Showing results by author "Robert Silverberg" in All Categories

This book contains 26 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.

Richard Muller was an honorable diplomat who braved unimaginable dangers to make contact with the first-known race of intelligent aliens. But those aliens left a mark on him: a psychic wound that emanates a telepathic miasma that his fellow humans can neither cure nor endure. Muller is exiled to the remote planet of Lemnos, where he is left, deeply embittered, at the heart of a deadly maze - until a new alien race appears, seemingly intent on exterminating humanity.

Needle in a Timestack is Robert Silverberg at his very best - intelligent, inventive, and visionary. This collection showcases his talent for thought-provoking science fiction, ranging in themes from time travel to space travel, the media to mortality. In the titular story - under development as a feature film by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley - a jealous ex-husband warps time in a vindictive attempt to destroy his former wife's new marriage. Thirty-one identical sons have a shocking surprise for their mother in "There Was an Old Woman".

It is the 50th century on Earth, and ancient historical cities such as Byzantine Constantinople can now be created on a whim for visiting tourists. Charles Philip, a man from the 20th century struggling to find his way home, finds himself fascinated with this strange new world. But beneath the surface fantasies, things are not as they seem. 

A group of pilgrims venture to a new planet, leaving Earth to escape the persecution they endured there only to find naked heathens inhabiting their new planet. The heathens worship a spaceship embedded in the hillside. The heathens speak English, but the pilgrims cannot abide their ways, so they decide to destroy them tomorrow because today is the Sabbath. A big surprise awaits them.

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.

From Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, here are the best stories of 2002, written by four of the most respected writers of our day: Robert Silverberg, James Patrick Kelly, Ian Watson, and Gregory Benford. Also try The Best of Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine and The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine 2002.

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 yoruself 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....

This collection of unabridged, unforgettable tales, written by some of science fiction's most esteemed authors, pays homage to one of the genre's most cherished story types. Whether time travel stories leap forward in time or slip into the past, they remain popular with fans.

The year is 2232. Earth is grossly overpopulated. The nations of the world, working through the United Nations, have authorized a global bureau known as the Bureau of Population Equalization (Popeek), whose goal it is to relocate people from overcrowded areas to the less densely populated parts of the planet. A highly unpopular euthanasia program weeds out newborns who have may have defective genes and accelerates the death of the incurable.

It was a legendary island, a fantastic island. Atlantis. Or as its prince called it, Athilan. Roy had traveled through time with his partner, Lora, to find it - and now he was tantalizingly close to its shore. Time travel allowed Roy's consciousness to enter the mind of the heir to Atlantis' throne, and what he found disturbed him. Strange dreams. Impossibly futuristic inventions and machines. How could such an advanced city exist at this time? The rest of the world was, as Lora witnessed in her travels, a dark, barbaric land still thawing from the ice age. Roy had been preparing for the odd isolation of time travel, but nothing had prepared him for his final arrival on Atlantis - a shimmering city far beyond his imagination! Roy knew this island's fate. According to legend, it would vanish into the sea. Roy also knew he had a limited amount of time to decipher the strange message in the Prince's mind - visions of cataclysmic events, mysterious rites to a faraway star. If Roy was in an Atlantis unlike anything the researchers had predicted, then what were its secrets? And when would it be destroyed?

Duncan Chalk is a monstrous media mogul with a vast appetite for other people's pain. He feeds off it and carefully nurtures it in order to feed it to the public. It is inevitable that Chalk should hone in on Minner Burris, a space traveler whose body was taken apart by alien surgeons and then put back together again - differently. Burris' pain is constant. And so is that of Lona Kelvin, used by scientists to supply eggs for 100 children and then ruthlessly discarded.

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.

X Minus One premiered in April 1955 on NBC and ran until January 1958. Like its predecessor series, Dimension X, X Minus One featured stories by the greatest names in modern science fiction: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and many more.

Nineteen gut-wrenching reports from the front lines of the War of the Worlds, as logged by Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, H.P. Lovecraft, Winston Churchill, Jules Verne, and many of the other most famous writers of the time. The most popular and acclaimed science fiction writers of today relive the Martian invasion through the eyes of their famous predecessors.

In the 21st century, a battered world is ruled by a crafty old tyrant, Genghis II Mao IV Khan. The Khan is 93 yers 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.

X Minus One premiered in April 1955 on NBC and ran until January 1958. Like its predecessor series, Dimension X, X Minus One featured stories by the greatest names in modern science fiction: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and many more.

After a misguided test run, a time traveler becomes trapped 20,000 years in the past. Unequipped for survival, his future is uncertain. What's worse, he's surrounded by people so primitive they don't even have a written language. So primitive they take in his unworthy and skill-less self and accept him into their society. This glimpse of what life might have been like for Cro-Magnon man in the late Pleistocene epoch shows us precisely why we can't judge a society by its lack of tool based technology.

For 1,000 years, mankind has lived under the threat of invasion from an alien race. After the oceans rose and the continents were reshaped, people divided into guilds - Musicians, Scribes, Merchants, Clowns, and more. The Watchers wander the Earth, scouring the skies for signs of enemies from the stars. But during one Watcher's journey to the ancient city of Roum with his companion, a Flier named Avluela, a moment of distraction allows the invaders to advance. When the Watcher finally sounds the alarm, it's too late: the star people are poised to conquer all.

Hailed as "one of the most fully realized worlds of modern science fiction" ( Booklist>), Majipoor is a planet unlike any other, with countless untold stories. Now, available for the first time in one volume, Silverberg presents seven tales that chronicle thousands of years of Majipoor’s history, from the arrival of the settlers of Old Earth to the expansion of vast cities to the extraordinary life of Lord Valentine. Within these stories lie the secrets of Majipoor - a wondrous world of incredible imagination.