nestles in the foothills of a world-dominating mountain known to all as "The Wall." Poilar Crookleg has grown up in Jespodar training hard and hoping that he will be chosen for the annual Pilgrimage, a group journey to the top of the mountain from which no pilgrim has ever returned both alive and sane. The pilgrims seek to replicate the legendary journey of a distant ancestor who scaled the mountain and, so the story goes, met with the gods. The Pilgrimage is a a life journey, an overwhelming challenge and a sacred honor and Poilar feels blessed when he is finally chosen to lead it.

But not all is as it first seems. Along the journey lie hazards of all kinds, both vilently dangerous and seductively beguiling and to triumph in the climb is to confront a revelation so surprising and so disturbing that none, not even the smartest and best prepared, are likely to survive. What belief and what devotion leads so many to hope for such a challenging task and what will be the ultimate result of such dedication? Only The Wall itself can reveal the destiny for those who undertake the Pilgrimage.

Meet the exotic, the unknown, and the almost-real in this thrilling new fantasy series for children called Dragonflight. In Letters fromAtlantis, two young time travelers cross the mellenia to the year 18,862 B.C., in the form of electrical impulses, to study the civilization of the fabled realm of Atlantis. Black-and-white illustrations.

Originally appeared in Ace Double D-237 in 1957.

Global overcrowding, a new immortality serum and an unfriendly alien ambassador are only a few of the problems confronting Roy Walton, government's new Master of Life and Death in Robert Silverberg's early and accomplished novel. Praised by a distinguished critic, Anthony Boucher, for "its complete clarity and narrative drive" the novel retains its power today.

Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Counter Foil - (1964) - novelette by George O. Smith
• A Bad Day for Sales - (1953) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• Without a Thought - [Berserker (Fred Saberhagen)] - (1963) - short story by Fred Saberhagen
• Solar Plexus - (1941) - short story by James Blish
• The Macauley Circuit - (1956) - short story by Robert Silverberg
• But Who Can Replace a Man? - (1958) - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• Instinct - (1952) - short story by Lester del Rey
• The Twonky - (1942) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• The Hunting Lodge - (1954) - novelette by Randall Garrett
• With Folded Hands - [Humanoids] - (1948) - novelette by Jack Williamson

Table of Contents:

• A Happy Day in 2381 - (1970) - shortstory
• After the Myths Went Home - (1969) - shortstory
• Passengers - (1968) - shortstory
• To Be Continued - (1956) - shortstory
• Nightwings - (1968) - novella
• We Know Who We Are - (1970) - shortstory
• The Pleasure of Their Company - (1970) - novelette
• The Songs of Summer - (1956) - shortstory
• A Man of Talent - (1966) - shortstory
• Collecting Team - (1956) - shortstory
• Going Down Smooth - (1968) - shortstory

This short story originally appeared in Omni, October 1983. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Fifth Omni Book of Science Fiction (1987), edited by Ellen Datlow, and Dying for It: More Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992) and Multiples: 1983-87 (2011).

In a major science fiction event, Nebula Award winners Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nancy Kress, and Frederik Pohl join forces--under the editorship of Robert Silverberg--to create a triumph of world-building: Murasaki, a science fiction novel in six parts. Murasaki is completely based in hard science and what we know of the Murasaki star system--which actually exists.

Authors Poul Anderson and Frederik Pohl painstakingly constructed the working mechanics of a real star system, projecting the atmosphere, geology, chemistry, flora, and fauna of the two planets on which the work is set. They and four more of America's best science fiction authors--known for their "hard" speculative fiction--used Pohl and Anderson's essays (included as appendixes to this book) as source material to create this amazing story of the earliest human explorations of the twenty-third century--an epic tale of discovery, conflict, and resolution told by the masters of imaginative writing.

Murasaki, star HD 36395... where the gristmill of Darwinism produced two vastly different alien ecologies on two closely revolving planets, circling each other since scouring lightning storms stirred them to life billions of years ago. The two planets are Genji, violent and reckless, filled with a variety of winged life; and Chujo, a cooling world of ancient, crumbling cities, slowly going through its glacial death throes. Both planets are host to intelligences that are strange in ways Man can only guess at...and the planets have an eerie connection that will soon come to fruition after the first human explorers arrive. Exceeding light-speed for twenty years and decelerating by plasma exhaust drive, the first ship bearing humans arrives at Murasaki. The wealth, pride, and future of nations depend upon the outcome as the first contact team sets foot on a Murasaki-system world--while the hope of mankind, a planet capable of supporting human life, awaits the first explorer to touch the strangely colored alien soil....

Contains:

• Introduction (Murasaki) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Treasures of Chujo - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• Genji - novelette by David Brin
• Language - novelette by Poul Anderson
• World Vast, World Various - novella by Gregory Benford
• A Plague of Conscience - novelette by Greg Bear
• Birthing Pool - novelette by Nancy Kress
• Appendix A: Design for Two Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Poul Anderson
• Appendix B: Murasaki's Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Frederik Pohl

Presenting acclaimed essays from one of contemporary science fiction's most imaginative wordsmiths, this collection shows that Robert Silverberg's nonfiction is as witty and original as his fiction and full of acute observations and matter-of-fact insights. Whether he is discussing science fiction, history, cultural effects, science, or writing, Silverberg is always exploring new territories. As in his fiction, no cultural icon escapes his scrutiny, including fellow writers such as Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, H. P. Lovecraft, and Isaac Asimov. Delightfully wicked commentaries on the concepts of thoughtcrimes, space exploration, the ancient Antikythera Computer, and the universal translator in science fiction fill these essays, many of which were originally published as columns in Asimov Science Fiction magazine.

Table of Contents:

• The Pain Peddlers (1963)
• Passport to Sirius (1958)
• Birds of a Feather (1958)
• There Was an Old Woman-- (1958)
• The Shadow of Wings (1963)
• Absolutely Inflexible (1956)
• His Brother's Weeper (1959)
• The Sixth Palace (1965)
• To See the Invisible Man (1963)
• The Iron Chancellor (1958)

This short story originally appeared in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, July 1982 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2012. It can also be found in the collections The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1984) and The Palace at Midnight: 1980-82 (2010).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Capturing a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of science fiction, this unique autobiography by Robert Silverberg shows how famous stories in this genre were conceived and written. Chronicling his career as one of the most important American science fiction writers of the 20th century, this account reveals how he rose to prominence as the pulp era was ending—and the genre was beginning to take on a more sophisticated tone—to eventually be named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Stating that this will be his only autobiographical work, Silverberg's book includes rare photos, ephemera from his own archives, and a complete bibliography of his works, from novels and short story collections to nonfiction.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Omni, September 1980. The story can aslo be found in the anthologies The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1982), edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr, and The Fourth Omni Book of Science Fiction (1985) edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collections The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1984), The Palace at Midnight: 1980-82 (2010) and First-Person Singularities (2017).

Table of Contents:

• The Man Who Never Forgot - (1958) - short story
• Ishmael in Love - (1970) - short story
• One-Way Journey - (1957) - novelette
• Sunrise on Mercury - (1957) - short story
• The Outbreeders - (1959) - short story
• Road to Nightfall - (1958) - novelette
• Going Down Smooth - (1968) - short story
• Counterpart - (1959) - novelette
• Flies - (1967) - short story
• The Fangs of the Trees - (1968) - novelette

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 4 (1968), edited by Damon Knight. The story can also be found in the Nebula Award Stories Five (1970), edited by James Blish, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume III (1981), edited by Arthur C. Clarke and George W. Proctor, The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981), edited by Barry N. Malzberg, Martin H. Greenberg and Bill Pronzini, The Best of the Nebulas (1989), edited by Ben Bova, and Foundations of Fear: An Exploration of Horror (1992), edited by David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collections The Cube Root of Uncertainty (1970), Moonferns and Starsongs (1971), The Best of Robert Silverberg (1976), Phases of the Moon (2004), and To the Dark Star: 1962-69: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Vol. 2 (2007).

A collection of Silverberg's best short fiction, as selected by the author.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• The 1950s: Introduction - essay
• Road to Nightfall - (1958) - novelette
• The Macauley Circuit - (1956) - short story
• Sunrise on Mercury - (1957) - short story
• Warm Man - (1957) - short story
• The 1960s: Introduction - essay
• To See the Invisible Man - (1963) - short story
• Flies - (1967) - short story
• Passengers - (1968) - short story
• Nightwings - (1968) - novella
• Sundance - (1969) - short story
• The 1970s: Introduction - essay
• Good News from the Vatican - (1971) - short story
• Capricorn Games - (1974) - novelette
• Born with the Dead - (1974) - novella
• Schwartz Between the Galaxies - (1974) - novelette
• The 1980s: Introduction - essay
• The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve - (1982) - novelette
• The Pope of the Chimps - (1982) - short story
• Needle in a Timestack - (1983) - short story
• Sailing to Byzantium - (1985) - novella
• Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another - (1989) - novelette
• The 1990s: Introduction - essay
• Hunters in the Forest - (1991) - short story
• Death Do Us Part - (1996) - short story
• Beauty in the Night - (1997) - novelette
• The 2000s: Introduction - essay
• The Millennium Express - (2000) - short story
• With Caesar in the Underworld - (2002) - novella

Identical twins Sean and Eric have been chosen for a daring experiment. One of them will travel into the distant past. The other into the distant future. But each swing of the time pendulum means they will be further and further apart Will the experiment work? And if it does, will the twins ever meet again?

It was the supreme irony. Humanity, apparently, feared being Recalled To Life more than it deared death itself. When Harker joined the little group of scientists, he didn't realize the problems he would face. Their discovery made it possible to revive corpses to full, healthy life. They thought the world would welcome it as the greatest boon of all time. Instead, the world fought them, bitterly and savagely. Bewildered, they could find no way to fight back. The problem was Harker's to solve, and there seemed to be only one answer... Harker himself had to die!

Nearly twenty years ago Robert Silverberg began writing a monthly column of opinion and commentary, for Galileo Magazine, Amazing Stories, and then for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Now he has chosen the liveliest and most relevant of his hundreds of magazine columns for the present collection. They constitute a vivid chronicle of events both in science fiction and the world in general over the past two decades.

Robert Silverberg is one of the great veterans of fantasy and science fiction. During the course of a career that has now stretched across more than forty years, he has written dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them considered classics of the genre. He has won more major award nominations than any other writer in his field, and no less than nine Hugo and Nebula awards, the key s-f/fantasy trophies. His books have been translated into some eighteen languages and his short stories have appeared in every science-fiction and fantasy magazine in the world, as well as in Omni, Playboy, and Penthouse.

With a mighty twist, the Space Ship Carden lunges into overdrive and shoots out into space. Ahead lies Alpha C IV, eerie world of three suns. But the Carden arrives on Alpha C right in the thick of a revolution against Earth. Treason! Then young cadet Larry Stark finds himself caught up in the revolution... on both sides!

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Introduction: The Making of a Science-Fiction Writer - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Four in One - (1953) - novelette by Damon Knight
• Four in One: Complications, With Elegance - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Fondly Fahrenheit - (1954) - novelette by Alfred Bester
• Fondly Fahrenheit: Who Am I, Which Are You? - essay by Robert Silverberg
• No Woman Born - (1944) - novelette by C. L. Moore
• No Woman Born: Flowing from Ring to Ring - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Home Is the Hunter - (1953) - short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Home Is the Hunter: The Triumph of Honest Roger Bellamy - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Monsters - (1953) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• The Monsters: Don't Forget to Kill Your Wife - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Common Time - (1953) - short story by James Blish
• Common Time: With All of Love - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Scanners Live in Vain - (1950) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Scanners Live in Vain: Under the Wire with the Habermans - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Hothouse - (1961) - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss
• Hothouse: The Fuzzypuzzle Odyssey - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The New Prime - (1951) - novelette by Jack Vance
• The New Prime: Six Plots for the Price of One - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Colony - (1953) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• Colony: I Trusted the Rug Completely - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Little Black Bag - (1950) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Little Black Bag: Press Button for Triple Bypass - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Light of Other Days - [Slow Glass] - (1966) - short story by Bob Shaw
• Light of Other Days: Beyond the Radius of Capture - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Day Million - (1966) - short story by Frederik Pohl
• Day Million: A Boy, a Girl, a Love Story - essay by Robert Silverberg
• For Further Reading - essay by Robert Silverberg

Their hotel was beautifully situated, high on the northern slope of the huge artificial mound known as the paneium that was sacred to the goat-footed god. From here they had a total view of the city: the wide noble boulevards, the soaring obelisks and monuments, the palace of Hadrian just below the hill, the stately and awesome Library, the temple of Poseidon, the teeming marketplace, the royal lodge that Mark Antony had built after his defeat at Actium. And of course the Lighthouse, the wondrous many-windowed Lighthouse, the seventh wonder of the world, that immense pile of marble and limestone rising in majesty at the end of its mile-long causeway. Black smoke from the beacon-fire ar its summit curled lazily into the sky. The city was awakening.

It looked like the past, on Earth. But times had changed...and changed...and changed.

There were ghosts and chimeras and phastasies everywhere about. A burly thick-thighed swordsman appeared on the porch of the temple of Poseidon holding a Gorgon's severed head and waved it in a wide arc, grinning broadly. In the street below the hotel gate, three small pink sphinxes, no bigger than housecats, stretched and yawned and began to prowl the curbside. A larger one, lion-sized, watched warily from an alleyway: their mother, surely. Even at this distance he could hear her loud purring....

The world's most distinguished author of the literature of the fantastic presents his most extraordinary stories of worlds lost and dreams fulfilled...

In his illustrious forty-five year career as a novelist and author of short fiction, Robert Silverberg has belonged in the company of the best writers of the 20th century. His writing has been compared to Conrad, Huxley, and Orwell.

In this definitive collection Silverberg presents the novellas that have won him multiple Hugo and Nebula Award nominations, including his Nebula Award winning achievement, "Sailing To Byzantium." Here are the virtuoso performances of the third phase of Silverberg's astounding career: the Nebula Award nominee "Homefaring"; the Hugo Award nominee "The Secret Sharer"; "Thomas The Proclaimer" and "We Are For The Dark."

If you are a lover of Silverberg's work or are simply looking for a place to begin a relationship with the literature of science fiction and fantasy, this is the place to start.

Table of Contents

• Sailing to Byzantium (1985)
• Homefaring (1983)
• Thomas the Proclaimer (1972)
• We Are for the Dark (1988)
• The Secret Sharer (1987)

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Stellar #1 (1974), edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey and was reprinted in Lightspeed, April 2013. The story is included in the collections The Feast of St. Dionysus (1975), Beyond the Safe Zone (1986), Phases of the Moon (2004), Trips: 1972-73 (2009) and The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades (2012).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Clay is a man from the 20th Century who is somehow caught up in a time-flux and transported into a distant future. The earth and the life on it have changed beyond recognition. Even the human race has evolved into many different forms, now co-existing on the planet. The seemingly omnipotent Skimmers, the tyrannosaur-like Eaters, the sedentary Awaiters, the squid-like Breathers, the Interceders, the Destroyers - all of these are "Sons of Man". Befriended and besexed by the Skimmers, Clay goes on a journey which takes him around the future earth and into the depths of his own soul. He is human, but what does that mean?

Yakoub was once the legendary King of the Rom, the Gypsy race that has evolved from the days of caravans into lords of the spaceways - the only pilots capable of steering ships safely between the many worlds of the Galaxy. Weary and proud, Yakoub has relinquished his power and lives in exile on a distant, icy world. In his absence, chaos fills the vacuum of power. The fate of the entire Galactic Empire hangs in the balance. Yakoub must journey across the cosmos and fight to regain his throne. Only then can he fulfil his dream - to return his people to their ancestral home of Romany Star. The Rom need the Yakoub of legend once more. Can the once-mighty King overcome time and tyranny and inspire his people in their darkest hour?

Is utopia a death sentence for mankind?***Does living in a perfect world destroy all that makes us human?***Fifty men and women, living perfect lives, decide to give it all up to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.***Equipped with enough genetic material to populate a new planet, these fifty set out to travel to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, with their only link to home a fragile telepathic bond between a blind crew member and her sister back home.***Starborne is a thoughtful, introspective look by one of the Grand Masters of Science fiction at what it means to be human and to live a life of meaning.

The Lexman Spacedrive gave man the stars - but at a fantastic price.

Interstellar exploration, colonisation, and trade became things of reality. The benefits to Earth were enormous but, because of the Fitzgerald Contraction, a man who shipped out to space could never live a normal life on Earth again. Travelling at speeds close to that of light, spacemen lived at an accelerated pace. A nine-year trip to Alpha Centauri and back seemed to take only six weeks to men on a spaceship. When they returned, their friends and relatives had aged enormously in comparison, old customs had changed, even the language was different.

Alan was a spacer, just like his whole family - until, suddenly and without intending to, he in turn jumped ship and remained on Earth. There were times he regretted that. Earth was a bewildering and utterly hostile place. To stay alive, he had to play a ruthless game - and he couldn't even find anyone to tell him the rules....

Appeared in Ace Double D-311 (1958).

What do you do when your planet is under threat from aliens, you have travelled light years to make contact with Earth (after 500 years of silence) and you then find no-one cares? A classic novel by the Hugo and Nebula award winner.

Contents:

• 7 - Sundance - (1969) - short story
• 26 - Neighbor - (1964) - short story
• 44 - Passport to Sirius - (1958) - short story
• 60 - Caught in the Organ Draft - (1972) - short story
• 76 - The Pain Peddlers - (1963) - short story
• 76 - Neutral Planet - (1957) - short story
• 108 - The Overlord's Thumb - (1958) - novelette
• 135 - The Outbreeders - (1959) - short story
• 150 - Something Wild Is Loose - (1971) - novelette

Originally appeared in Ace Double D-223 in 1957.

THE SECRET OF THE FORBIDDEN CONTINENT

What happens when men become immortal? Can living forever become boring? What happens to you when you see your lovers, wives and even children grow old and die and you continue in a status that defies aging? Life upon a planet divided into twelve grids wherein each section has its Immortal or Duke and seems to be tranquil and well-organized. How is it that a 13th immortal becomes known and challenges the stability and ways of the other twelve rulers?

"Who was your father?" the mutant asked Dale Kesley. And try as he might, Kesley could not remember: his past was an utter blank. But he knew one thing-the answer to his life's riddle lay in Antarctica, the once frozen continent, now an earthly paradise surrounded by an impenetrable barrier.

But how to get there? The only means of transportation were the spindly six-legged mutant horses. And it was suicide for Kesley to travel on the American continents. Two immortal dictators had set king-size rewards for his capture--dead or alive. But somewhere in the two continents there was someone who would help him, someone he had to find. The future of the world depended on his success.

A fascinating, well-written novel of life upon an earth of the future.

This short story originally appeared in Playboy, June 1984. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985) and Killing Me Softly: Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love (1995), both edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Pluto in the Morning Light (1992), The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992), and The Palace at Midnight: 1980-82 (2010).

It Was The Worst of Times...

Fifteen feet tall, the Entities land in cities across Earth. Ignoring humankind, they wall themselves in impenetrable enclaves, enslaving a few willing collaborators with their telepathic PUSH. Then they plunge humans into a new Dark Age without electricity, allowing us to live--but no longer as a dominant species.

