obert Silverberg, author of more than 75 books and 400 short stories, winner of five Nebula and five Hugo awards, needs few introductions within the community of science fiction. Many of his short stories and novels—such as "Passengers," "Good News From the Vatican," "A Time of Changes," "Born With the Dead," "Dying Inside" and "Sailing to Byzantium"—have become acknowledged classics.
His Majipoor books—Lord Valentine's Castle, Lord Prestimion, etc.—gave him best-seller status. His work as an editor—from the New Dimensions anthologies to Robert Silverberg's Worlds of Wonder and the recent Legends anthologies—has proven invaluable to the field.
If all of that doesn't impress anyone just making Silverberg's literary acquaintance, then his Damon Knight Grand Master Award for 2004 surely will. Silverberg is the first writer of his generation to be so honored. During a recent telephone interview, the author talked about that honor, his long and varied career, a forthcoming collection, Phases of the Moon (2004) and what the future holds in store for him.
Did you find it unnerving to realize that you now share an award bestowed upon the writers who first drew you into the field?
Silverberg: There are odd features to it. Because—although I'm not the youngest writer ever to receive the Grand Master—Heinlein, Asimov and Jack Williamson were all younger than I am now when they got theirs—I am the first one who was born in the 1930s. That means that I was formed as a writer by most of the existing group of Grand Masters.
I'm the 21st to be chosen now. So I'm joining a group of writers who must be regarded as my peers, but who were also my idols as a boy. Heinlein, Asimov, Van Vogt, Williamson, Simak: These writers were all established when I was a small boy. Now I've been picked up and put in that pantheon myself—which is the inevitable passage of time. After all, Mickey Mantle was probably a small boy when Babe Ruth was hitting all those home runs, yet we speak of them in the same breath.
The other side of the Grand Master honor is that I feel no false modesty about it. I worked long and hard and well for 50 years, and probably did write a lot of important and influential science fiction that led my fellow writers to deserve the award. And I'm not going to disagree with them! Yes, I'm awed and stunned to be elevated to the group of writers who so shaped me as boy; on the other hand, I feel I've done what needed to be done to take my seat among them.
Many of the stories which have won you acclaim have been gathered in your forthcoming Subterranean collection, Phases of the Moon. Did they come to you, or did you approach them?
Silverberg: I approached them. The book is, of course, also being published by Byron Preiss' Ibooks later in the year. He is my regular paperback publisher now. But since it is the 50th-anniversary volume, I wanted something a little more imposing as a monument for myself. So I went to one of the small-press people who have done such nice work with limited hardcover editions. Subterranean Press is primarily, I believe, a horror and fantasy line. They were quite happy to have me, and we struck up a nice relationship that will continue.
It's a fairly large collection. How did you decide which stories to include? Did you have help in paring down the list?
Silverberg: I did it all by myself. I'd already done a six-volume British collection. So I had some idea of what I considered to be my best stories. Because this was a 50th-anniversary commemoration for myself, I decided to work decade by decade and pick three, four or five stories from the six decades that I've now been a functioning, professional science-fiction writer. That got a little difficult, because in some of the years I was extremely prolific. How do you pick four out of 40? I gave precedence to the award winners, of course. And I gave precedence to the stories that were particularly close to my heart while I was writing them.
Would it be fair to say your short stories of the '60s were more concerned with social issues and inner conflict, while your stories of the '80s were more extroverted and geared toward plot?
Silverberg: I'm not sure that's accurate. Certainly in the 1980s I wrote a story called "Symbiont" which uses all the material of the old, rip-roaring space operas. But the technique was far more sophisticated than I could've achieved in the 1950s—or than anyone would have let me achieve. The magazines then had very strict requirements about how you could write.
The point of Phases of the Moon is that I've been around as a writer now for 50 years. You go through a lot of changes in 50 years. I'm practically 70. Different things concern you at different times in your life. As you age, at least in my case, you move farther from the center of everyday existence. In the '60s—which, of course, was a turbulent time in our society—I was in my 30s and a young man, busy with the ongoing problems of life [around me]. Now, I'm in my seventh decade here, going into the eighth fairly soon, and my life is much more inward and withdrawn. I leave the house much less frequently—by choice, because I'm in fine health—and I'm not in the swirling thick of things that most young people are, so my writing reflects that.
Other than a two-volume Gregg Press collection in the '70s, your first attempt at collecting the best of your short fiction was with Bantam in the '90s. But volume two of The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg never appeared. What happened?
Silverberg: Bantam was going to do a whole series of them, and then there was a change of administration at Bantam. We had a contract for volume two—in fact I'd already turned in volume two—and suddenly there was different administration saying, "We're not going to do any more short story collections, here's your book back." So volume one is all there is in that series. The previous people at Bantam were more ... idealistic, let's say. The short stories were selling well enough; they just weren't selling as well as the big, shiny, best-seller novels. So [the new administration] didn't want to make room on the schedule for more short story books. I don't believe they've done any since.
You've taken several "retirements" from writing science fiction—sometimes out of protest, and sometimes in order to regroup. Each time you've come out of retirement you've redefined yourself as a writer: In the '60s you came back as a highly literary, experimental writer; in the '80s you came back as a bestselling icon. Do you see yourself entering another stage or phase as a writer?