But a few refuse to submit to fate, including the Carmichael family, whose patriarch, an aging colonel devoted to resistance, will inspire a daring new generation of dissidents. United in spirit, these diverse rebels--an aging hippie, a cold-blooded Muslim assassin, a prodigal son, and a renegade hacker--will carry on the colonel's legacy as they attempt to kill the mysterious Prime Entity and free the planet.

Seeking the immortality promised in an ancient manuscript, The Book of Skulls, four friends, college roommates, go on a spring break trip to Arizona: Eli, the scholar, who found and translated the book; Timothy, scion of an American dynasty, born and bred to lead; Ned, poet and cynic; and Oliver, the brilliant farm boy obsessed with death.

Somewhere in the desert lies the House of Skulls, where a mystic brotherhood guards the secret of eternal life. There, the four aspirants will present themselves–and a horrific price will be demanded.

For immortality requires sacrifice. Two victims to balance two survivors. One by suicide, one by murder.

Now, beneath the gaze of grinning skulls, the terror begins....

Three complete novels of mystery in space from Grand Master Robert Silverberg explode back into print for the first time in decades in this thrilling new Planet Stories collection! These extremely scarce tales originally appeared in the legendary Ace Double novel series, and represent a future multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author bridging the explosive, action-oriented science fiction adventures of the early pulps with more introspective themes of the new wave that swept sci-fi in the 1960s. In The Chalice of Death, a human from the far edge of space must track down the legendary planet that birthed his race tens of thousands of years ago. For the legends hold that the long-forgotten Earth holds the Chalice of Life, and the Chalice of Life holds immortality! In Starhaven, interplanetary fugitive Johnny Mantell flees authorities to the artificial pirate world known as Starhaven, sanctuary for the criminals and misfits of space. There he finds a new home for himself - as well as questions about his past, his future, and his identity! In Shadow on the Stars, deep space colonist Baird Ewing returns to Earth for the first time in the thousand years since his ancestors first departed, seeking aid against the aliens who seek to destroy his colony. But the weapon he finds upon the ancient Earth can save only one planet, and Ewing must choose between his two home worlds.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• The Chalice of Death - (1957)
• Starhaven - (1958)
• Shadow on the Stars - (2002)

Collection of Short Stories written from 1980 to 1982.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve - (1982) - novelette
• The Pope of the Chimps - (1982) - novelette
• The Changeling - (1982) - shortstory
• The Man Who Floated in Time - (1982) - shortstory
• The Palace at Midnight - (1981) - shortstory
• A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa - (1981) - novelette
• At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party - (1982) - shortstory
• Our Lady of the Sauropods - (1980) - shortstory
• Gianni - (1982) - shortstory
• The Trouble with Sempoanga - (1982) - shortstory
• How They Pass the Time in Pelpel - (1981) - shortstory
• Waiting for the Earthquake - (1981) - novelette
• Not Our Brother - (1982) - novelette
• The Regulars - (1981) - shortstory
• Jennifer's Lover - (1982) - shortstory
• Needle in a Timestack - (1983) - shortstory

Here, on the imagination of three young women writers, the reader is invited to visit the worlds of the future, where wonders and horrors await him. Take the title story, for instance, "The Crystal Ship" by Vinge, which tells of a tired old planet, torn between the decadent, dying, drug-soaked Star People, and the vibrant young animals who are their heirs.

Or consider little Redsun, of McIntrye's "Screwtop." A steaming, black-and-red planet, it boasts the toughest prison in the galaxy, where three ill-assorted beings learn to love and struggle for life.

And then there is the planet of the Taebish, as depicted by Randall, in "The City of Stone - a primitive world where men fight with spears for supremacy over one another. It should be easy for the advanced Terrans to invade and rape the land of its mineral riches, leaving desolation behind, shouldn't it? But it wasn't, for one of their own kind, also despoiled, was there to foil them.

Edited by Robert Silverberg, himself a prize-winning writer of science fiction, this trio of novellas gains insight and freshness from the youth and femininity of its authors and strength and power from their professionalism.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1976) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Crystal Ship - (1976) - novella by Joan D. Vinge
• Megan's World - (1976) - novella by Marta Randall
• Screwtop - (1976) - novella by Vonda N. McIntyre

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Passengers - (1968) - short story
• Double Dare - (1956) - short story
• The Sixth Palace - (1965) - short story
• Translation Error - (1959) - short story
• The Shadow of Wings - (1963) - short story
• Absolutely Inflexible - (1956) - short story
• The Iron Chancellor - (1958) - novelette
• Mugwump Four - (1959) - novelette
• To the Dark Star - (1968) - short story
• Neighbor - (1964) - short story
• Halfway House - (1966) - short story
• Sundance - (1969) - short story

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The King's Dogs - novella by Phyllis Gotlieb
• In the Blood - novella by Glenn Chang
• Acts of Love - novella by Mark J. McGarry

Robert Silverberg's The Emperor and the Maula was written in 1992 for an aborted publishing project and has been printed only once, in a radically abbreviated version. This deluxe new edition restores more than 15,000 words of missing text, allowing us to see, for the first time, the author's original intent. The result is both a genuine publishing event and an unexpected gift for Silverberg's legion of readers.

The Emperor and the Maula is Silverberg's Scheherazade tale, the story of a woman telling a story in order to extend--and ultimately preserve--her life. The Scheherazade of this striking story is Laylah Walis, denizen of a far-future Earth which has been invaded and conquered by a star-faring race known as the Ansaarans. Laylah is a "maula," a barbarian forbidden, under pain of death, to set foot on the sacred home worlds of the imperial conquerors. Knowing the risks, Laylah travels to Haraar, home of the galactic emperor himself. Once there, she delays her execution by telling the emperor a story--and telling it well.

That story, the tale within a tale that dominates this book, is, in fact, Laylah's own story. It is also the story of the beleaguered planet Earth, of people struggling, often futilely, to oppose their alien masters and restore their lost independence.

It is the year 2450. Humanity is scattered among the stars, which teem with intelligent life, while the home world has been destroyed by an inadvertent catastrophe two hundred years before. Thus all Earthmen are exiles, and Earth itself is only a memory. Hydros is a world of great complexity. It has almost no landmass, only a great globe-encompassing ocean with occasional tiny islands. Its seas swarm with apparently intelligent life-forms of a hundred kinds, and one - a bipedal humanoid form - has created a kind of land for itself: floating islands, woven from sea-borne materials, buffered by elaborate barricades against the ceaseless tidal surges that circle the planet. To Hydros have come an assortment of Earthmen. For them it's a world of no return: having no form of outbound space transportation. This brilliantly inventive novel tells their story, as they travel across the planet's endless ocean in search of the mysterious area from which no human has ever returned - the Face of the Waters.

Not to be confused with The Fantasy Hall of Fame published in 1998. This anthology has an almost entirely different table of contents.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Masque of the Red Death - (1842) - short story by Edgar Allan Poe
• An Inhabitant of Carcosa - (1886) - short story by Ambrose Bierce
• The Sword of Welleran - (1908) - short story by Lord Dunsany
• The Woman of the Wood - (1926) - novelette by A. Merritt
• The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan - (1932) - short story by Clark Ashton Smith
• The Valley of the Worm - (1934) - novelette by Robert E. Howard
• Black God's Kiss - (1934) - novelette by C. L. Moore
• The Silver Key - (1929) - short story by H. P. Lovecraft
• Nothing in the Rules - (1939) - novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• A Gnome There Was - (1941) - short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Snulbug - (1941) - short story by Anthony Boucher
• The Words of Guru - (1941) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• Homecoming - (1946) - short story by Ray Bradbury
• Mazirian the Magician - (1950) - novelette by Jack Vance
• O Ugly Bird! - (1951) - short story by Manly Wade Wellman
• The Silken-Swift - (1953) - short story by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Golem - (1955) - short story by Avram Davidson
• That Hell-Bound Train - (1958) - short story by Robert Bloch
• Kings in Darkness - (1962) - novelette by Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorn
• Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes - (1967) - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• Gonna Roll the Bones - (1967) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973) - short story by Ursula K. Le Guin

Not to be confused with The Fantasy Hall of Fame (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg. The two anthologies have almost completely different tables of contents.

The authoritative companion and follow-up to the acclaimed Science Fiction Hall of Fame acknowledges the importance of fantasy to modern literature, and enshrines the 30 favorite short stories of all time.

Chosen by popular ballot among the 1000 professionals who make their living creating America's bestselling dreams, these are the undisputed classics: The unforgettable stories that influenced and shaped the imagination at work in the field today.

Here are the stories that shaped the shapers. Here are the stories that will live forever.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Fantasy Hall of Fame) - (1996) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Trouble with Water - (1939) - shortstory by H. L. Gold
• Nothing in the Rules - (1939) - novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• Fruit of Knowledge - (1940) - novelette by C. L. Moore
• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius - (1961) - shortstory by Jorge Luís Borges (trans. of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius 1940)
• The Compleat Werewolf - (1942) - novella by Anthony Boucher
• The Small Assassin - (1946) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• The Lottery - (1948) - shortstory by Shirley Jackson
• Our Fair City - (1949) - shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein
• There Shall Be No Darkness - (1950) - novelette by James Blish
• The Loom of Darkness - (1950) - shortstory by Jack Vance
• The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles - (1951) - shortstory by Margaret St. Clair
• The Silken-Swift - (1953) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Golem - (1955) - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• Operation Afreet - (1956) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• That Hell-Bound Train - (1958) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• The Bazaar of the Bizarre - (1963) - novelette by Fritz Leiber (variant of Bazaar of the Bizarre)
• Come Lady Death - (1963) - shortstory by Peter S. Beagle
• The Drowned Giant - (1964) - shortstory by J. G. Ballard
• Narrow Valley - (1966) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Faith of Our Fathers - (1967) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• The Ghost of a Model T - (1975) - novelette by Clifford D. Simak
• The Demoness - (1976) - shortstory by Tanith Lee
• Jeffty Is Five - (1977) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• The Detective of Dreams - (1980) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Unicorn Variations - (1981) - novelette by Roger Zelazny (variant of Unicorn Variation)
• Basileus - (1983) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• The Jaguar Hunter - (1985) - novelette by Lucius Shepard
• Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1987) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Bears Discover Fire - (1990) - shortstory by Terry Bisson
• Tower of Babylon - (1990) - novelette by Ted Chiang

Contains:

• The Feast of St. Dionysus
• Schwartz Between the Galaxies
• Trips
• In the House of Double Minds
• This is the Road

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by uncredited
• The Fall of the House of Usher - (1839) - novelette by Edgar Allan Poe
• Green Tea - (1869) - novelette by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Damned Thing - (1893) - short story by Ambrose Bierce
• The Yellow Sign - (1895) - novelette by Robert W. Chambers
• The Monkey's Paw - (1902) - short story by W. W. Jacobs
• The White People - (1904) - novelette by Arthur Machen
• The Willows - (1907) - novella by Algernon Blackwood
• Casting the Runes - (1911) - novelette by M. R. James
• The Graveyard Rats - (1936) - short story by Henry Kuttner
• Pigeons from Hell - (1938) - novelette by Robert E. Howard
• It - (1940) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• Smoke Ghost - (1941) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper - (1943) - short story by Robert Bloch
• The Small Assassin - (1946) - short story by Ray Bradbury
• The Whimper of Whipped Dogs - (1973) - short story by Harlan Ellison
• Calling Card - (1982) - short story by Ramsey Campbell
• Coin of the Realm - (1981) - short story by Charles L. Grant
• The Reach - (1981) - short story by Stephen King
• Biographical Notes - essay by uncredited

In the course of his extraordinary--and prolific--career, Robert Silverberg has made an enormous contribution to imaginative literature. In The Last Song of Orpheus, his longest story in more than a decade, Silverberg has given us one of his most remarkable accomplishments, a resonant recreation of one of the central myths of western civilization.

In this mesmerizing narrative, Orpheus--wanderer, demigod, and master musician--recounts his own astonishing story. That story ranges from the depths of the Underworld, where he attempts to rescue his beloved but doomed Eurydice, to the farthest, most dangerous corners of the ancient world, where he journeys in search of the legendary Golden Fleece. It is a tale of men and gods, of miraculous encounters, of the binding power of inescapable Fate. More than that, it is a meditation on the power of the creative spirit, and on the eternal human search for balance and harmony in a chaotic universe. Beautifully constructed and masterfully written, The Last Song of Orpheus is Silverberg at his incomparable best, showing us a deeply familiar series of scenes, themes, and characters from a fresh, wholly original perspective.

"What wonders and adventures he has to tell us," is how Ursula K. LeGuin characterized the world of Robert Silverberg, and in The Longest Way Home, he takes readers on another dazzling odyssey.

Joseph, just fifteen and alone in the land known at Getfen, awakens to an attack on the Great House in which he is visiting. Narrowly escaping with his life but still pursued by enemies who wish to see him killed, Joseph must journey across a dark, unfamiliar world in his quest to return to his home of Helikis... and his father. He has thousands of miles to travel and much to learn, about this perilous alien world in transition, and about himself.

Vornan-19 fell from the sky, naked, and landed on the Spanish steps in Rome on Christmas afternoon toward the end of the Millennium. And for Leo Garfield things would never be the same. For he is an acknowledged expert in the time reversal properties of sub-atomic particles... and Vornan-19 claims to come from far in the future. Whether or not he is telling the truth, a nervous and edgy world accepts the charming and magnetically charismatic Vornan as some kind of messiah. Even Garfield and his fellow scientists fall under Vornan's spell. But, has he really traveled across time -- or is he just a charlatan and a fraud?

This short story originally appeared in Playboy, January 2000. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 6 (2001), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collections Phases of the Moon (2004), The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades (2012), and The Millennium Express: 1995-2009 (2014).

In a dark near-future, global warming and a ruined ecology is causing the continents to sink into the oceans just as the towers of Atlantis re-emerge above the sea.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1975) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Silhouette - (1975) - novella by Gene Wolfe
• The New Atlantis - (1975) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• A Momentary Taste of Being - (1975) - novella by James Tiptree, Jr.

This short story originally appeared in Playboy, June 1987. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edited by Gardner Dozois, The 1988 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Arthur W. Saha and Donald A. Wollheim, and Hackers (1996), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann. The story is included in the collections The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992) and Multiples: 1983-87 (2013).

In The Planet Killers, the Security Computers of Earth Central determine that the frontier world of Lurion will launch an all-out attack on Earth in 67 years, sending Agent Roy Gardner to the rough-and-tumble planet to ensure that doesn't happen - even if it means blowing Lurion to interstellar dust! In The Plot Against Earth, agent Lloyd Catton must work with skeptical, suspicious alien agents to bust a hypnojewel racket, unveiling a multi-planet conspiracy threatening the Earth itself! In One of Our Asteroids is Missing, independent miner John Storm discovers an impossible asteroid rich with fabulously valuable metals and minerals, only to find his claim stolen, along with all computer records indicating that he had ever existed! Never before reprinted since their original appearances and with a new introduction by the author, these three novels of science fiction adventure blaze back onto the scene, revealing early masterworks of one of the genre's most gifted and celebrated storytellers!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• The Planet Killers - (1959)
• The Plot Against Earth - (1959)
• One of Our Asteroids Is Missing - (1964)

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appreaed in the anthology Perpetual Light (1982), edtied by Alan Ryan. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #12 (1983), edited by Terry Carry, The Nebula Awards #18 (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg, Sacred Visions (1991), edited by Michael Cassutt and Andrew M. Greeley, and Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1984), Phases of the Moon (2004) and The Palace at Midnight: 1980-82: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Vol. 5 (2010).

Table of Contents:

• In Entropy's Jaws - (1971) - novelette
• The Reality Trip - (1970) - shortstory
• Black Is Beautiful - (1970) - shortstory
• Ozymandias - (1958) - shortstory
• Caliban - (1972) - shortstory
• The Shrines of Earth - (1957) - shortstory
• Ringing the Changes - (1970) - shortstory
• Hawksbill Station - (1967) - novella

Manhattan 2012: Nat Hamlin's brilliant career as an artist came to an end the day he went insane and embarked on a murderous rampage ... his sentence: Total Personality Replacement. Lissa loved Nat for his passion, now she loves him again--but as Paul Macy--for his warmth and kindness. Now each personality wants her help in battling the other, for with her Power, the man she chooses can kill the other. Lissa is terrified. She has to send one of her loves to his destruction. If she chooses the wrong man, the horror will never end.

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella.

Written as a tribute to the classic Joseph Conrad story of the same name. It's the starship captain's first voyage. He didn't need this kind of trouble.

The story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September 1987 and was released as a chapbook the following year. It can also be found in the collections The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992), Sailing to Byzantium (2000), Multiples: 1983-87: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Vol. 6 (2011) and First-Person Singularities (2017).

Originally appeared in Ace Double F-145 (1962).

The computer had chosen them - a small cross-section of humanity to serve Mankind's Destiny. Out of seven billion people on Earth mechanical chance had selected them as involuntary colonists on an unknown planet. In seven days they would be on their way, on a sink-or-swim mission to a lonely world beyond the limits of the Solar System.

It was a summons each had privately dreaded, yet always been prepared for. But no one had prepared them for the vicious attacks of sinister aliens...

Expanded from the 1958 novella of the same name. The novel appeared in Ace Double F-195 (1963).

Abner Harris was sent to Earth on a mission of extreme urgency: the universe was in danger of enslavement by the pebble-skinned Medlins, and the fight against them called for Harris to assume the disguise of a flesh-and-blood Earthman.

But once in that new synthetic body, he discovered that the real villains of space were not the Medlins or the people of Earth; THEY WERE HIS OWN KIND.

Suddenly he was alone, alienated from his own race, hated by the Medlins, and an imposter on Earth. No matter what side he chose he'd be a traitor.

Yet choose he must... or forever remain a man without a planet.

Lew Nichols is in the business of stochastic prediction. A mixture of sophisticated analysis and inspired guesswork, it is the nearest man can get to predicting the future. And Nichols is very good at it. So good that he is soon indispensable to Paul Quinn, the ambitious and charismatic mayor of New York whose sights are firmly set on the presidency. But there is nothing paranormal about stochastic prediction: Nichols can't actually see the future. However, Martin Carvajal apparently can and he offers to help Nichols do so too. It's an offer Nichols can't resist, even though he can clearly see the devastating impact that knowing in advance every act of his life has on Carvajal. For Carvajal has even seen his own death.

ROBERT SILVERBERG confronts the paradoxes of time travel in a brilliant novel of the 25th century, when the only escape from suffocation in a totally controlled environment is to hop backward through time. Since time hopping rearranges the past on which the structure of current existence is based, it must be stopped - but not too quickly. For the history of the 1970's includes the arrival of hoppers who have not yet left the 2490's - and whose departure thus must not be stopped!

Earth 2381: The hordes of humanity have withdrawn into isolated 1000-story Urbmons, comfortably controlled multicity-buildings which perpetuate an open culture of free sex and unrestricted population growth. Nearly all of Earth's 75 billion live in the hundreds of monolithic structures scattered across the globe, with the exception of the small agricultural communes that supply the Urbmons with food. When a restless Urbmon computer engineer begins to think unblessworthy thoughts of making a trip outside, he risks being labeled a flippo, for whom there is only one punishment.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, October-November 1970. There are no other known publications but the story was incorporated in the fix-up novel The World Inside (1971).

Duncan Chalk's six-hundred-pound frame is nearly as large as his media empire. Beneath the depths of his immense rolls of flab, the fabulously wealthy mogul wields the editorial power to deliver his programming across the solar system to billions of viewers. His newest real-life romance drama is between a starman who survived painful surgical experimentation while in alien captivity, and an emotionally scarred 17-year-old virgin. When the arranged relationship takes off on a whirlwind tour of the antarctic and out to the moons of Saturn, the viewers are swept up in the romance, but Chalk's true motives are revealed when the doomed relationship begins to unravel... and Chalk can feed on the emotional anguish of the two lost souls.

'The explosion was painfully bright against the dark backdrop of the moonless New Mexico sky. To those who looked up at that precise moment - and there were many who happened to look up - it was as though a new star had momentarily blossomed in blue-white incandescence.' Only three human beings would ever know that the blinding flash in the sky on that night in 1982 was an exploding flying saucer. Only they would learn the truth about THOSE WHO WATCH - about the alien observers who came into this world in a crash landing from the stars. THOSE WHO WATCH is the strange, seductive story of three accidental colonists from outer space whose chance encounter with Earth brought revelation to three earthly counterparts - and triggered interplanetary conflict. It is a remarkable story by one of science fiction's most remarkable writers.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Threads of Time) - (1974) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Threads of Time - (1974) - novella by Gregory Benford
• The Marathon Photograph - (1974) - novella by Clifford D. Simak
• Riding the Torch - (1974) - novella by Norman Spinrad

TIME AND TIME AGAIN: Sixteen Trips in Time by beloved science fiction Grand Master ROBERT SILVERBERG presents of all his best time travel fiction in one stunning collection. Silverberg introduces this new collection with a new essay praising early sci-fi icons that left a lasting impression on him as a young boy and launched his sixty-year voyage in time travel fiction. Over the course of his career, Silverberg expanded time travel's incredible world of freedom and mystery and delivered imaginative and intriguing stories that are hailed globally.

Tales in TIME AND TIME AGAIN include: a marriage destroyed by a time travelling rival, a human waking up in the mind of a lobster after being sent to the future, and a Silverbergian touch to the age-old story of getting an advance peek at the next day's newspaper. Each story additionally features new introductions and anecdotes by Silverberg that recount his experiences writing for the greatest science fiction magazines of the past and present.

TIME AND TIME AGAIN reaffirms Silverberg's mastery of not only the science fiction genre, but its most ubiquitous theme.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Time and Time Again) - essay
• Absolutely Inflexible - (1956) - short story
• Needle in a Timestack - (1983) - short story
• Trips - (1974) - novelette
• Many Mansions - (1973) - novelette
• Homefaring - (1983) - novella
• What We Learned from This Morning's Newspaper - (1972) - short story
• Hunters in the Forest - (1991) - short story
• Jennifer's Lover - (1982) - short story
• Sailing to Byzantium - (1985) - novella
• Breckenridge and the Continuum - (1973) - novelette
• The Man Who Floated in Time - (1982) - short story
• Gianni - (1982) - short story
• The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve - (1982) - novelette
• Dancers in the Time-Flux - (1983) - short story
• Hawksbill Station - (1967) - novella
• Against the Current - (2007) - short story

2650 AD The Earth has been buried beneath a sheet of ice for 300 years. In cities miles beneath the surface humanity huddles, waiting for release. Dr. Raymond Barnes waits with passion, and listens daily for evidence of life on the still Earth. Finally, a voice from across the void hails his open frequency . . . the surface awaits mankind. But not all men are anxious to return to what was . . . those in power are determined to keep man in his new place, to retain their order of fear and oppression. Barnes and his courageous group of scientists and adventurers are arrested for possession of forbidden technology; the radio is destroyed! Their punishment is swift ejection from the underground city, their only hope is to reach London - 3000 desolate miles across a frozen wasteland!

First published in 1969, this novel by one of the most prolific authors in the history of science fiction explores an idea that is truly "far out." Imagine a future world where death is not exactly the end. You can record everything about you that ever made you a distinct human being and then be implanted in the mind of someone living.

Paul Kaufmann had been the richest and most powerful man on Earth. Imagine having his knowledge and insights integrated with your own persona. The tycoon's mind becomes the prize in a deadly game for those still living who want more out of life than they could ever achieve on their own.

The great man's "soul" is stored in the Scheffing Institute, waiting for the time when someone hungry enough gives him back his appetite. Silverberg extrapolates as only he can from this intriguing premise. "To Live Again" is about a future where the dead are slaves to the living--until at last someone leads a rebellion.

Table of Contents:

• About Robert Silverberg - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Old Man - (1957) - shortstory
• New Men for Mars - (1957) - novelette
• Collecting Team - (1956) - shortstory
• Double Dare - (1956) - shortstory
• The Overlord's Thumb - (1958) - novelette
• Ozymandias - (1958) - shortstory
• Certainty - (1959) - shortstory
• Mind for Business - (1956) - shortstory
• Misfit - (1957) - shortstory

"I know more than Apollo
Fort oft when he lies sleeping
I behold the starts at mortal wars
And the wounded wekin weeping."
--Tom O' Bedlam's song

Tom, like the medieval Tom O'Bedlam, can't decipher the meaning of the images plaguing his mind. Much like the wondering and mad Tom of the medieval ballad, the Tom O' Bedlam of 2103 doesn't know what to make of the images that keep cluttering his mind. To preserve the last shred of his sanity and keep these never-ending wonders a secret, he feigns insanity. But then a probe that has traveled over four light years away transmits the very pictures that have been haunting Tom's dreams.

In this post-industrial world on the verge of a total collapse, Tom has become humanity's spokesperson to the distant planet that may be his world's salvation.

Simeon Krug has a vision--and the vast wealth necessary to turn dream into reality. What he wishes is to communicate with the stars, to answer signals from deep space. The colossal tower he's constructing for this purpose soars above the Arctic tundra, and the seemingly perfect androids building it view Krug as their god. But, Krug is only flesh-and-blood, and when his androids discover the truth, their anger knows no bounds... and it threatens much more than the tower.

Hugo-nominated Related Work

In addition to exploring Silverberg's career, now in its sixth decade, this collection of transcribed conversations delves into aspects of Silverberg's life -- such as his extensive travel, passion for film, opera and classical music -- not covered elsewhere.

A decade-and-a-half-long friendship, and working together on When the Blue Shift Comes, afforded Alvaro the opportunity to speak at length with Silverberg. The result: a remarkably candid series of conversations that will be of interest to science fiction readers and anyone curious about the writing life.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Gardner Dozois
• The Vividness of Landscape
• Aesthetics
• In the Continuum
• Enwonderment
• Libraries
• Potpourri
• After the Myths Went Home
• Afterword: Travels With Bob by Karen Haber

This short story originally appeared in Amazing Stories, Summer 1999 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2010. The story can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams. It is included in the collection The Millennium Express: 1995-2009 (2014).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1977) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• An Infinite Summer - (1976) - novelette by Christopher Priest
• The King's Wishes - (1953) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• Manna - (1949) - novelette by Peter Phillips
• The Long Remembering - (1957) - short story by Poul Anderson
• Try and Change the Past - (1958) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• Divine Madness - (1966) - short story by Roger Zelazny
• Mugwump 4 - (1959) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Secret Rider - (1976) - novelette by Marta Randall
• The Seesaw - (1941) - short story by A. E. van Vogt

Table of Contents:

• Caught in the Organ Draft - (1972) - shortstory
• {Now + n, Now - n} - (1972) - novelette
• Some Notes on the Pre-Dynastic Epoch - (1973) - shortstory
• In the Group - (1973) - shortstory
• Caliban - (1972) - shortstory
• Many Mansions - (1973) - novelette
• Good News from the Vatican - (1971) - shortstory
• Push No More - (1972) - novelette
• The Mutant Season - (1973) - shortstory
• When We Went to See the End of the World - (1972) - shortstory
• What We Learned from This Morning's Newspaper - (1972) - shortstory
• In Entropy's Jaws - (1971) - novelette
• The Wind and the Rain - (1973) - shortstory

Being a Time Courier was one of the best jobs Judson Daniel Elliott III ever had. It was tricky, though, taking group after group of tourists back to the same historic event without meeting yourself coming or going. Trickier still was avoiding the temptation to become intimately involved with the past and interfere with events to come. The deterrents for any such actions were frighteningly effective. So Judson Daniel Elliott played by the book. Then he met a lusty Greek in Byzantium who showed him how rules were made to be broken... and set him on a family-history-go-round that would change his past and his future forever!

Valley Beyond Time- Four shattering excursions out of this worls, into the future and beyond the furthest reaches of imagination. -where men are but flies to gods unknown, where weapons that don't exist cand kill, where honor can be the deadliest of virtues and where man lives in terror of ever-encouching youth.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1973) - essay
• Valley Beyond Time - (1957) - novella
• The Flame and the Hammer - (1957) - novella
• The Wages of Death - (1958) - novelette
• Spacerogue - (1958) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1967) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Sands of Time - (1937) - novella by P. Schuyler Miller
• ... and It Comes Out Here - (1951) - short story by Lester del Rey
• Brooklyn Project - (1948) - short story by William Tenn
• The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - (1958) - short story by Alfred Bester
• Time Heals - (1949) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Wrong-Way Street - (1965) - short story by Larry Niven
• Flux - (1963) - novelette by Michael Moorcock and Barrington J. Bayley
• Dominoes - (1953) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• A Bulletin from the Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Research at Marmouth, Mass. - (1964) - short story by Wilma Shore
• Traveler's Rest - (1965) - short story by David I. Masson
• Absolutely Inflexible - (1956) - short story by Robert Silverberg
• The Time Machine [Chapter XI, XII--part] - (1895) - short story by H. G. Wells

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story.

A parody of the end-of-the-world theme in which time travel allows Nick, Jane and their friends to witness the final apocalypse. As a group of friends gather for Mike and Ruby's party, each couple boasts about their recent trip to the end of the world: a new holiday service available from travel agents at tremendous expense. But as the time-tourists compare their experiences, they soon realise they have not all witnessed the same end of the world.

The story was originally published in the anthology Universe 2 (1972), edited by Terry Carr. It has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #2 (1972), edited by Terry Carr
• Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Collection (1973), edited by Lester del Rey
• Nebula Award Stories Eight (1973), edited by Isaac Asimov
• The Mammoth Book of the End of the World (2010), edited by Mike Ashley
• Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (2015), edited by John Joseph Adams

As well as the collections

• Unfamiliar Territory (1973)
• Beyond the Safe Zone (1986)
• The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Three: Something Wild Is Loose: 1969-72 (2008)

Across Time

Chasing mysterious celestial phenomena was part of Zack's air force duties, so it wasn't strange that he was assigned in his brother's experiment.

Invaders From Earth

Genocide on a small planet

Vital radioactive minerals are found on the tiny planet of Ganymede. It looks like a bonanza for Earth, but massacre for the peaceful, harmless aliens who live there. So there's going to be an advertising campaign on Earth to cover up the systematic harrasment and destruction of this wise and simple people.

Just to dig up a few minerals.

Ted Kennedy's a small wheel in the massive propaganda machine. But he's sick of all the pitiless killing of the vulnerable Gannies. So he's out to stop the genocide that will make Men the space gangsters, the supervandals, the Invaders from Earth.

Collision Course

The crew of the XV-ftl was looking forward to shore leave, vacation, and a chance to see their families after a month in space. But once they brought back the news that they had discovered aliens, they were doomed to another, and longer, journey. Accompanying them on the return were several technical experts, who seemed to be more interested in squabbling with each other than meeting the first alien race in the history of humankind. But face to face with the blue humanoid Norglans, everyone began to realise just how important these first meetings could be - for they could make the difference between peaceful coexistence in space and interstellar war!

The Nemesis from Terra

Rick Urquhart was going to conquer the turmoil-ridden planet of Mars. He was penniless and unknown, but there could be no doubt that he would rule the Red Planet--the ancient Martian mystic had made the prophecy, there was no way fate could cheat him of his prize.

But there were powerful interests on both Earth and Mars who didn't believe in prophecies--and they were going to undo Rick's future before it had a chance to begin.

Conquerors from the Darkness

A thousand years in the future, the earth has been conquered by an alien race and covered by a single sea. Dovirr Stargan, who is disgusted with the servility of his life on the floating city of Vythain, longs to become one of the Sea-Lords, who roam the sea as powerful protectors of the cities. Dovirr gets his wish, but the return of the alien race brings unexpected and critically dangerous crises to his new life as he learns the real, sometimes terrible, significance of power.

Master of Life and Death

Global overcrowding, a new immortality serum and an unfriendly alien ambassador are only a few of the problems confronting Roy Walton, government's new Master of Life and Death in Robert Silverberg's early and accomplished novel. Praised by a distinguished critic, Anthony Boucher, for "its complete clarity and narrative drive" the novel retains its power today.

Invaders from Earth

Earth's colony on Ganymede is under attack. The people of Earth demand reprisal, and the United Nations must take action to protect the interests of the people.

But Ted Kennedy is worried. He has been to Ganymede and seen the "people"; and knows a truth too terrifying to reveal. Only he can convince the leaders of Earth that they are victims of a hoax. His life may be forfeit, but he is determined to live long enough to stop the INVADERS FROM EARTH

To Worlds Beyond

Collection containing:

• The Old Man - (1957) - shortstory
• New Men for Mars - (1957) - novelette
• Collecting Team - (1956) - shortstory
• Double Dare - (1956) - shortstory
• The Overlord's Thumb - (1958) - novelette
• Ozymandias - (1958) - shortstory
• Certainty - (1959) - shortstory
• Mind for Business - (1956) - shortstory
• Misfit - (1957) - shortstory

Master of Life and Death

Global overcrowding, a new immortality serum and an unfriendly alien ambassador are only a few of the problems confronting Roy Walton, government's new Master of Life and Death in Robert Silverberg's early and accomplished novel. Praised by a distinguished critic, Anthony Boucher, for "its complete clarity and narrative drive" the novel retains its power today.

The Secret Visitors

When the World Security Organization asked Doctor Lockhart to treat their mysterious prisoner, they hadn't known that the dying old man would reply to their questions in a totally unknown language. They had expected the stranger to reveal something about the world war which seemed imminent. But they had been thinking in terms of foreign spies - not alien beings!

Now suddenly they found themselves confronted with a Gargantuan task. They had to find a way to another world, a means of communicating with creatures they could barely imagine.

They had to stop a war which was originating in the farthest stars - or else surrender the Earth unconditionally to THE SECRET VISITORS.

Stepsons of Terra

What do you do when your planet is under threat from aliens, you have travelled light years to make contact with Earth (after 500 years of silence) and you then find no-one cares? A classic novel by the Hugo and Nebula award winner.

A Man Called Destiny

Suddenly he became the most valuable human in space.

The 13th Immortal

Who was your father the mutant asked Dale Kesley. And try as he might, Kesley could not remember; his past was an utter blank. But he knew one thing - the answer to his life's riddle lay in Antarctica, the once-frozen continent, now an earthly paradise surrounded by an impenetrable barrier. But how to get there?

The only means of transportation were the spindly six-legged mutant horses. And it was suicide for Kesley to travel on the American continents. Two immortal dictators had set king-size rewards for his capture - dead or alive! But somewhere in the two continents there was someone who would help him, someone he had to find. The future of the world depended on his success.

This Fortress World

William Dane is a man with a nasty but valuable secret, one that all the cutthroats in the galaxy are itching to get their hands on. Dane must perfect the art of concealing himself from the crazed factions yearning for the power that this secret can give.

Table of Contents:

• The Seed of Earth - (1962) - novel
• Slaves of the Star Giants - (1957) - novella
• The Songs of Summer - (1956) - shortstory
• Hopper - (1956) - novelette
• Blaze of Glory - (1957) - shortstory
• Warm Man - (1957) - shortstory

The Silent Invaders

Abner Harris was sent to Earth on a mission of extreme urgency: the universe was in danger of enslavement by the pebble-skinned Medlins, and the fight against them called for Harris to assume the disguise of a flesh-and-blood Earthman.

But once in that new synthetic body, he discovered that the real villains of space were not the Medlins or the people of Earth; THEY WERE HIS OWN KIND.

Suddenly he was alone, alienated from his own race, hated by the Medlins, and an imposter on Earth. No matter what side he chose he'd be a traitor.

Yet choose he must... or forever remain a man without a planet.

Battle on Venus

Earth's first spaceship to Venus landed amidst a war where strange weapons like the archaic ones used in the old wars on Earth in the twentieth century hurled shells at each other. But this war had lasted over a thousand years--and by remote control!

George Starkey had to find a way to stop the war before the little group of astronauts became early casualties. But how? Where were the headquarters of the contending sides and how do you tell a robot tank that you're neutral?

But George had an ally, a Venusian girl who thought stealing was virtuous--and, unknowingly, he had something else that turned out to be the most valuable substance on Venus--a box of chocolate bars!

At the beginning of the 22nd century, Earth colonies were established on Mars and Venus. But the ultimate dream - to travel to the stars - was still an impossibility. A few enlightened men believed that the Vorsters and the Harmonists could solve this seemingly insurmountable problem, if they could only forget their differences and work together.

We Claim These Stars!

All's fair in love and war--and with the galaxy split in conflict between two implacable confederations, anything ought to go. Still, how do you plan the ambush and capture of a tremendously capable telepath?

The intended victim, a weird genius from an uncharted world and the right arm of the enemy's general staff, not only knew everything everyone was thinking nearby, he could also read minds at a distance. So the problem posed to Dominic Flandry, Captain of Terran Intelligence, was a real killer.

To make matters worse, the telepath in question was equally interested in putting Flandry out of commission. The fate of many planets depended on which of the two triumphed.

The Planet Killers

Murder Mission to Betelgeuse IV

It was in wide-eyed horror that Roy Gardner heard the news from the Chief of Security. In just sixty-seven years the Earth would be destroyed by the planet Lurion.

That data had been compiled by the invincible computer. With unwavering faith in the machine, humans had only one thing to do--destroy Lurion first.

And the man for the job was Gardner. If he did it successfully the blood of billions would be on his hands; if he fouled up he would be the worst traitor in Terrestrial history. And not even he knew which course he would pursue when he finally learned that eben the all-wise machine had not known all the right answers.

The 13th Spacebourne is the elite fighting force of the Accord of Free Worlds. For decades, the Accord tried to keep out of the war that divided the galaxy. But now, they have no choice -- it's fight or die. And the soldiers of the 13th Spacebourne are "the lucky" ones chosen to do it.

Two enemy empires are poaching Free World planets. The Lucky 13th must "hold until relieved," delaying the actions of one empire while the Free Worlds' main fleet fights on another front. If their mission succeeds, the fleet will come and rescue them. If anything goes wrong, the unlucky fighters of the Lucky 13th are on their own...

Meet the soldiers of the "Lucky 13th"...

Colonel Stossen is the only commanding officer the "Lucky 13th" has ever had. He doesn't always like what he has to ask his men to do, but he always knows they'll do it -- or die trying.

Sergeant Joe Baerclau rarely shows any outward emotion, but when his gray eyes begin to smolder, his men know it's time to get out of his way or follow him into action.

Corporal Ezra Frain is a veteran at age twenty. The tall redhead has joined the 13th after helping fight off the enemy's invasion of his home planet. Now he's ready to give that enemy a taste of his own poison.

Private Mort Jaiffer is the "old man" of his squad at twenty-seven. A former college professor turned soldier, he turned down a chance at officer school to be a private.