Silverberg: Well, I'm entering the phase of getting old! The sketch you drew, although basically accurate, is not the full story. As a young man, I came to science fiction out of a very fine education—a classical education, Columbia degree and all that. So on the one hand I was setting out to become a pulp writer, and on the other hand I was, already in my 20s, a cultivated and educated man. Very complicated conflict there. My original science-fiction writing was quite ambitious—overly ambitious for an 18- or 19-year-old. And when I found that I couldn't readily sell those stories because people—like Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon and Fritz Lieber—were taking up all the space, I resorted to becoming a hired gun, and would write whatever I could just to sell it and pay the rent.
Gradually, I established myself in the position those more well-known writers had been in before me, and I could sell whatever I wanted. I began challenging myself more intensely, and I've gone on doing that ever since. So writing the hackwork of 40 years ago became not only ridiculous but irrelevant to my career. The various retirements that I've gone through—and I did retire once in the late '50s and then very emphatically in the mid-'70s, and perhaps at other times—are a reflection of my ongoing war with science fiction. A love/hate kind of thing. I think science fiction is a very important kind of fiction. It's also a branch of popular entertainment, and I've struggled back and forth between my desire to make science fiction into a visionary literature of great emotional and literary intensity, and the publisher's desire to make a lot of money by selling popular entertainment. Every decade or so I've walked out in anger, saying I can't cope with this dichotomy anymore. I won't do that again.
Now that I've moved toward relatively small publishing houses, I'm removing myself from that whole commercial battlefield. I don't need to be out there anymore. I'll write what I please, and have it published by people with whom I can work without commercial prodding.
During one of your retirements from SF, your nonfiction career took up a significant portion of your life. You were quite successful at it. Would you consider doing something similar again?
Silverberg: I don't think I'll do it again. It's a matter of stamina at my age. I wrote some fairly important books of scholarly popularization—The Realm of Prester John and Mound Builders of Ancient America, which are still the definitive popular books on those subjects—but that involved me in a colossal amount of research. And, then, the drawing together of all that research at the age of 35 or 40 was not daunting to me. It would be now. I doubt very much that I would attempt anything on that scale again.
But it was a fascinating second career; it fed the first career. If you look at a story like "Born with the Dead," you'll see that it reflects my archaeological writing, but in science-fiction mode. Some people are unaware that the same Robert Silverberg wrote both the nonfiction and the fiction. I have seen at least one book on the theory of time that gives me footnotes both as a science-fiction writer and as the author of the mound-builder book, speculating as to whether it's the same person. It gave me a big chuckle. It's a terrific tribute that I could've been that versatile. I was flattered and amused.
Do you think the genre of science fiction is undergoing a change, moving from fiction that is less visionary and concentrating instead on the past and on alternative history?
Silverberg: Certainly my own recent work has been more concerned with the past rather than the future. My last book, Roma Eterna, is set in that alternate Rome that never fell. That's a personal preference. I am, after all, a man of the 20th century who finds himself stranded in the 21st. I am quite blunt in saying I don't understand enough about the times I live in anymore to feel I'm in a position to comment on them. And that's what science fiction really is.
As I move into my 70s, I tend to be drawing away from the cutting-edge kind of technological science fiction that most people think of as science fiction. That's a personal thing, too. But the younger writers ... well, I just don't know what's going on now. I have to do a certain amount of literary triage: the number of unread books, and the number of expected years of life left ... I have to work out a kind of literary quotient.
For example, for many years when people asked me if I had read such-and-such science fiction novel, I said, "No, but I haven't found time for War and Peace yet, either." And that was a good excuse for not having read my friend's latest book. But, finally, I realized I still haven't found time for War and Peace. So I read it! And, indeed, War and Peace is the great novel that I had [claimed it was] for 50 years without reading. It was as great as all of the advance word. Nevertheless, it took me some months—it's a gigantic book—and that left no room for reading science fiction. But I have no regrets whatsoever about that. I've perhaps read as much science fiction as anybody alive, and I need now to have time for some of the other books.
Have you read the science-fiction efforts by mainstream writers like Thoreau, Updike and Atwood?
Silverberg: Oh, yes! I like them. This is the uppity Columbia side of me coming to the fore. Updike, Atwood and Thoreau are far more elegant writers than Heinlein, Asimov and Van Vogt. And also, because of their grounding in world literature, they have a broader and deeper range. So, of course, when they handle the material of science fiction, it fascinates me. I felt The Handmaid's Tale was a splendid novel on a lot of counts. Ideologically far-fetched, but that's how science fiction often is—but she developed it beautifully.
I've just been reading an old Philip Wylie novel—The Disappearance. I do [still] read some science fiction, but most of it is 40 or 50 years old. It's a fascinating idea Wylie had there; it caused a lot of controversy in its day. The men all disappear, leaving a world of women; then the women all disappear, leaving a world of men. That's the kind of science fiction that still attracts me. But I confess that I really don't want to read much of the current category product anymore. Not that it's terrible. There are some very good writers out there, and I'm delighted that they have picked up the torch. But I have other things to do at my age.
Do you have any immediate plans for the future, or are you going to take some time off and let the well refill?
Silverberg: That's a metaphor that I've used through most of my days. Since I've been such a prolific writer, I do feel the need to let that well refill. I am not retiring again. But I also have no novels under contract at the moment, and I'm not doing anything about that. What I feel now is—with the Grand Master Award as a kind of consummation of everything I've been working toward all my life—let's sit back and take stock, travel, read, take deep breaths. And, in a year or two, figure out what I want to do next. I may never write anything again. [But] I doubt that very much.
So old writers never truly retire?
Silverberg: They can't. It's not as if you're leaving the office and shutting up the shop and throwing your key away. It's too easy to say—on some rainy morning—let's see what this idea is all about.
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Also in this issue:
Chris Delaporte, director of Kaena: The Prophecy