Private Kam Goff had never seen combat before landing on Porter, but before the end of his first day on the ground, he'd seen enough to last him a lifetime.

The 13th Spacebourne is the elite fighting force of the Accord of Free Worlds. For decades, the Accord tried to keep out of the war that divided the galaxy. But now, they have no choice -- it's fight or die. And the soldiers of the 13th Spacebourne are the "lucky" ones chosen to do it.

The Accord's campaign to liberate Jordan from the Hegemony has stalled -- well short of its objectives. Most important is a secret lab behind enemy lines doing research that could decide the outcome of the war. The soldiers of the Lucky 13th have their assignment, to rescue the scientists and recover their results... and the boys know all too well that if they fail, nobody will be coming to rescue them.

The 13th Spacebourne is the elite fighting force of the Accord of Free Worlds. For decades, the Accord tried to keep out of the war that divided the galaxy. But now, they have no choice -- it's fight or die. And the soldiers of the 13th Spacebourne are the "lucky" ones chosen to do it.

Intelligence says the Hegemony is preparing a major invasion of the Accord planets. The only way to head off the invasion is prevent it -- by launching a crippling attack on the heavily defended planet where the Hegemony stockpiles ordnance. The Lucky 13th is chosen to spearhead the assault. Heavy casualties are expected. But the soldiers of the 13th don't just know the odds -- they know how to beat them!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1970) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Poor Little Warrior - (1958) - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Moon Moth - (1961) - novelette by Jack Vance
• Testament of Andros - (1953) - novelette by James Blish
• A Triptych - (1969) - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• For a Breath I Tarry - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• Game for Motel Room - (1963) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne - (1967) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• The Man Who Came Early - (1956) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• The Time of His Life - (1968) - short story by Larry Eisenberg
• The Doctor - (1967) - short story by Theodore L. Thomas
• Time Trap - (1948) - novelette by Charles L. Harness
• The Pi Man - (1959) - short story by Alfred Bester
• The Last Man Left in the Bar - (1957) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Terminal Beach - (1964) - novelette by J. G. Ballard

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Goodbye Amanda Jean - (1970) - short story by Wilma Shore
• A Man of the Renaissance - (1964) - novelette by Wyman Guin
• Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night - (1961) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• Faith of Our Fathers - (1967) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• That Share of Glory - (1952) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Men Return - (1957) - short story by Jack Vance
• The Voices of Time - (1960) - novelette by J. G. Ballard
• The Burning of the Brain - (1958) - short story by Cordwainer Smith
• The Shaker Revival - (1970) - novelette by Gerald Jonas

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Gift of Gab - (1955) - novella by Jack Vance
• Beyond Lies the Wub - (1952) - short story by Philip K. Dick
• Nine Hundred Grandmothers - (1966) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• Total Environment - (1968) - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss
• Day Million - (1966) - short story by Frederik Pohl
• Aristotle and the Gun - (1958) - novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• Under Old Earth - - (1966) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• The Shadow of Space - (1967) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• Come to Venus Melancholy - (1965) - short story by Thomas M. Disch
• Rescue Party - (1946) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1973) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Casablanca - (1967) - novelette by Thomas M. Disch
• Dio - (1957) - novelette by Damon Knight
• Eastward Ho! - (1958) - short story by William Tenn
• Judas Danced - (1958) - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• Angel's Egg - (1951) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• In His Image - (1971) - short story by Terry Carr
• All Pieces of a River Shore - (1970) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• We All Die Naked - (1969) - novelette by James Blish
• Carcinoma Angels - (1967) - short story by Norman Spinrad
• Mother - (1953) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• 5,271,009 - (1954) - novelette by Alfred Bester

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1974) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Star Pit - (1967) - novella by Samuel R. Delany
• Baby, You Were Great - (1967) - short story by Kate Wilhelm
• Live, from Berchtesgaden - (1972) - short story by George Alec Effinger
• As Never Was - (1944) - short story by P. Schuyler Miller
• We Can Remember It for You Wholesale - (1966) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• Yesterday House - (1952) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• A Man Must Die - (1966) - short story by John Clute
• The Skills of Xanadu - (1956) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• A Special Kind of Morning - (1971) - novelette by Gardner Dozois

Table of Contents:

• Introduction- essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Lost Continent - (1970) - novelette by Norman Spinrad
• Light of Other Days - (1966) - short story by Bob Shaw
• The Secret of the Old Custard - (1966) - short story by John Sladek
• Down Among the Dead Men - (1954) - novelette by William Tenn
• With These Hands - (1951) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• Short in the Chest - (1954) - short story by Margaret St. Clair
• Brown Robert - (1962) - short story by Terry Carr
• The Food Farm - (1967) - short story by Kit Reed
• An Honorable Death - (1961) - novelette by Gordon R. Dickson
• Man of Parts - (1954) - short story by H. L. Gold
• Painwise - (1972) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Dune Roller - (1951) - novelette by Julian May
• Shape - (1953) - novelette by Robert Sheckley
• Transfer Point - (1950) - novelette by Anthony Boucher
• A Galaxy Called Rome - (1975) - novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
• Rejoice, Rejoice, We Have No Choice - (1974) - short story by Terry Carr
• Orphans of the Void - (1952) - novelette by Michael Shaara
• The Luckiest Man in Denv - (1952) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• For Love - (1962) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• World War Two - (1973) - short story by George Alec Effinger
• The Night of Hoggy Darn - (1958) - novelette by Richard McKenna

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• A Dusk of Idols - (1961) - novelette by James Blish
• The Human Operators - (1971) - novelette by Harlan Ellison and A. E. van Vogt
• Think Only This of Me - (1973) - novelette by Michael Kurland
• The Short Ones - (1955) - novelette by Raymond E. Banks
• Warm - (1953) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• When the Change-Winds Blow - (1964) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• One Face - (1965) - novelette by Larry Niven
• The Man Who Lost the Sea - (1959) - short story by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Happiest Creature - (1953) - short story by Jack Williamson
• Klysterman's Silent Violin - (1972) - short story by Michael Rogers
• The New Reality - (1950) - novelette by Charles L. Harness

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Dumb Waiter - (1952) - novelette by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• The Monsters - (1953) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World - (1971) - short story by Philip José Farmer
• The Funeral - (1972) - novelette by Kate Wilhelm
• The Book - (1953) - novelette by Michael Shaara
• Dusty Zebra - (1954) - novelette by Clifford D. Simak
• Goodlife - (1963) - novelette by Fred Saberhagen
• Nobody's Home - (1972) - short story by Joanna Russ

MAN INVENTS

MAN DISCOVERS

MAN DEVELOPS

...AND MAN DESTROYS

Out of the innocence of discovery and that fulfilling moment when theory becomes a workable reality, a monstrous horror grows. Grows, multiplies, and degenerates until it reaches the ultimate terror.

Terror spawned in a laboratory intended to create a new generation that is stronger, brighter, and longer-lived.

Horror nurtured in a public relations office on the day the first interplanetary life is discovered.

Only such masters of science fiction as James Blush and Robert Silverberg could have brought such a startling reality to the havoc wreaked by a test tube and a conference table.

The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory -- she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.

But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology -- satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans -- all of them now simply scrambling to survive -- who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home.

"Am I a person?" Borne asked me.
"Yes, you are a person," I told him. "But like a person, you can be a weapon, too."

In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company--a biotech firm now derelict--and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.

One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump--plant or animal?--but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts--and definitely against Wick's wishes--Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.

"He was born, but I had borne him."

But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.

A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden.

Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth... all the Earths.

Borne in Blood is the landmark twentieth volume of the Saint-Germain cycle. Historically accurate, these deeply emotional novels have a devoted readership.

he year is 1817. In Switzerland, the Count has become intrigued by the work of an Austrian noble who is investigating the properties of blood, a subject always of key interest to a vampire. But when the noble's beautiful young ward fixates sexually on the Count, the vampire fears that it is his blood the Austrian will be most interested in!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber
• The Bones of the Earth - (2001) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Legerdemain - (2001) - novelette by Jack O'Connell
• Diving the Coolidge - (2001) - novelette by Brian A. Hopkins
• The Mould of Form - (2001) - shortstory by Rosemary Edghill
• Eternity and Afterward - (2001) - novella by Lucius Shepard
• Wolves Till the World Goes Down - (2001) - shortstory by Greg van Eekhout
• The Lady of the Winds - (2001) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Ave de Paso - (2001) - shortstory by Catherine Asaro
• Grass - (2001) - shortstory by Lawrence Miles
• Slipshod, at the Edge of the Universe - (2001) - shortstory by Robert Thurston
• Hell Is the Absence of God - (2001) - novelette by Ted Chiang

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg
• Our Friend Electricity - (2002) - novelette by Ron Wolfe
• King Rainjoy's Tears - (2002) - novelette by Chris Willrich
• Social Dreaming of the Frin - (2002) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Agamemnon's Run - (2002) - novelette by Robert Sheckley
• Creation - (2002) - shortstory by Jeffrey Ford
• The Face of an Angel - (2002) - novelette by Brian Stableford
• Dating Secrets of the Dead - (2002) - shortstory by David Prill
• Luck - (2002) - novelette by James Patrick Kelly
• The Majesty of Angels - (2002) - novelette by Robert Reed
• Ailoura - (2002) - novelette by Paul Di Filippo
• Mr. Gaunt - (2002) - novella by John Langan

When winter comes, the mutants gather...

They have always lived in the shadows, on the fringes of normal society. Ignored, shunned, they survived in their own invisible clans, using their extraordinary psychic abilities to shield themselves from the intolerance, bigotry, and hatred of the normals - until now...

The first mutant leader to emerge into the light of public life demanding equality has been savagely murdered. Finding her assassin has become the obsession of one courageous group of mutants. There is Michael, torn between loyalty to his clan and his love for a normal. Melanie, denied her mutant heritage by a cruel trick of genetic fate. And Jena, willing to use her psychic powers and mutant sexuality to get what she wants most.

As society faces the explosive implications of radical evolution and as inner rivalries threaten to tear the clan apart, the mutants must find a way to protect their identities, their lovers - and their very lives.

Cloaked in mist and layered in magic, the denizens of Moonshae Isles move in secret circles as capricious rulers vie for power.

High Lady Ordalf wanted her niece, the princess known as the Rose of Sarifal, dead. Instead, the young regent was secreted away by the high lady's opponents. For years the eladrin queen of Gwynneth Isle has searched for evidence of her niece's death, and word has finally come in the form of a castaway's tale. The princess lives on the island of Moray--a mad beauty who leads a nation of lycanthropes.

As long as her niece is alive, Lady Ordalf cannot rest secure in her claim to the throne. Enlisting a band of adventurers to seek out the princess is the first step toward stemming the Rose of Sarifal and her tide of wolves. Will those heroes see the same threat the queen sees in the beautiful young maiden?

In the twenty-first century, a battered world is ruled by a crafty old tyrant, Genghis II Mao IV Khan. The Khan is ninety-three years old, his life systems sustained by the skill of Mordecai Shadrach, a brilliant young surgeon whose chief function is to replace the Khan's worn-out organs. Within the vast tower-complex, the most advanced equipment is dedicated to three top-priority projects, each designed to keep the Khan immortal. Most sinister of these is Project Avatar, by which the Khan's mind and persona are to be transferred to a younger body.

Shadrach makes the unsettling discovery that it is his body that is to be used. His friends beg him to flee, but he refuses to panic.Instead, and with startling composure, he evolves a dangerous plan that could change the face of the earth or, if it backfires, mean the end of life.

"Shadrach in the Furnace" is at once a broad, sweeping novel and a harsh, abrasive, irreverent book about a life-and-death battle between two titans - one the epitome of evil, the other a paragon of idealism - in a society pushed to extremes.

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1986. The story can also be found in the anthologies Rebels in Hell (1986) edited by Janet Morris, and The New Hugo Winners, Volume II: (1986-88) (1992), edited by Isaac Asimov. It is included in the collection Multiples: 1983-87: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Vol. 6 (2011).

Gilgamesh's appetite for wine, women, and warfare is insatiable. As the King of Uruk, he oppresses his people and burdens his city. To temper his excesses, the gods create Enkidu, Gilgamesh's equal, who becomes his greatest friend. Together they wander the kingdom as brothers, conquering demons until a cruel twist changes Gilgamesh's path forever. Two parts god and one part man, Gilgamesh is mortal—a fate he now resolves to overcome, no matter what the price. And so he embarks on another journey, in pursuit of vengeance and the ultimate prize for a mortal king: eternal life.

Set in an Afterworld - where everyone who has ever lived reawakens when they die to live again and die again, seemingly for ever - this novel tells of the warrior-king Gilgamesh's journey in search of a gateway to the land of the living. Based on the author's novella "Gilgamesh in the Outback".

Acclaimed writer and editor Robert Silverberg gathered eleven of the finest writers in Fantasy to contribute to this collection of short novels. Each of the writers was asked to write a new story based on one of his or her most famous series: from Stephen King's opening piece set in his popular Gunslinger universe to Robert Jordan's early look at his famed Wheel of Time saga, these stories are exceptionally well written and universally well told. The authors include King, Jordan, and Silverberg himself, as well as Terry and Lyn Pratchett, Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey, and Raymond E. Feist.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Legends) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Dark Tower - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Little Sisters of Eluria - [Roland] - novella by Stephen King
• Discworld - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Sea and Little Fishes - [Discworld] - novelette by Terry Pratchett
• The Sword of Truth - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Debt of Bones - [Sword of Truth Universe] - novella by Terry Goodkind
• Tales of Alvin Maker - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Grinning Man - [The Alvin Maker Saga] - novelette by Orson Scott Card
• Majipoor - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Seventh Shrine - [Majipoor] - novella by Robert Silverberg
• Earthsea - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Dragonfly - [Earthsea Cycle] - novella by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Burning Man - [Memory, Sorrow & Thorn] - novelette by Tad Williams
• A Song of Ice and Fire - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Hedge Knight - [Dunk and Egg - 1] - novella by George R. R. Martin
• Pern - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Runner of Pern - [Dragonriders of Pern] - novella by Anne McCaffrey
• The Riftwar Saga - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Wood Boy - [Riftwar Universe] - novelette by Raymond E. Feist
• The Wheel of Time - essay by Robert Silverberg
• New Spring - [Wheel of Time] - novella by Robert Jordan

Fantasy fans, rejoice! Seven years after writer and editor Robert Silverberg made publishing history with Legends, his acclaimed anthology of original short novels by some of the greatest writers in fantasy fiction, the long-awaited second volume is here. Legends II picks up where its illustrious predecessor left off. All of the bestselling writers represented in Legends II return to the special universe of the imagination that its author has made famous throughout the world. Whether set before or after events already recounted elsewhere, whether featuring beloved characters or compelling new creations, these masterful short novels are both mesmerizing stand-alones--perfect introductions to the work of their authors--and indispensable additions to the epics on which they are based. Beyond any doubt, Legends II is the fantasy event of the season.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Legends II) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Realm of the Elderlings - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Homecoming - [Realms of the Elderlings] - novella by Megan Lindholm [as by Robin Hobb ]
• A Song of Ice and Fire - (1998) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Sworn Sword - [Dunk and Egg - 2] - novella by George R. R. Martin
• Alvin Maker - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Yazoo Queen - [The Alvin Maker Saga] - novella by Orson Scott Card
• Outlander - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Lord John and the Succubus - [Lord John Grey - 3] - novella by Diana Gabaldon
• Majipoor - (1998) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Book of Changes - [Majipoor] - novella by Robert Silverberg
• Otherland - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Happiest Dead Boy in the World - [Otherland] - novella by Tad Williams
• Pern - (1998) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Beyond Between - [Dragonriders of Pern] - novelette by Anne McCaffrey
• The Riftwar - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Messenger - novelette by Raymond E. Feist
• The Symphony of Ages - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Threshold - [The Symphony of Ages] - novella by Elizabeth Haydon
• American Gods - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Monarch of the Glen - [American Gods] - novelette by Neil Gaiman
• Shannara - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Indomitable - [Shannara] - novelette by Terry Brooks

The Long-Awaited Prequel!

A thousand years before Lord Valentine, the destiny of kings is hostage to sorcery and deceit.

On the planet Majipoor, it is a time of great change. The aged Pontifex Prankipin, who brought sorcery (and prosperity) to the Fifty Cities of Castle Mount, is dying. The Coronal Lord Confalume, who will become replacement is chosen. It is no secret that the next Coronal will be prince Prestimion.

Visited by an oracle, Korsibar has heard a prophecy that will plunge the planet into a fearsome conflagration and alter destiny itself: "You will shake the world!"

King of the world! Prestimion is Coronal Lord of Majipoor. The Starburst Crown is his at last.

The 30,000 rooms of the castle are crammed with eager guests and exotic gifts from the farthest corners of the largest and most wondrous planet in all the galaxy. Jubilation--not unmixed with greed and lust--sweeps through the Fifty Cities, which crowd the heights of the thirty-five-mile-high Castle Mount.

The coronation, its solemn ceremonies and bawdy delights, are Prestimion's to savor. Even love is possible again--a love that might replace the soaring passion he once knew. So why is he so sad? From whence this emptiness that darkens his soul like night?

Prestimion is burdened with a great secret, perhaps the greatest ever known. For he gained the throne through a bloody civil war, which stained the rivers crimson and strewed the fields with severed limbs. And yet it is a war no one remembers!

Prestimion swore an oath after his victory at Thegomar Edge. The war had left a scar upon the world--a scar he vowed to heal. With a phalanx of sorcerers, he invoked the awesome Spell of Oblivion and dropped it over his ravaged people like a cloak. Forgotten were the betrayals of Korsibar, the intrigues of the two-headed Su-Suheris, and the slaughter wrought by Dantirya Sambail at Mavestoi. It was as though the war had never been. Only Prestimion and two of his surviving comrades-in-arms remembered anything happened at all.

So how can Prestimion, now Coronal Lord of Majipoor, account for the devastation that still lies upon the land? How can he mourn the fallen sons and brothers who never died because they never existed? And most troubling, how can he bring to justice the kinsman who languishes in the dungeon because no one remembers his unforgivable crime?

Yet in this, his hour of triumph, Prestimion faces a rebellion far more insidious than war. When something, even sorrow, is taken away, something else rushes in to fill the void. In this case it is a global madness: a twisted violence that no ruler can control, no kingdom can keep away, and no love can long survive...

The years since first be gained the Starburst Crown have been difficult ones for Coronal Lord Prestimion and the vast, unfathoniable realm he rules. But finally peace has been restored to Majipoor. And now it is time for Prestimion to name the able Prince Dekkeret his succeeding Coronal and to descend to the Labyrinth as Pontifex. But a power from a dark past that both men believed was dead is stirring once again -- an evil more potent and devastating than either leader dares to remember.

Once, decades past, a then knight-initiate Dekkeret had his dreams stolen from him. His quest for recovery led him to a remarkable helmetthat could invade the psyches of sleeping foes, a device the newly anointed Coronal Prestimion later utilized to defeat his enemy Dantirya Sambail, tyrant of the continent Zimroel. In the fires of civil war, the terrible weapon was destroyed forever -- or so it was believed.

The noxious weed of rebellion was torn out at its roots but its seeds have borne frightening fruit. Dantirya Sambail is dead, and the hungry jackals who ran at his heels now scheme to recover his lost lands and power. At their head is the tyrant's former henchman Mandralisca -- a villain of great wiles and icy heart, who somehow has unleashed a devastating plague of the mind upon Prestimion's subjects, Dark visions are invading the sleep of those loyal to the Lords and the Lady of Majipoor -- soul-shattering scenes of madness and monstrosity, driving those inflicted to commit horrible, destructive acts. And the dark wave is flowing ever-closer to the throne, seeping beneath the doors of the 30,000 rooms of the towering edifice atop Castle Mount ... and into sacrosanct depths of the imperial Labyrinth itself.

A new campaign for the soul of Majipoor has been declared -- and its catastrophic opening salvos have been fired in silence and in mystery. Once again Prestimion and Dekkeret have been called onto the battlefield of nightmare. But this time it will be a war to the death against a foe greater than all who came before: the master of murderous shadows who aspires to be King of all.

Terminally ill salvage pilot Ash Jackson lost everything in the war with the alien Vai, but she'll be damned if she loses her future. Her plan: to buy, beg, or lie her way out of corporate indenture and find a cure. When her crew salvages a genocidal weapon from a ravaged starship above a dead colony, Ash uncovers a conspiracy of corporate intrigue and betrayal that threatens to turn her into a living weapon.

Natalie Chan gained her corporate citizenship, but barely survived the battle for Tribulation.

Now corporate has big plans for Natalie. Horrible plans.

Locked away in Natalie's missing memory is salvation for the last of an alien civilization and the humans they tried to exterminate. The corporation wants total control of both - or their deletion.

Mechanic and shapeshifter Mercy Thompson never knows what the next day (or night) may bring. After all, her world is inhabited by witches, werewolves, and vampires. But now a book of fae secrets has come to light, and Mercy's about to find out just how implacable-and dangerous- the fae can be.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1983) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Souls - (1982) - novella by Joanna Russ
• (Excerpt From) No Enemy But Time - (1982) - shortfiction by Michael Bishop
• The Pope of the Chimps - (1982) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Burning Chrome - (1982) - novelette by William Gibson
• Fire Watch - (1982) - novelette by Connie Willis
• Corridors - (1982) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Another Orphan - (1982) - novelette by John Kessel
• A Letter from the Clearys - (1982) - shortstory by Connie Willis
• Swarm - (1982) - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• The Nebula Winners, 1965-1981 - (1983) - essay by uncredited

Edited by the widely acclaimed SF author Robert Silverberg, the Nebula Awards series is "the pulse of modern science fiction" (The New York Times Book Review)

The Nebula Awards are the Academy Awards of science fiction, the finest works each year in the genre as voted by the members of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

The Nebula Awards anthology series has now reached its thirty-fifth year. This edition contains the complete award-winning texts by Ted Chiang, Mary A. Turzillo, Leslie What, and Octavia E. Butler (an excerpt from her novel The Parable of the Talents); a report on the field ("still inarguably dynamic") by Gary K. Wolfe; runner-up stories by David Marusek and Michael Swanwick; an early story by 2000 Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss; and 2000 Author Emeritus Daniel Keyes's account of how he wrote Flowers for Algernon.

In his introduction, editor Robert Silverberg looks back wryly at Damon Knight, the beginnings of SFWA, and the first Nebula banquets.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Nebulas at Century's End - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Story of Your Life - (1998) - novella by Ted Chiang
• Mars Is No Place for Children - (1999) - novelette by Mary A. Turzillo
• The Cost of Doing Business - (1999) - shortstory by Leslie What
• Parable of the Talents (epilogue) - (1998) - shortfiction by Octavia E. Butler
• Unhidden Agendas, Unfinished Dialogues: 1999 in Science Fiction - essay by Gary K. Wolfe
• The Wedding Album - (1999) - novella by David Marusek
• Radiant Doors - (1998) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• The Grand Master Award: Brian W. Aldiss - essay by Harry Harrison
• Judas Danced - (1958) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• Author Emeritus 2000: Daniel Keyes - essay by Barry N. Malzberg
• Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer's Journey - (2000) - essay by Daniel Keyes
• Confessions of a Body Thief - (1998) - poem by Bruce Boston
• egg horror poem - (1998) - poem by Laurel Winter
• Appendixes - essay by uncredited

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• A Special Kind of Morning - (1971) - novelette by Gardner Dozois
• The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World - (1971) - short story by Philip José Farmer
• At the Mouse Circus - (1971) - short story by Harlan Ellison
• Nobody's Home - (1972) - short story by Joanna Russ
• Eurema's Dam - (1972) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• f(x)=(11/15/67) x=her, f(x)!=0 - (1972) - short story by George Alec Effinger
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973) - short story by Ursula K. Le Guin
• They Live on Levels - (1973) - short story by Terry Carr
• Tell Me All About Yourself - (1973) - short story by F. M. Busby
• The Examination - (1974) - short story by Felix C. Gotschalk
• Find the Lady - (1975) - short story by Nicholas Fisk
• A Scarab in the City of Time - (1975) - short story by Marta Randall
• The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats - (1976) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• On the Air - (1976) - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• A Quiet Revolution for Death - (1978) - short story by Jack Dann
• When the Morning Stars Sing Together - (1978) - short story by Donnan Call Jeffers, Jr.
• Calibrations and Exercises - (1979) - short story by Gregory Benford
• Yes, Sir, That's My - (1978) - short story by Daniel P. Dern

EXPLORING BEYOND... Beyond the everyday, beyond the commonplace, beyond even the traditional subject matter of science fiction. Written especially for this volume, these stories esplore new themes and notions in ways that are daringly different. Prize-winning science fiction author Robert Silverberg has assembled a unique collection: provoking, surprising, and totally original.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• A Special Kind of Morning - novelette by Gardner Dozois
• The Trouble with the Past - shortstory by Alex Eisenstein and Phyllis Eisenstein
• The Power of Time - novelette by Josephine Saxton
• The Giberel - shortstory by Doris Pitkin Buck
• Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Great A - shortstory by Robert C. Malstrom
• At the Mouse Circus - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• A Plague of Cars - shortstory by Leonard Tushnet
• Sky - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Love Song of Herself - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• The Wicked Flee - shortstory by Harry Harrison
• The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World - shortstory by Philip José Farmer
• Conquest - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come - novelette by Thomas M. Disch

STEPPING OUTSIDE Outside of the world we know... outside of our space, time, and reality... outside even the traditional subject matter of science fiction. Written especially for this volume, these stories share a freshness and originality that come from stepping outside of the conventional, into unknown territory. Prize-winning science fiction author Robert Silverberg has assembled a noteworthy, stimulating collection, continuing the bold tradition of NEW DIMENSIONS 1.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Nobody's Home - (1972) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• Filomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & the Alien - (1972) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Out from Ganymede - (1972) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• No. 2 Plain Tank Auxiliary Fill Structural Limit 17,605 lbs. Fuel-PWA Spec. 522 Revised - (1972) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• Eurema's Dam - (1972) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• King Harvest - (1972) - novelette by Gardner Dozois
• Take a Match - (1972) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• f(x)=(11/15/67) x=her, f(x)!=0 - (1972) - shortfiction by George Alec Effinger
• White Summer in Memphis - (1972) - novelette by Gordon Eklund
• Lazarus II - (1972) - shortstory by Miriam Allen deFord
• The Men Inside - (1972) - novelette by Barry N. Malzberg

New Dimensions III - Through the portals of time and space...your passport to the infinite realms of science fiction! Featuring stories by: Ursula K Le Guin, Damon Knight, W Macfarlane, Terry Carr, James Tiptree Jr, R A Lafferty, Barry N Malzberg, Geo Alec Effinger, F M Busby, Gordon Eklund and Gardner R Dozois.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Down There - shortstory by Damon Knight
• How Shall We Conquer? - shortstory by W. Macfarlane
• They Live on Levels - shortstory by Terry Carr
• The Girl Who Was Plugged In - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Days of Grass, Days of Straw - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Notes Leading Down to the Conquest - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• At the Bran Foundry - (1973) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• Tell Me All About Yourself - shortstory by F. M. Busby
• Three Comedians - novelette by Gordon Eklund
• The Last Day of July - novelette by Gardner Dozois

TEN TALES OF INVASION, EXPLORATION AND THE UNKNOWN--

THE EXAMINATION by FELIX C. GOTSCHALK
A little "girl," a doctor, and a test--but who was doing the testing?

THE COLORS OF FEAR by TERRY CARR
They came from the stars to bring Earth light. Were they angels from heaven or harbingers of hell?

AMONG THE METAL-AND-PEOPLE PEOPLE by DAVID R. BUNCH
They lived to fight and fought to win, by the only prize was war.

ANIMAL FAIR by R.A. LAFFERTY
When man comes to sit his judgement day, will a rhinoceros sit on the jury?

STRANGERS by GARDNER R. DOZOIS
If you take an alien wife, will she or you be an alien for life?

NEW DIMENSIONS IV
A journey beyond space and time to the worlds of the imagination.

Table of Contents:

• After the Dreamtime - novelette by Richard A. Lupoff
• The Bible After Apocalypse - shortstory by Laurence M. Janifer
• Outer Concentric - shortstory by Felix C. Gotschalk
• The Examination - shortstory by Felix C. Gotschalk
• The Colors of Fear - shortstory by Terry Carr
• Ariel - shortstory by Roger Elwood
• State of the Art - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Among the Metal-and-People People - shortstory by David R. Bunch
• Animal Fair - novelette by R. A. Lafferty
• Strangers - novella by Gardner Dozois

Table of Contents:

• Find the Lady - (1975) - shortstory by Nicholas Fisk
• A Solfy Drink, a Saffel Fragrance - (1975) - shortstory by Dorothy Gilbert
• A Scarab in the City of Time - (1975) - shortstory by Marta Randall
• Theodora and Theodora - (1975) - shortstory by Robert Thurston
• A Day in the South Quad - (1975) - shortstory by Felix C. Gotschalk
• Rogue Tomato - (1975) - shortstory by Michael Bishop
• The Mothers' March on Ecstasy - (1975) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• The Local Allosaurus - (1975) - poem by Steven Utley
• Achievements - (1975) - shortstory by David Wise
• The Dybbuk Dolls - (1975) - novelette by Jack Dann
• The Mirror at Sunset - (1975) - shortstory by Gil Lamont
• Report to Headquarters - (1975) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Museum Piece - (1975) - shortstory by Drew Mendelson
• White Creatures - (1975) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• The Contributors to Plenum Four - (1975) - shortstory by Michael Bishop
• Sail the Tide of Mourning - (1975) - shortstory by Richard A. Lupoff

Table of Contents:

• Target: Berlin! - novelette by George Alec Effinger
• The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Is Your Child Using Drugs? Seven Ways to Recognize a Drug Addict - shortstory by Rachel Pollack
• Charisma Leak - novelette by Felix C. Gotschalk
• Secret Rider - novelette by Marta Randall
• On the Air - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Dinosaurs - novelette by Tom Reamy
• Mask - shortstory by Donnan Call Jeffers, Jr.
• Water - novelette by David Marshak
• Osiris on Crutches - shortstory by Philip José Farmer and Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor
• Chase Our Blues Away - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• The Alternates - novelette by James P. Girard

Seventh in a series of annual colections of original and significant science fiction writing. Authors are: Gordon Eklund, Marta Randall, Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop, Phylis and Alex Eisenstein, J. A. Lawrence, John Shirley, Barry N. Malzberg, Felix C. Gotschalk, A. A. Attanasio, Henry-Luc Planchat, Fritz Leiber.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1977) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Retro Man - (1977) - novelette by Gordon Eklund
• The State of the Art on Alyssum - (1977) - shortstory by Marta Randall
• Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole - (1977) - novelette by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley
• You Are Here - (1977) - novelette by Phyllis Eisenstein and Alex Eisenstein
• Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat - (1977) - shortstory by J. A. Lawrence
• The Almost Empty Rooms - (1977) - shortstory by John Shirley
• In the Stocks - (1977) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Home Sweet Geriatric Dome - (1977) - shortstory by Felix C. Gotschalk
• Knowing Her - (1977) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• The Blood's Horizon - (1977) - novelette by A. A. Attanasio
• Several Ways, and the Sun - (1977) - novelette by Henry-Luc Planchat
• The Princess in the Tower 250,000 Miles High - (1977) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• A Quiet Revolution for Death - shortstory by Jack Dann
• Yes, Sir, That's My - shortstory by Daniel P. Dern
• Whores - shortstory by Christopher Priest
• Sun-1 - shortstory by Gregor Hartmann
• This Is My Beloved - shortstory by J. A. Lawrence
• Metal - novelette by Robert R. Olsen
• I Graver - poem by Peter Dillingham
• Lifeboat - shortstory by Jeff Hecht
• Blind Man, Singing - shortstory by Drew Mendelson
• Three Dream Woman - shortstory by Michael Bishop and Craig Strete
• Mandala - novella by Greg Bear
• When the Morning Stars Sing Together - shortstory by Donnan Call Jeffers, Jr.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Pathways of Desire - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Rauncher Goes to Tinker Town - shortstory by Tim Sullivan
• Calibrations and Exercises - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Binding Energy - novelette by Peter S. Alterman
• The Attendant - shortstory by Bruce Taylor
• Square Pony Express - shortstory by Felix C. Gotschalk
• Crossing the Wastelands - shortstory by Jeff Hecht
• Of Wind, Song and the Pinnacles of Trona - poem by Peter Dillingham
• Perdidit Silentium - poem by Peter Dillingham
• I Chronophage - poem by Peter Dillingham
• The Sands of Libya Are Barren - shortstory by Donnan Call Jeffers, Jr.
• A Passionate State of Mind - novelette by Tony Sarowitz
• Last - shortstory by Mike Conner

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Holy - novelette by Orson Scott Card
• Animals - shortstory by John Kessel
• Amadeus - novelette by Carter Scholz
• Growing Up on Vlin - shortstory by Sydelle Shamah
• Deletions - novelette by Joseph V. Francavilla
• The Breath Amidst the Stones - shortstory by Bruce Taylor
• A Chrysalis Unbroken - shortstory by Peter Santiago C.
• Mare Somniorum - novelette by Stephen W. Potts
• Circus - shortstory by Marta Randall
• A Presidential Tape - shortstory by Felix C. Gotschalk

The exciting series that showcased the best of the 70's now launches the 80's with superb science fiction-from the terrifying to the sublime! Featuring: UNICORN TAPESTRY Suzy McKee Charnas. A vampire who teaches anthropology seeks psychiatric help and works an unorthodox spell on his therapist. A SUNDAY VISIT WITH GREAT-GRANDFATHER Craig Strete Aliens in a streamlined space vessel meet their match in a crusty old Indian with a taste for expensive chewing tobacco. THE HAUNTING Mary Pangborn A man slips in and out of time and is scared by his own ghost. Those are just a few of the stories in this book.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: A Time of Changes - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Unicorn Tapestry - novella by Suzy McKee Charnas
• The Haunting - shortstory by Mary C. Pangborn
• The Eros Passage - novelette by Scott Russell Sanders
• A Sunday Visit With Great-Grandfather - (1974) - shortstory by Craig Strete
• Criers and Killers - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• The Four - shortstory by Gary Woolard
• Comstock - novelette by Alan Ryan
• Kid Photon - shortstory by Steven Bryan Bieler
• The Feast of Saint Janis - novelette by Michael Swanwick

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: The Second Decade - essay by Marta Randall
• Walden Three - novelette by Michael Swanwick
• Cadenza - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Drode's Equations - novelette by Richard Grant
• The Woman in the Phone Booth - shortstory by Elizabeth A. Lynn
• Elfleda - shortstory by Vonda N. McIntyre
• Elfleda - interior artwork by Wendy Rose
• Pain and Glory - novelette by Gordon Eklund
• Parables of Art - shortstory by Jack Dann and Barry N. Malzberg
• Delta D and She - shortstory by Michael Ward
• A Manner of Speaking - shortstory by Tony Sarowitz
• The Satyrs' and Dryads' Cotillion - shortstory by Juleen Brantingham
• The Last Concert of Pierre Valdemar - shortstory by Carter Scholz
• The Celebrants - novelette by Peter Santiago C.

In the distant future, humans abandoned the Earth to the ravages of a nuclear winter. Now, thousands of generations later, their distant relatives are slowly emerging from the ice-ridden planet to stake their own claim on the planet--but they are not the only intelligent species to have flourished in hiding.

The death-stars had come, and they had kept on coming for hundreds of thousands of years, falling upon the Earth, swept upon it by a vagrant star that had passed through the outer reaches of the solar system. They brought with them a time of unending darkness and cold. It was an event that occured every twenty-six million years, and there was no turning it aside

But all that was done with now. At last the death-stars had ceased to fall, the sky had cleared of dust and cinders, the sun's warmth again was able to break through the clouds. The glaciers relinquished their hold on the land; the Long Winter ended; the New Springtime began. The world was born anew.

Now each year was warmer than the last. The fair seasons of spring and summer, long lost from the world, came again with increasing power. And the People, having survived the dark time in their sealed cocoons, were spreading rapidly across the fertile land. But others were already there. The hjjks, the somber cold-eyed insect-folk, had never retreated, even at the time of greatest chill. The world had fallen to them by default, and they had been its sole masters for seven hundred thousand years. They were not likely to share it gladly now...

The story came about when, in 1988, Marty Greenberg suggested Asimov find someone who would take his forty-seven year old short story, "Nightfall", and - keeping the story essentially as written - add a detailed beginning and a detailed ending to it. This resulted in the 1990 publication of the novel, Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. As Asimov relates in the Robert Silverberg chapter of his autobiography, "...Eventually, I received the extended Nightfall manuscript from Bob [Silverberg]... Bob did a wonderful job and I could almost believe I had written the whole thing myself. He remained absolutely faithful to the original story and I had very little to argue with.

These two renowned writers have invented a world not unlike our own--a world on the edge of chaos, torn between the madness of religious fanaticism and the stubborn denial of scientists. Only a handful of people on the planet Lagash are prepared to face the truth--that their six suns are setting all at once for the first time in 2,000 years, signaling the end of civilization!

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, September 1968. The story is included in the anthologies The Eleventh Galaxy Reader (1969), edited by Frederik Pohl, The Hugo Winners, Volume 2: (1963-70) (1971), edited by Isaac Asimov, and The Furthest Horizon: SF Adventures to the Far Future (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Moonferns and Starsongs (1971), The Best of Robert Silverberg (1976), Phases of the Moon (2004) and The Best of Robert Silverberg: Stories of Six Decades. With minor alterations, the novella was incorporated in the novel Nightwings (1969).

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, February 1969. With minor alterations, the novella was later incorporated in the novel Nightwings (1969).

In 1492, Colombus discovered America. In 1992 Claude Regan had to make it happen again! The US needed a shot in the arm as the twentieth century entered the last decade. And a World's fair celebrating five hundred years of American civilisation might just do the trick. Regan was the trickiest, most ruthless promoter in the country. And the first thing he realised was that Earth wasn't big enough to hold the kind of fair he wanted So he built a new world!

Bill Hastings was one in a million. He was the winner of a planet-wide contest, and the prize was a chance to spend a year working at the 1992 World's Fair. For the young xenobiology student, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Fifty thousand miles above the Earth, a gigantic satellite moved in its elegant orbit. It would be Bill's home for a year, and host to hundreds of thousands of visitors. The 1992 World's Fair was to be an orbital extravaganza, and Bill Hastings thought that his dreams had come true. He had a lot to learn.

There wasn't a single major science fiction author during the 1950s and 1960s who didn't receive a paycheck from Ace Books at one time or another. Everyone from Isaac Asimov to Andre Norton saw their works grace the pages of various Ace paperback editions. Ace was best known for its science fiction double novels, which were issued in the tête-bêche format. The format was simple enough: slap two novels back to back in the same paperback volume, one being upside down from the other. It was a brilliant concept and science fiction fans went crazy over them.

Science Fiction Grand Master Robert Silverberg was a regular contributor to Ace's Double Novel series. Starting in 1957 through the mid-1960s, Bob saw a dozen of his novels (plus a short story collection) published in the Ace Double format. In this, the first of two Armchair Fiction "Masters of Science Fiction" volumes covering these works, you get three of Bob's best early Ace novels: "The Chalice of Death," "Starhaven," and "Shadow on the Stars." All three are thought-provoking tales that have a pronounced spirit of adventure that keeps the reader moving along at a brisk pace.

As if all this isn't enough, we have thrown in two additional Silverberg bonus stories not seen in print in over half a century: "The Impossible Intelligence" and "Overlord of Colony Eight."

Table of Contents:

• 5 - Introduction (Robert Silverberg: The Ace Years, Part One) - essay
• 19 - The Chalice of Death - [Lest We Forget Thee, Earth] - (2012) - novel (variant of Lest We Forget Thee Earth 1958)
• 125 - Starhaven - (1958) - novel
• 231 - Shadow on the Stars - (2002) - novel (variant of Stepsons of Terra 1958)
• 342 - The Impossible Intelligence - (1959) - short story
• 359 - Overlord of Colony Eight - (1957) - short story

Three more science fiction classics from Robert Silverberg. One of the most notable contributers to Ace Books' science fiction double novel series of the 1950s and 1960s was Science Fiction Grand Master Robert Silverberg, who graced Ace's pages with a dozen novels over a seven-year period, 1957-1964.

In this, the second of two Armchair Fiction "Masters of Science Fiction" volumes covering these works, you'll be treated to three more of Bob's rousing, thought-provoking Ace novels: "The Planet Killers," "The Plot Against Earth," and "One of Our Asteroids is Missing." All three are wonderful tales that kept sci-fi enthusiasts of the day on the edge of their seats. Not surprisingly, these stories still stand up today.

Also included in this volume is a Silverberg Ace Cover Gallery, showing the wonderful artwork that accompanied many of Bob's Ace novels. Featured are two of the best science fiction artists of the day, Ed Emshwiller and Ed Valigursky.

And finally, as we did in our first volume, we've thrown in two more Silverberg bonus tales, "Death's Planet" and "The Assassin," both not seen in print in decades. Both tales come with their original illustrations.

Table of Contents:

• One of Our Asteroids Is Missing - (1964) - novel
• The Plot Against Earth - (1959) - novel
• The Planet Killers - (1959) - novel

In this, our third volume of Robert Silverberg Ace Double novels you get some of his best stuff. "Invaders from Earth" is a great tale about an outer space scam gone horribly wrong, with the fate of an entire world hanging in the balance. In "Collision Course," the discovery of another, more-advanced race shakes the very foundations of humanity, with a clash of intergalactic powers seemingly inevitable. "The Silent Invaders" throws one man into the middle of a three-pronged conflict that has Earth seemingly threatened by one race, while secretly being imperiled by another.

All three tales are perfect examples of why Ace Books was the one-stop shopping place for thrilling science fiction. Also included in this volume is an updated Silverberg Ace Cover Gallery, showing the wonderful artwork that accompanied all twelve of Bob's Ace novels. Featured are two of the best science fiction artists of the day, Ed Emshwiller and Ed Valigursky.

Lastly, as we did in our first two volumes, we've thrown in a Robert Silverberg bonus tale, "The Songs of Summer," not seen in print in decades, complete with its original Kelly Freas illustration.

Table of Contents:

• 5 - Foreword (Robert Silverberg: The Ace Years, Part Three) - essay by Gregory Luce [as by Greg Luce]
• 6 - Invaders from Earth - (1958) - novel
• 142 - Collision Course - (1961) - novel
• 270 - The Silent Invaders - (1963) - novel
• 376 - The Songs of Summer - (1956) - short story

Sidewise award nominated novelette. It originally appreared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 1999. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois, and One Lamp: Alternate History Stories from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2003), edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

No power on Earth can resist the might of Imperial Rome, so it has been and so it ever shall be. Through brute force, terror, and sheer indomitable will, her armies have enslaved a world. From the reign of Maximilianus the Great in A.U.C. 1203 onward through the ages -- into a new era of scientific advancement and astounding technologies -- countless upstarts and enemies arise, only to be ground into the dust beneath the merciless Roman bootheels. But one people who suffer and endure throughout the many centuries of oppressive rule dream of the glorious day that is coming -- when the heavens themselves will be opened to them... and the ships they are preparing in secret will carry them on their "Great Exodus" to the stars.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1989. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990) and Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction (2005), both edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (2010), edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates.

The best stories of the year, as selected by the one of the world's most honoured science fiction authors and his long-time collaborator. Here in one affordable volume is the best short science fiction of the year as selected from magazines, anthologies and journals. It is the first in a prestigious new series from ibooks.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber
• Undone - (2001) - novelette by James Patrick Kelly
• Know How, Can Do - (2001) - novelette by Michael Blumlein
• From Here You Can See the Sunquists - (2001) - novelette by Richard Wadholm
• Keepers of Earth - (2001) - novelette by Robin Wayne Bailey
• Anomalies - (2001) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• One of Her Paths - (2001) - novella by Ian Watson
• The Dog Said Bow-Wow - (2001) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• And No Such Things Grow Here - (2001) - novelette by Nancy Kress
• Sun-Cloud - (2001) - shortstory by Stephen Baxter
• Into Greenwood - (2001) - novelette by Jim Grimsley
• On K2 with Kanakaredes - (2001) - novelette by Dan Simmons
• About the Authors - essay by uncredited

A collection of the best science fiction prose written in 2002, by some the genre's greatest writers, and selected by two of SF's most respected editors. Here in one affordable volume is the best short science fiction of the year as selected from magazines, anthologies and journals. It is the second in a prestigious new series from ibooks.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber
• Tourist - (2002) - novelette by Charles Stross
• The Long Chase - (2002) - shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis
• Coelacanths - (2002) - novelette by Robert Reed
• Liking What You See: A Documentary - (2002) - novelette by Ted Chiang
• The Black Abacus - (2002) - shortstory by Yoon Ha Lee
• The Discharge - (2001) - shortstory by Christopher Priest
• Aboard the Beatitude - (2002) - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss
• Droplet - (2002) - shortstory by Benjamin Rosenbaum
• The War of the Worldviews - (2002) - shortstory by James Morrow
• Breathmoss - (2002) - novella by Ian R. MacLeod
• Angles - (2001) - novelette by Orson Scott Card

Continuing the third in a series of authoritative new editions of the novels of Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert Silverberg. During his heroic first encounter with an alien race, Dick Muller was permanently altered, hideously transformed in a way that left him repulsive to the entire human race. Alone and embittered, he exiled himself to Lemnos, an abandoned planet famed for its labyrinthine horrors, both real and imagined. But now, Earth trembles on the brink of extinction, threatened by another alien species, and only Muller can rescue the planet. Men must enter the murderous maze of Lemnos, find Muller, and convince him to come back. But will the homeless alien, alone in the universe, risk his life to save his race, the race that has utterly rejected him?

A fabulous tale of pilgrimage and hope, betrayal and transformation by one of science fiction's greatest writers. Only at night on the winds of darkness can she soar. And it was Avluela the Flier's ebony and scarlet wings that lead the Watcher to the seven hills of the ancient city from which, in a moment of weakness, the Watcher failed his vigil, leaving the skies and deep space unguarded. The invaders came and conquered. With Avluela lost in the turmoil of conquest, the Watcher set out alone for the Holy City home of the Rememberers, keepers of the past. This is where the secret of Earth's salvation lay hidden in antiquity. On his journey the Watcher hoped to recapture his youth and find the soaring, beautiful woman he loved. But Avluela held more for the Watcher - and Earth - than love. Her wonder stretched beyond flight, for she knew the riddle that would free all men.

Table of Contents:

• Thinking About Silverberg - (1976) - essay by Barry N. Malzberg
• Introduction (The Best of Robert Silverberg) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Road to Nightfall - (1958)
• Warm Man - (1957)
• To See the Invisible Man - (1963)
• The Sixth Palace - (1965)
• Flies - (1967)
• Hawksbill Station - (1967)
• Passengers - (1968)
• Nightwings - (1968)
• Sundance - (1969)
• Good News from the Vatican - (1971)

The Dominion War has been over for a year, but its legacy lives on. Commander Sonya Gomez, former Starship Enterprise engineer, and her crack Starfleet Corps of Engineers team on the U.S.S. da Vinci find themselves dealing with many permutations of that legacy.

Two mysterious murders on the da Vinci lead to the Gamma Quadrant and a Dominion base. A pre-warp planet occupied by the Dominion still has scars from both sides of that conflict. Plus Gomez, computer expert Soloman, and Security Chief Corsi are haunted by demons from their past.

But the greatest threat of all comes from a visit to Deep Space 9. A fissure has opened up between realities, endangering the very existence of the Bajoran system -- and also stranding Doctors Lense and Bashir on a war-torn planet from which they may never escape.

Contents:

• 1 - Malefictorum - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 50] - (2005) - novella by Terri Osborne
• 75 - Lost Time - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 51] - (2005) - novella by Ilsa J. Bick
• 159 - Identity Crisis - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 52] - (2005) - novella by John J. Ordover
• 205 - Fables of the Prime Directive - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 53] - (2005) - novella by Cory Rushton
• 277 - Security - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 54] - (2005) - novella by Keith R. A. DeCandido
• 363 - Wounds - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 55] - (2005) - novel by Ilsa J. Bick
• 518 - Author Bios (Wounds) - essay by uncredited

Before they became the crack team of engineers we've all come to know and love on the U.S.S. da Vinci, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers team had plenty of adventures throughout the galaxy. Now some of those exploits are chronicled, featuring special guests from all across the Star Trek universe.

Progress: Captain David Gold's previous command brings him and former Starship Enterprise medical officer Dr. Katherine Pulaski to Drema IV and a special young woman named Sarjenka.

The Future Begins: Learn how Captain Montgomery Scott found himself in charge of the S.C.E.--also featuring Geordi La Forge, Admirals Alynna Nechayev and William Ross, and Robin Lefler.

Echoes of Coventry: During the height of the Dominion War, Bart Faulwell is part of a team that must crack Cardassian codes.

Distant Early Warning: In the 23rd century, the U.S.S. Lovell helps in the construction of Starbase Vanguard in this special prequel to the hit novel series.

10 Is Better than 01: An inside look at the culture of Bynaus, home of 110--the future Soloman.

Many Splendors: Before they were reunited on the da Vinci, Sonya Gomez and Kieran Duffy had a whirlwind romance aboard the Starship Enterprise.

Contents:

• 1 - Progress - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 61] - (2006) - novella by Terri Osborne
• 119 - The Future Begins - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 62] - (2006) - novella by Michael Schuster and Steve Mollmann
• 223 - Echoes of Coventry - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 63] - (2006) - novella by Richard C. White
• 311 - Distant Early Warning - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 64] - (2006) - novella by Kevin Dilmore and Dayton Ward
• 413 - 10 Is Better than 01 - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 65] - (2006) - novella by Heather Jarman
• 505 - Many Splendors - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 66] - (2006) - novella by Keith R. A. DeCandido

The SF Grandmaster's follow up to the career retrospective Phases of the Moon is a glance back to the earliest days of his career. Included with pulp stories not reprinted in decades will be more of the commentary that made Phases so much more than just a collection.

"I have to confess, right up front here, that you will not find a great deal in the way of poetic vision in these stories, or singing prose, or deep insight into character. Nor are these stories that will tell you much that is new to you about the human condition. These are stories in what is now pretty much a lost tradition in science fiction, the simple and unselfconsciously fast-paced adventure story of the pulp-magazine era. They are stories from the dawn of my career, which began in the closing years of that era, and are straightforward tales of action, in the main, that were written partly for fun and partly for money."

--Robert Silverberg, from the Introduction.

Table of Contents:

• Yokel with Portfolio (1955)
• Long Live the Kejwa (1956)
• Guardian of the Crystal Gate (1956)
• Choke Chain (1956)
• Citadel of Darkness (1957)
• Cosmic Kill (1957)
• New Year's Eve--2000 A.D. (1957)
• The Android Kill (1957)
• The Hunters of Cutwold (1957)
• Come into My Brain (1958)
• Castaways of Space (1958)
• Exiled from Earth (1958)
• Second Start (1959)
• Mournful Montster (1959)
• Vampires from Outer Space (1959)
• The Insidious Invaders (1959)

In 2006, Robert Silverberg published In the Beginning, a generous selection of stories from the early, developmental stages of his distinguished sixty-year career. Fast-paced, energetic, and unabashedly pulp-like in their origins and ambitions, those stories proved to be an unexpected gift to Silverberg's many readers. That gift continues with Early Days, a second volume of apprentice fiction as wide-ranging and enjoyable as the first.

Early Days collects seventeen impossible to find stories from the years 1956 to 1958, supplemented by a fascinating introduction and extensive notes on the creation and publication history of each story. Together, these non-fiction pieces constitute both an episodic memoir and an affectionate history of an era when pulp magazines still dominated the SF marketplace.

Without exception each of the stories in Early Days offers honest, unpretentious entertainment. The astonishingly prolific Silverberg may have had a bit to learn back then, but he had an innate understanding of narrative that shines through every one of these tales. The stories range in tone from the grimly dystopian future of "The Inquisitor" to the playful "Space is the Place," in which a maintenance technician from Crawford IX experiences comic culture shock during a mandatory vacation on Earth. "Rescue Mission" revolves around the telepathic connection between two interplanetary intelligence agents. "Housemaid No. 103" provides a humorous glimpse into the romantic difficulties of a far future matinee idol. "Hardwood's Vortex" combines a mad scientist, alien invaders, and the possible end of life as we know it into a single colorful narrative.

Silverberg, of course, would evolve into one of the genuine masters of the genre, and this retrospective collection of early work offers invaluable insights into his development. Silverberg himself calls Early Days "an affectionate tribute to my hardworking self of more than half a century ago." It is all of that and more. Anyone with an interest in Silverberg's career, or in the history and evolution of modern science fiction, needs to read this book. They may not write 'em like this anymore, but once upon a time they did. And looking back has never been so much fun.

Contents:

• Introduction by Robert Silverberg
• The Inquisitor - (1956)
• The Ultimate Weapon - (1957)
• Harwood's Vortex - (1957)
• Quick Freeze - (1957)
• Six Frightened Men - (1957)
• Puppets Without Strings (variant of Call Me Zombie! 1957)
• A Time for Revenge - (1957)
• Housemaid No. 103 - (1957)
• Rescue Mission - (1957)
• Planet of Parasites - (1958)
• Slaves of the Tree - (1958)
• Frontier Planet - (1958)
• The Aliens Were Haters - (1958)
• The Traders - (1958) (variant of The Unique and Terrible Compulsion)
• Waters of Forgetfulness - (1959)
• You Do Something to Me - (1959)
• There's No Place Like Space! - (1959)

The follow-up to Silverberg's earlier Arbor House anthology focuses on short novels, or novellas, and discusses the difficulty of reprinting notable works of these lengths in anthologies with limited space. (Silverberg did an earlier, paperback anthology, Great Short Novels of Science Fiction, that just preceded in 1970 the first volume of his Alpha series. That book included 3 of the 15 stories here.)

Though a companion to the earlier Arbor House anthology, Silverberg slightly relaxes that one's scope; one story here was published in 1945, and Silverberg's introduction mentions that one story was written as early as 1941.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels) - (1980) - essay by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg [as by Martin Harry Greenberg and Robert Silverberg]
• Beyond Bedlam - (1951) - novella by Wyman Guin
• Equinoctial - (1977) - novella by John Varley
• By His Bootstraps - (1941) - novella by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Golden Helix - (1954) - novella by Theodore Sturgeon
• Born with the Dead - (1974) - novella by Robert Silverberg
• Second Game - (1958) - novelette by Katherine MacLean and Charles V. De Vet
• The Dead Past - (1956) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• The Road to the Sea - (1951) - novella by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Star Pit - (1967) - novella by Samuel R. Delany
• Giant Killer - (1945) - novella by A. Bertram Chandler
• A Case of Conscience - (1953) - novella by James Blish
• Dio - (1957) - novelette by Damon Knight
• Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - (1976) - novella by James Tiptree, Jr.
• On the Storm Planet - (1965) - novella by Cordwainer Smith
• The Miracle-Workers - (1958) - novella by Jack Vance

This anthology was re-released by Random House imprint Avenel Books in 1989 as Worlds Imagined; the only change in contents being that "The Miracle-Workers" was excluded, possibly for publishing rights reasons.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• Angel's Egg - (1951) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• Rescue Party - (1946) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
• Shape - (1953) - novelette by Robert Sheckley
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - (1961) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Winter's King - (1969) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Or All the Seas with Oysters - (1958) - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• Common Time - (1953) - novelette by James Blish
• When You Care, When You Love - (1962) - novella by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Shadow of Space - (1967) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• "All You Zombies --" - (1959) - shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein
• I'm Scared - (1951) - shortstory by Jack Finney
• Child's Play - (1947) - novelette by William Tenn
• Grandpa - (1955) - novelette by James H. Schmitz
• Private Eye - (1949) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Sundance - (1969) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• In the Bowl - (1975) - novelette by John Varley
• Kaleidoscope - (1949) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• Unready to Wear - (1953) - shortstory by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night - (1961) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• Day Million - (1966) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Hobson's Choice - (1952) - shortstory by Alfred Bester
• The Gift of Gab - (1955) - novella by Jack Vance
• The Man Who Never Grew Young - (1947) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Neutron Star - (1966) - novelette by Larry Niven
• Impostor - (1953) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• The Human Operators - (1971) - novelette by Harlan Ellison and A. E. van Vogt
• Poor Little Warrior! - (1958) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• When It Changed - (1972) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• The Bicentennial Man - (1976) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• Hunting Machine - (1957) - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
• Light of Other Days - (1966) - shortstory by Bob Shaw
• The Keys to December - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand - (1973) - novelette by Vonda N. McIntyre
• A Galaxy Called Rome - (1975) - novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
• Stranger Station - (1956) - novelette by Damon Knight
• The Time of His Life - (1968) - shortstory by Larry Eisenberg
• The Marching Morons - (1951) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Women Men Don't See - (1973) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Queen of Air and Darkness - (1971) - novella by Poul Anderson

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• Mellonta Tauta - (1849) - shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe
• In the Year 2889 - (1889) - shortstory by Jules Verne (trans. of La Journée d'un journaliste américain en 2889 1891)
• Sold to Satan - (1923) - shortstory by Mark Twain
• The New Accelerator - (1901) - shortstory by H. G. Wells
• Finis - (1906) - shortstory by Frank Lillie Pollock
• As Easy as A.B.C. - (1912) - novelette by Rudyard Kipling
• Dark Lot of One Saul - (1912) - novelette by M. P. Shiel
• R. U. R. - (1921) - shortfiction by Karel Capek (trans. of R. U. R. 1920)
• The Tissue-Culture King - (1926) - shortstory by Julian Huxley
• The Metal Man - (1928) - shortstory by Jack Williamson
• The Gostak and the Doshes - (1930) - shortstory by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
• Alas, All Thinking! - (1935) - novelette by Harry Bates
• The Mad Moon - (1935) - novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum
• As Never Was - (1944) - shortstory by P. Schuyler Miller
• Desertion - (1944) - shortstory by Clifford D. Simak
• The Strange Case of John Kingman - (1948) - shortstory by Murray Leinster
• Dreams Are Sacred - (1948) - novelette by Peter Phillips
• Misbegotten Missionary - (1950) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• Dune Roller - (1951) - novelette by Julian May
• Warm - (1953) - shortstory by Robert Sheckley
• A Bad Day for Sales - (1953) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Man of Parts - (1954) - shortstory by H. L. Gold
• The Man Who Came Early - (1956) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• The Burning of the Brain - (1958) - shortstory by Cordwainer Smith
• The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - (1958) - shortstory by Alfred Bester
• The Man Who Lost the Sea - (1959) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• Goodlife - (1963) - novelette by Fred Saberhagen
• The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World - (1971) - shortstory by Philip José Farmer
• Gehenna - (1971) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• A Meeting With Medusa - (1971) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
• Painwise - (1972) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Nobody's Home - (1972) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• Think Only This of Me - (1973) - novelette by Michael Kurland
• Capricorn Games - (1974) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics - (1974) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Travels - (1980) - shortstory by Carter Scholz
• Doing Lennon - (1975) - shortstory by Gregory Benford

First in a projected eight volumes collecting all of the short stories and novellas SF Grandmaster Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf. Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. Mr. Silverberg has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.

The Subterranean Collected Silverberg will vary greatly from the UK trade paperback series published in the 1990s. Due to the publisher's desire to limit the series to six volumes, many stories and, especially, novellas, could not be included. The Subterranean Collected Silverberg will be the definitive set.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Gorgon Planet
• The Road to Nightfall
• The Silent Colony
• Absolutely Inflexible
• The MacAuley Circuit
• The Songs of Summer
• To Be Continued
• Alaree
• The Artifact Business
• Collecting Team
• A Man of Talent
• One-Way Journey
• Sunrise on Mercury
• World of a Thousand Colors
• Warm Man
• Blaze of Glory
• Why?
• The Outbreeders
• The Man Who Never Forgot
• There Was an Old Woman
• The Iron Chancellor
• Ozymandias
• Counterpart
• Delivery Guaranteed

From Publishers Weekly

"Beginning with his very first sale, "Gorgon Planet," Hugo and Nebula award-winner Silverberg (A Time of Changes) collects 24 stories from the prolific first five years of his career (1953-1958), each piece with a lively headnote about its genesis, magazine venue and editor... Though none of his best-known or award-winning stories are included, these selections, which Silverberg deems the best of his early era, illustrate his apprenticeship and presage the Grand Master he has become."

From SF Site:

"And there is a consistent ambition which clearly drives most of the stories here. All of this is unusual in the pulp science fiction of the time, and while they would lead to bigger and better things for Silverberg they also mean that these early efforts still retain interest for the reader today."

From Green Man Review:

"Of equal interest--and value--are Silverberg's introductions to each story. They become, as one reads along, a history not only of the early days of Silverberg's career (he sold his first story at age eighteen and was writing steadily throughout his college years), but a glimpse at a unique period in the history of the field: the Golden Age, when editors such as Campbell, Boucher, and Gold were shaping the future of this particular brand of literature and leaving behind the days of the pulp-formula story in favor of the literary explosion that happened in the 1960s and 1970s."

This story, "To See the Invisible Man," written in June of 1962, marks the beginning of my real career as a science-fiction writer, I think. The 1953-58 stories collected in To Be Continued, the first of this series of volumes, are respectable professional work, some better than others but all of them at least minimally acceptable--but most of them could have been written by just about anyone. Aside from a few particularly ambitious items, they were designed to slip unobtrusively into the magazines of their time, efficiently providing me with regular paychecks. But now, by freeing me from the need to calculate my way around the risk of rejection, Fred Pohl allowed--indeed, required--me to reach as deep into my literary resources as I was capable of doing. I knew that unless I gave him my very best, the wonderful guaranteed-sale deal I had with him would vanish as quickly as it had appeared. Therefore I would reach deeper and deeper, in the years ahead, until I had moved so far away from my youthful career as a hack writer that latecomers would find it hard to believe that I had been emotionally capable of writing all that junk, let alone willing to do it. In "To See the Invisible Man" the distinctive Silverberg fictional voice is on display for just about the first time.

--Robert Silverberg

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• To See The Invisible Man
• The Pain Peddlers
• Neighbor
• The Sixth Palace
• Flies
• Halfway House
• To The Dark Star
• Hawksbill Station
• Passengers
• Bride 91
• Going Down Smooth
• Fangs of the TREES
• Ishmael in Love
• Ringing the Changes
• Sundance
• How It Was When the Past Went Away
• A Happy Day in 2381
• (Now + n, Now - n )
• After the Myths Went Home
• The Pleasure of Their Company
• We Know Who We Are

"The world that these stories sprang from was the troubled, bewildering, dangerous, and very exciting world of those weird years when the barriers were down and the future was rushing into the present with the force of a river unleashed. But of course I think these stories speak to our times, too, and that most of them will remain valid as we go staggering onward through the brave new world of the twenty-first century. I am not one of those who believes that all is lost and the end is nigh. Like William Faulkner, I do think we will somehow endure and prevail against increasingly stiff odds.

"A great many strange and dizzying things happen to the characters in these sixteen stories, and in the fourteen stories of the 1972-73 volume that will follow. The reader who makes the journey from beginning to end of all thirty stories will be taken on many a curious trip, that I promise--as was their author during the years when they were being written."

--Robert Silverberg, from the Introduction

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Something Wild is Loose
• In Entropy's Jaws
• The Reality Trip
• Going Caliban
• Good News from the Vatican
• Thomas the Proclaimer
• When We Went to See the End of the World
• Push No More
• The Wind and the Rain
• Some Notes on the Pre-Dynastic Epoch
• The Feast of St. Dionysus
• What We Learned from This Morning's Newspaper
• The Mutant Season
• Caught in the Organ Draft
• Many Mansions

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):

"This third of a projected eight volumes of Grand Master Silverberg's short form fiction focuses on his literary output from 1969 to 1972. Many of the 16 stories share what Silverberg describes as the era's "Day-Glo splendor" and take a questioning, cynical tone, often with discontented characters searching for some kind of transcendence... Longtime fans and new readers alike will cherish this collection."

From Booklist:

"Silverberg wrote several novels and fewer short stories in the period this volume covers, during which losing his house in a 1968 fire and responding to the social and political turmoil of the 1960s affected his writing. Nevertheless, he produced such widely recognized classics as 'The Feast of St. Dionysus,' 'Good News from the Vatican,' 'Caught in the Organ Draft,' 'Thomas the Proclaimer,' and 'Going.'"

The stories here, all of them written between March of 1972 and November of 1973, mark a critical turning point in my career. Those who know the three earlier volumes have traced my evolution from a capable journeyman, very young and as much concerned with paying the rent as he was to advancing the state of the art, into a serious, dedicated craftsman now seeking to leave his mark on science fiction in some significant way. Throughout the decade of the 1960s I had attempted to grow and evolve within the field of writing I loved--building on the best that went before me, the work of Theodore Sturgeon and James Blish and Cyril Kornbluth and Jack Vance and Philip K. Dick and half a dozen others whose great stories had been beacons beckoning me onward--and then, as I reached my own maturity, now trying to bring science fiction along with me into a new realm of development, hauling it along even farther out of its pulp-magazine origins toward what I regarded as a more resonant and evocative kind of visionary storytelling.

--Robert Silverberg, from his introduction

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• In the Group
• Getting Across
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame
• A Sea of Faces
• The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV
• Breckenridge and the Continuum
• Capricorn Games
• Ship-Sister, Star-Sister
• This is the Road
• Trips
• Born with the Dead
• Schwartz Between the Galaxies
• In the House of Double Minds

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):

"Thought-provoking and deeply ironic, these stories and the others in this volume are as powerful today as they were when they first saw print."

From Booklist:

"The introductions to the whole volume and each story represent new installments of Silverberg's literary autobiography and make it more obvious that the series is an invaluable resource to sf readers and scholars alike."

From SF Site:

"'Born with the Dead,' which went on to win a Nebula Award for Silverberg, is perhaps the most successful of the stories included, but others, such as the titular 'Trips' or 'The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV' stand the test of time. These stories show that no matter how much Silverberg was feeling that times were changing around him, he could still tell a good story."

Somehow, for all my outward pretence of cold-eyed professionalism, all my insistence that writing is simply a job like any other, I've discovered to my surprise and chagrin that there's more than that going on around here, that I write as much out of karmic necessity and some inescapable inner need to rededicate my own skills constantly to my--what? My craft? My art? My profession? I wrote these stories because the only way of earning a living I have ever had has been by writing, but mainly, I have to admit, I wrote these stories because I couldn't not write them. Well, so be it. They involved me in a lot of hard work, but for me, at least, the results justify the toil. I'm glad I wrote them. Writing them, it turns out, was important for me, and even pleasurable, in a curiously complex after-the-fact kind of way. May they give you pleasure now too.

--Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Our Lady of the Sauropods
• Waiting for the Earthquake
• The Regulars
• The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve
• A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa
• How They Pass the Time in Pelpel
• The Palace at Midnight
• The Man Who Floated in Time
• Gianni
• The Pope of the Chimps
• Thesme and the Ghayrog
• At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party
• The Trouble with Sempoanga
• Jennifer's Lover
• Not Our Brother
• Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory
• Dancers in the Time-Flux
• Needle in a Timestack
• Amanda and the Alien
• Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake
• The Changeling
• Basileus
• Homefaring

From Publishers Weekly:

"This superb volume collects nearly two dozen of SFWA Grand Master Silverberg's best short stories... With exquisite takes on common themes like time travel and transcendent experiences, these stories represent some of the best and most sophisticated science fiction of the early 1980s."

From Booklist:

"The volume opens with a classic, 'Our Lady of the Sauropods,' and ends with one of the best-ever sf stories about intelligent lobsters (!), 'Homecoming.' In between are many stories about time travel, many done for Playboy, and some done because the author, who considers himself a working writer rather than an 'artist,' simply couldn't NOT write them."

From SF Crowsnest:

"These are quiet, serene, cerebral stories by a master of the genre, flawlessly written and well worth a look. Highly recommended."

By the time this present group of stories was written I had passed through the cultural turbulence that engulfed nearly everyone's life in the wild, stormy period we know as "the Sixties," which for me had actually lasted from 1968 to 1974 or 1975. I had come through my own angry four-year-long retirement from writing in the middle 1970s, and was working again at a steady pace, though not with the frenetic prolificacy of the pre-retirement years. At the beginning of this period my personal life was still pretty chaotic, a carryover from all that Sixties madness, and plenty of new chaos was going to descend on me while some of these stories were written, but I was tiptoeing toward an escape from the various messes that were complicating my life, and by the time the last five stories of this volume were being written I was heading into the stability of my second marriage.

--Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Tourist Trade
• Multiples
• Against Babylon
• Symbiont
• Sailing to Byzantium
• Sunrise on Pluto
• Hardware
• Hannibal's Elephants
• Blindsight
• Gilgamesh in the Outback
• The Pardoner's Tale
• The Iron Star
• The Secret Sharer
• House of Bones

From Publishers Weekly:

"...this volume gives fans and scholars a closer look at some of Silverberg's best work, as he explores classic science fiction themes of alienation, exploration, and humanity."

From SFCrowsnest:

"Many of the stories herein were much praised and included in 'Best Of-' anthologies for the year they appeared, deservedly so. I think Silverberg is probably the greatest SF writer ever, perhaps slightly too sophisticated to achieve the popular appeal of some others. This is a brilliant collection from a gifted writer and deserves a place on the bookshelf or the electronic reading device."

From SFSite:

"Virtually all of the stories included in this volume were amongst the best science fiction written in the mid-1980s, and many were indeed nominated and/or won various awards. Robert Silverberg has created here tales of emotional impact and intellectual depth that should be avidly perused by every serious science fiction reader. I look forward to future volumes in the series."

The stories collected here, written between August of 1987 and May of 1990, demonstrate that I still believe in the classical unities. Of course, what seems to us a unity now might not have appeared that way when H. G. Wells was writing his wonderful stories in the nineteenth century. Wells might have argued that my "To the Promised Land" is built around two speculative fantasy assumptions, one that the Biblical Exodus from Egypt never happened, the other that it is possible to send rocketships to other worlds. But in fact we've seen plenty of rocketships to other worlds by now, so only my story's alternative-world speculation remains fantasy today. Technically speaking the space-travel element of the plot has become part of the given; it's the other big assumption that forms the central matter of the story.

--Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• The Dead Man's Eyes
• Enter A Soldier. Later: Enter Another
• To The Promised Land
• Chip Runner
• A Sleep And A Forgetting
• In Another Country
• The Asenion Solution
• We Are For The Dark
• Lion Time in Timbuctoo
• A Tip On A Turtle

From Publishers Weekly:

"In 'The Dead Man's Eyes,' a jealous husband goes on the run after the thoughtless murder of his wife's lover. Anorexia is the means to a computer-obsessed boy's end in 'Chip Runner.' Hugo-winner 'Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another' and 'A Sleep and a Forgetting' explore the issues that might arise if scientists created the technology to recreate famous men from history. Alternate history is also represented; 'To the Promised Land' considers what the 20th century would be like if the Roman Empire hadn't fallen, and "Lion Time in Timbuctoo" examines a world where the Black Death has completely changed the fortunes of the world's great empires."

From SF Site:

"We Are For the Dark doesn't exhaust Silverberg's work in the late 80s, and, of course, in the more than twenty years since 'A Tip on a Turtle' was published in Amazing Stories, Silverberg has published more than fifty additional stories, leaving several additional volumes in the series, each of which will demonstrate that Silverberg continues to be innovative in his story-telling."

The stories in this volume were written between July of 1990 and March of 1995--the second half of the fifth decade of my career as a science-fiction writer. I don't think I could have imagined, when I began that career in the early 1950s, that science-fiction publishing would evolve the way it did over the next forty years.

Here, then, is the cream of the Silverberg output, 1990-95. I suppose I wrote more short stories in the first six months of 1957 than in that entire six-year period; but so be it. It's a different world today. I look back nostalgically on the small-town atmosphere of the era in which I began my career, and there are times when I'd be glad to "call back yesterday, bid time return." As Shakespeare pointed out, though, that can't be done. The one recourse is the one I have chosen, which is to soldier staunchly onward through the years, come what may, writing a story or two here and a book there, while the world changes out of all recognition around me. And so--to leap neatly from the Bard of Avon to F. Scott Fitzgerald--"so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

--Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• In the Clone Zone
• Hunters in the Forest
• A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple
• Thebes of the Hundred Gates
• It Comes and Goes
• Looking for the Fountain
• The Way to Spook City
• The Red Blaze is the Morning
• Death Do Us Part
• The Martian Invasion Diaries of Henry James
• Crossing into the Empire
• The Second Shield
• Hot Times in Magma City

From Publishers Weekly:

"Dense with colorful settings, thoughtful characters, and Silverberg's usual painstaking attention to detail, these stories reveal a master of the genre comfortable with what he does best."

From Booklist:

"Silverberg has an inimitable voice, informed by mythology, history, and science. He puts together entertaining yarns about all kinds of worlds, from recognizable variations on our own to much stranger places. 'Hot Times in Magma City' is a short piece about the harsh work of fighting volcanoes in Los Angeles. 'Thebes of the Hundred Gates' is a time-travel story in a classic vein, with just the right level of shock at seeing history come to life. 'Crossing into the Empire' isn't quite a time-travel story, but it's got that same historical bent. 'The Martian Invasion Diaries of Henry James' is something only Silverberg would think of--and yet this particular revision of the classic Wells tale is thoroughly entertaining."

But, for all that, I went on writing short fiction all through the seventh and eighth decades of my life, and though I'm not very active these days, I would still pay attention if someone were to approach me with an interesting and challenging short-story project, or if some absolutely irresistible story idea were to come into my mind. I will not, at this point, try to claim that the stories that are collected here are the last short stories I will ever write. Surely some editor, in the years ahead, will tickle my imagination with a proposal I can't resist. But I doubt that will be happening very often; and, meanwhile, here's the harvest of the fourteen years that began in 1995--not an enormous number of stories, no, but stories nevertheless that I think are worth reading and reprinting.

--Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Diana of the Hundred Breasts
• Beauty in the Night
• Call Me Titan
• The Tree That Grew From the Sky
• The Church at Monte Saturno
• Hanosz Prime Goes to Old Earth
• The Millennium Express
• Travelers
• The Colonel Returns to the Stars
• The Eater of Dreams
• A Piece of the Great World
• Against the Current
• The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale
• Defenders of the Frontier
• The Prisoner
• Smithers and the Ghost of the Thar

Intended to be the first volume in a series collection of Siverberg's short fiction. It never progressed beyond the first volume.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Homefaring - (1983) - novella
• Basileus - (1983) - short story
• Dancers in the Time-Flux - (1983) - short story
• Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory - (1984) - short story
• Amanda and the Alien - (1983) - short story
• Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake - (1984) - short story
• Tourist Trade - (1984) - novelette
• Multiples - (1983) - short story
• Against Babylon - (1986) - novelette
• Symbiont - (1985) - novelette
• Sailing to Byzantium - (1985) - novella
• Sunrise on Pluto - (1985) - short story
• Hardware - (1987) - short story
• Hannibal's Elephants - (1988) - novelette
• The Pardoner's Tale - (1987) - short story
• The Iron Star - (1987) - novelette
• The Secret Sharer - (1987) - novella
• House of Bones - (1988) - short story
• The Dead Man's Eyes - (1988) - short story
• Chip Runner - (1989) - short story
• To the Promised Land - (1989) - short story
• The Asenion Solution - (1989) - short story
• A Sleep and a Forgetting - (1989) - short story
• Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another - (1989) - novelette

In this alternate history novel, the Bubonic Plague sets the stage for a world where the West is powerless. After the Black Death has wiped out most of the European population, there is little defense against Turkish invasion and expansion, and by the 1980s, the major world powers are the Russians, the Turks, the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Japanese. Dan Beauchamp, a young Englishman whose heart longs for fortune and adventure, travels to industrial Mexico and discovers that he has a lot to learn.

These three novellas are set in an alternate world first created by Silverberg in his novel, The Gate of Worlds (TOR, 1984). The idea remains intriguing: the Black Plague decimates the European population to a degree that proves irrecoverable and the ensuing cultural, inventive, and technological vacuum is filled by the civilizations of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Silverberg and John Brunner contribute taut and tantalizing glimpses into the might-have-beens of Timbuctoo politics and would-be Eastern European assassins. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's contribution, set in the courts of the Incas, unfortunately bogs down in its strain to demonstrate just how exotic this setting is. Despite this reservation, the book is likely to be popular with fans of alternate-world dramas and of these well-known authors. In addition, it might prove a stimulating enrichment for world-history classes. -Cathy Chauvette, Fairfax County Pub. Lib., VA

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - (2002) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Introduction - (2002) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Outward Bound - (1964) - novelette by Norman Spinrad
• The Kragen - (1964) - novella by Jack Vance
• The Master Key - (1964) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal - (1964) - shortstory by Cordwainer Smith
• The Graveyard Heart - (1964) - novella by Roger Zelazny
• Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon - (1964) - shortstory by Leigh Brackett
• The Last Lonely Man - (1964) - shortstory by John Brunner
• Soldier, Ask Not - (1964) - novella by Gordon R. Dickson
• A Man of the Renaissance - (1964) - novelette by Wyman Guin
• The Dowry of Angyar - (1964) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• When the Change-Winds Blow - (1964) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• The Fiend - (1964) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• The Life Hater - (1964) - shortstory by Fred Saberhagen
• Neighbor - (1964) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• Four Brands of Impossible - (1964) - novelette by Norman Kagan

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy (2004), edited by Al Sarrantonio. It can also be found in the anthologies Fantasy: The Best of 2004, edited by Karen Haber and Jonathan Strahan, and The Way of the Wizard (2010), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the collection Tales of Majipoor (2013).

Treachery and wizardry run rampant under the reign of the mighty Pontifex, as both the rightful and the unworthy heirs to the throne anxiously await his demise. Korsibar, son of the current Coronal, plots with his twin sister and ambitious companions to seize the power of the Coronal when his father ascends to the throne of the Pontifex.

But the burdens of the crown and scepter exact a higher price than Korsibar is prepared to pay. His rival fights to take his appointed place as keeper of his beloved Majipoor... and to restore order to the utter chaos that has befallen their world.

This collection contains ten stories reflecting the endless variety of life on the planet Majipoor. The stories include "Thesme and the Ghayrog", "In the Fifth Year of the Voyage", "The Desert of Stolen Dreams" and "Voriax and Valentine".

Treachery and wizardry run rampant under the reign of the mighty Pontifex, as both the rightful and the unworthy heirs to the throne anxiously await his demise. Korsibar, son of the current Coronal, plots with his twin sister and ambitious companions to seize the power of the Coronal when his father ascends to the throne of the Pontifex.

But the burdens of the crown and scepter exact more of a price than Korsibar is prepared to pay. His rival fights to take his appointed place as keeper of his beloved Majipoor...and to resbackse order to the utter chaos that has befallen their world.

Facing blizzards, ice storms, and strange beasts on a mission to the frozen tundra, Prince Harpirias attempts to rescue a party of scientists who have been kidnapped by an uncivilized race from beyond Majipoor.

From one of the masters of SF comes this new collection of stories, all set on his most famous creation - the world of Majipoor.

A massive world of adventure, romance and danger. A place where dreams can soothe the restless or flay the minds of the guilty. Where humans, aliens and natives live in a shifting, uneasy alliance and where two great men rule over all. No matter who bears the title, there is always a Coronal and a Pontifex, forever miles apart, forever striving to maintain the balance of their far-flung civilisation.

Here, collected for the first time, are the final tales of Majipoor. From the earliest legends of the Shapeshifters to an untold mystery late in the reign of Valentine Pontifex, the seven stories in this collection expand upon and flesh out the remarkable world that Robert Silverberg has created. Spanning a decade of writing from one of the masters of science-fiction, this collection is both a fantastic introduction for those new to Majipoor and a welcome return for those who have visited before.

Table of Contents:

• The End of the Line - (2011) - novelette
• The Book of Changes - (2003) - novella
• The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn - (2011) - novelette
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice - (2004) - novelette
• Dark Times at the Midnight Market - (2010) - novelette
• The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar - (2009) - novelette
• The Seventh Shrine - (1998) - novella

What if you could bring back the gods?

Centuries ago, the followers of the new gods defeated the old gods and the folk of legend, banishing them from the world of man. With their departure, magic faded from the land.

The Milesian Accords had provisions for a new challenge, though, and the Exiled Gods have sent their minions back to our world to seek out a champion to fight for them and a druid able to wield the magic needed to fulfill the challenge.

A descendant of the druid who participated in the original challenge, Liam Knox doesn't know anything about the Accords or his ancestors, but those seeking to maintain the status quo are hunting him, and the beings of myth are doing their best to convince him to help the Exiled Gods return to the world of man, bringing magic back with them.

Liam is faced with a choice he doesn't want, and if he chooses wrong, he risks more than his own life--he could end the world as we know it. And he's running out of time to decide.

Centuries ago, the followers of the new gods defeated the old gods, and the folk of legend were banished from the world. With their departure, magic faded from the land. However, the Milesian Accords provided for a new challenge, and its time rapidly approaches.

The descendant of the druid who participated in the original challenge, Liam Knox, must forge the sword for the Champion to wield, and write the next set of Accords. Time is running out, though, and the minions of the new gods will stop at nothing to ensure he fails in his tasks.

The descendent of the legendary hero Cu Chulainn, Erin Donnelly, has gone to Dunos Scaith, a fortress out of time and space, to train for the Challenge to come. Interruptions and distractions abound, though, including the potential for new love... and she is being hunted as well.

Both Druid and Champion are running out of time as the Challenge approaches--a challenge that could end the world as we know it--and neither is likely to be ready in time. They must trust in each other and their friends... but what if that trust is misplaced?

The Challenge approaches!

Centuries ago, the followers of the new gods defeated the people of the old gods in a challenge of champions. The folk of legend were banished from the world, and magic faded from the land. The Milesian Accords, however, provided for a new challenge, and the time for that challenge is running out.

Erin Donnelly, the proclaimed Champion of the Exiled Folk, is marooned in the otherworldly Glaswold after an assassination attempt. The fortress Dunos Scaith vanished, and Erin's daughter disappeared with it. She has to find her daughter, finish her training, and make it back to the World of Man before the deadline.

Knox, the Druid of the Accords, faces tests both domestic and mystical in rural Illinois. Liam must rally his allies in the wake of loss, mentor a son who has discovered magic, and deal with supernatural entities meddling in his life. All the while, Liam's enemies circle closer, hunting the druid, his family, and his friends.

Only together can the Druid and the Champion face the Challenge and survive. If they fail, more than their lives hang in the balance. If they win, it could change the world as we know it. But first they must master their tangled fate.

The Milesian Accords have fallen, but their shadow remains.

As magic returns to the mundane world, so do supernatural creatures. A federal agent seeking answers, a spurned Nephilim searching for his fae-blood wife, and a primeval goddess hungering for power all seek Liam Knox, the First Druid of the Accords.

New allies and old foes appear as paths converge on a nexus between realities. No longer a simple farmhouse, the druid's home has become a pathway between worlds and a locus of power.

Can Liam protect his family? Can he shield those who have no other place to go? And can he keep magic from destroying this world?

Magic has returned to the world, but so has an ancient foe.

Erin Donnelly, descendant of Cu Chulainn and Champion of the Folk, searches for Nechtan--her lover cursed to live as a stag for a year and a day. Enlisting the aid of allies, Erin maintains a vigil, turning back hunters and predators who might harm Nechtan in the wilds of the magical otherworld.

But when Stangr Iron-skinned escapes his imprisonment in the River of Time, he has one thing on his mind--revenge on Nechtan. Stangr's thirst for vengeance takes him from the Seelie courts of the otherworld to the windswept Great Plains.

Can Erin find Nechtan before Stangr tracks him down? Erin beat Giwargix the Dragon-Slayer, but can she defeat a jotunn-blooded Viking impervious to blades and bullets?

In a twenty-first century Earth where the development of the positronic brain has revolutionized the way of life, beloved household robot "Andrew" struggles with his unusual capacity for emotion and dreams of becoming human.

The definitive collection of the best in science fiction stories between 1929-1964.

This book contains twenty-six of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. They represent the considered verdict of the Science Fiction Writers of America, those who have shaped the genre and who know, more intimately than anyone else, what the criteria for excellence in the field should be. The authors chosen for The Science Fiction Hall Fame are the men and women who have shaped the body and heart of modern science fiction; their brilliantly imaginative creations continue to inspire and astound new generations of writers and fans.

Robert Heinlein in "The Roads Must Roll" describes an industrial civilization of the future caught up in the deadly flaws of its own complexity. "Country of the Kind," by Damon Knight, is a frightening portrayal of biological mutation. "Nightfall," by Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest stories in the science fiction field, is the story of a planet where the sun sets only once every millennium and is a chilling study in mass psychology.

Originally published in 1970 to honor those writers and their stories that had come before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, Volume One, was the book that introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction. Too long unavailable, this new edition will treasured by all science fiction fans everywhere.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1970) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• A Martian Odyssey - [Tweel] - (1934) - novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum
• Twilight - (1934) - novelette by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Helen O'Loy - (1938) - shortstory by Lester del Rey
• The Roads Must Roll - (1940) - novelette by Robert A. Heinlein
• Microcosmic God - (1941) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• Nightfall - (1941) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• The Weapon Shop - (1942) - novelette by A. E. van Vogt
• Mimsy Were the Borogoves - (1943) - novelette by Lewis Padgett
• Huddling Place - (1944) - shortstory by Clifford D. Simak
• Arena - (1944) - novelette by Fredric Brown
• First Contact - (1945) - novelette by Murray Leinster
• That Only a Mother - (1948) - shortstory by Judith Merril
• Scanners Live in Vain - (1950) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Mars Is Heaven! - (1948) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• The Little Black Bag - (1950) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• Born of Man and Woman - (1950) - shortstory by Richard Matheson
• Coming Attraction - (1950) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• The Quest for Saint Aquin - (1951) - novelette by Anthony Boucher
• Surface Tension - (1952) - novelette by James Blish
• The Nine Billion Names of God - (1953) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• It's a Good Life - (1953) - shortstory by Jerome Bixby
• The Cold Equations - (1954) - novelette by Tom Godwin
• Fondly Fahrenheit - (1954) - novelette by Alfred Bester
• The Country of the Kind - (1956) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• Flowers for Algernon - (1959) - novelette by Daniel Keyes
• A Rose for Ecclesiastes - (1963) - novelette by Roger Zelazny

Nebula- and Locus-winning Novella

"Born With the Dead" by Robert Silverberg tells the story of a man whose wife is among the rekindled dead now. He's heard that she is on a plane to Zanzibar with five other rekindled dead. As a "warm", he is not really allowed to make contact with her. The dead like to stay in their cold-cities. But he'd loved her so much when she was alive, he just has to try! This novella was nominated for every major science fiction award when it was originally published in 1974, winning the Nebula and Locus awards.

"Quicken", a novella by Australian author Damien Broderick, uses Robert Silverberg's original novella as a starting point for a brilliant leap into the far future, widening the scope and tenor of the original story by revisiting some of its subtler implications.

Life has spread across the stars, and everyone enjoys a long life. However, only those who are Earth-born are truly immortal.

But what happens when the immortals of Earth are suddenly faced with their ultimate destruction?

"The Song of Last Things" by Robert Silverberg introduces Hanosz Prime, a near-immortal (though not truly so, not being of true Earth stock) planetary ruler who abdicates his throne and travels to humanity's ancient home to meet the legendarily-beautiful Kaivilda and discover the ultimate answer to humanity's imminent end.

"The Last Mandala Sweeps" by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro comes in as a relationship is developing between Hanosz and Kaivilda. But then someone attempts to kill him. Is Kaivilda his soulmate, or a would-be murderer? And the Oracles of Earth, issuing conflicting prophecies, seem to think that he is destined to save Earth and humanity from the looming cataclysm. Can Hanosz Prime, with Kaivilda's help, avert disaster and save them all?

The citadel has long been the stronghold of Highkell. All that is about to change because the traitor, Vasic, is marching on the capital. Against her better judgement, Queen Alwenna allows herself to be spirited away by one of the Crown's most trusted servants, safe from the clutches of the throne's would-be usurper.

Fleeing across country, she quickly comes to learn that her pampered existence has ill-equipped her for survival away from the comforts of the court. Alwenna must toughen up, and fast, if she is even to make it to a place of safety. But she has an even loftier aim - for after dreaming of her husband's impending death, Alwenna knows she must turn around and head back to Highkell to save the land she loves, and the husband who adores her, or die in the attempt.

But Vasic the traitor is waiting. And this was all just as he planned.

A nameless priestess will stop at nothing to get revenge on the killers of her lover.

In a world of turmoil, following the king's death, the traitor Vasic is struggling to secure his rule over the combined Peninsular Kingdoms whilst the exiled queen, Alwenna, has taken refuge with a freemerchant community whose elders fear her dark power.

Mistrust rules the day with bribery, drugs, trafficking of children, and murder rife throughout the kingdom.

As the priestess' plot for revenge continues, Alwenna leaves to seek the outcast group of loyal kinsman. Marten attempts to restore Alwenna to the throne but as the priestess closes in, will he succeed?

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1989. The story can also be found in the anthologies Time Gate (1989), edited by Robert Silverberg and Bill Fawcett, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The New Hugo Winners, Volume III: (1989-91) (1994), edited by Connie Willis. It is included in the collections The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 1: Secret Sharers (1992), Phases of the Moon (2004) and We Are for the Dark: 1987-90: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Vol. 7 (2012).

Born With The Dead:

His wife was among the rekindled dead now. He'd heard that she was on a plane to Zanzibar with five other rekindled dead. As a "warm" he was not really allowed to make contact with her. The dead liked to stay in their cold-cities. But he'd loved her so much when she was alive, he just had to try.

The Saliva Tree:

In the late nineteenth century, a modern-thinking young man and friend of H. G. Wells's resides in the old-fashioned town of Cottersall. When a meteor lands in a pond in the neighbouring farming district, the man decides to investigate the odd occurrences in the area, where the farmer family of his beloved comes into danger courtesy of the stranded alien(s).

Sailing To Byzantium:

An Eternal party with the people of the future... in the cities of the past.

Seven American Nights:

The story unfolds with a diary of an Iranian visitor to the ruins of a future United States. The diary tells a story of an adventure in a land of mutants and ruined treasure for the taking.

The Last Castle:

For 700 years the Meks served without complaint; they were indispensable, for no gentleman would demean himself with toil. But now they turn against the strongholds of civilization--Castle Halcyon, then Sea Island, Morninglight, and Maraval--one by one the proud castles of Earth fall; last standing is Castle Hagedorn.

Winner Nebula Award 1966, Hugo award 1967.

Nightwings:

A fabulous tale of pilgrimage and hope, betrayal and transformation by one of science fiction's greatest writers. Only at night on the winds of darkness can she soar. And it was Avluela the Flier's ebony and scarlet wings that lead the Watcher to the seven hills of the ancient city from which, in a moment of weakness, the Watcher failed his vigil, leaving the skies and deep space unguarded. The invaders came and conquered. With Avluela lost in the turmoil of conquest, the Watcher set out alone for the Holy City home of the Rememberers, keepers of the past. This is where the secret of Earth's salvation lay hidden in antiquity. On his journey the Watcher hoped to recapture his youth and find the soaring, beautiful woman he loved. But Avluela held more for the Watcher - and Earth - than love. Her wonder stretched beyond flight, for she knew the riddle that would free all men.

Vintage Season:

It's the most beautiful Spring the great metropolis has seen in modern memory. the sun-drenched air seems full of hope, of promise for a better tomorrow. But across the river, in the suburb on the ridge that overlooks the city, Oliver Wilson is perplexed. Who are those elegant, perfectly-poised, almost exotic people to whom he's rented his house? What impending event has drawn them here, to this sleepy suburb, as if it were the best seat in the house for the greatest show on Earth?

In Another Country:

For time-traveling tourists, the rule about affairs with the locals is clear--look but don't touch. To flout that rule is to invite endless paradoxes and complications--as the well-meaning Thimiroi finds out to his dismay, in this all-new tale by SF master Robert Silverberg, written especially for the Tor Doubles as a companion to C. L. Moore's famous original.

Press Enter:

Victor Apfel, a troubled war vet, gets an odd, pre-recorded phone message, instructing him to go inside the house next door. He opens the door to find his neighbor shot through the head. But is it suicide - or murder? And is it possible that a computer is to blame?

Hawksbill Station:

In the mid-21st century, time travel is used to send political prisoners to Hawksbill Station, a prison camp in the late Cambrian Era. When the latest arrival suspiciously deflects questions about his crimes and knowledge of 'Up Front', the inmates decide to find out his secret.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Translator - novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The City of Ultimate Freedom - short story by Geoffrey A. Landis
• The Shobies' Story - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• One Night in Television City - short story by Paul Di Filippo
• Playback - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• Moon Blood - short story by M. J. Engh
• And of the Earth, a Womb - novelette by John M. Landsberg
• Alimentary Tract - novelette by Scott Baker
• The Songs the Anemone Sing - short story by Grania Davis
• Alien Used Cars - short story by Richard R. Smith
• O Time Your Pyramids - short story by Gregor Hartmann
• The Shores of Bohemia - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• The Propagation of Light in a Vacuum - short story by James Patrick Kelly
• Whalesong - novelette by Stoney Compton
• River of the Dying - novelette by Augustine Funnell
• The Book of St. Farrin - novelette by Jamil Nasir
• Bumpie (TM) - novelette by Francis Valéry (trans. of Bumpie™ 1988)
• Love is a Drug - short story by Leah Alpert
• 1099 A. G. F - short story by K. Hernandez-Brun
• Daniel's Labyrinth - novelette by Damian Kilby

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Life on the Artificial Heart - novelette by Mark W. Tiedemann
• Automatic Death - novelette by Cary James
• Waterworld, or All the Way Down - short story by John K. Gibbons
• Another Way Than Death - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• That Particular Green of Obsequies - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Ancestral Home of Thought - (1980) - short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Cool Equations - short story by Deborah Wessell
• The Fire the Fire - short story by Alex Jeffers
• The Sum of All Potentials - short story by John M. Landsberg
• Most Politely, Most Politely - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• Souls in the Great Machine - novelette by Sean McMullen
• Lost in Transmission - short story by Tony Daniel
• Job Security - short story by Joe Haldeman
• The Passing of the Eclipse - novelette by Donna Farley
• Forty at the Kiosk - short story by Nicholas A. DiChario
• By the Mirror of My Youth - short story by Kathe Koja
• Memories of Muriel - novelette by Paula May
• Waiting for the Rain - short story by Dirk Strasser
• Program's Progress - short story by Jonathan Lethem
• The Shining Place - short story by Jamil Nasir
• Triad - novelette by Lisa Mason
• (from) The Bridge - novelette by Alex Jeffers
• Burning Bush - novelette by Carolyn Gilman
• Metal Teeth - short story by Lou Fisher

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Cure - short story by Joe Haldeman
• Composition with Barbarian and Animal - novella by Alex Jeffers
• Transcript of "Yandal" - novelette by Terry Boren
• Dirtyside Down - (1991) - short story by Wil McCarthy
• Let Me Count the Ways - short story by Larry Tritten
• Moths to the Blue Flame - novelette by E. Michael Blake
• Black Memes - short story by Jamil Nasir
• Neezies - short story by Mary A. Turzillo
• The Enemies of Nickel City - short story by Nicholas A. DiChario
• The Only Thing You Learn - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• The Pigeonhole Principle - novella by David Ira Cleary
• Going West - novelette by Phillip C. Jennings
• McGregor - short story by Paul Di Filippo
• The Apples of Venus - novella by Mark Rich
• The Madonna of Futurity - novella by Brian W. Aldiss