About the Author
Born in Brooklyn in l935, Robert Silverberg attended Erasmus Hall High School and Columbia University (BA, l956) before becoming a full-time freelance writer immediately upon his graduation from college. At the time of that graduation, Silverberg was already making $l0,000 a year, selling science fiction and other genre material to a wide range of markets; his first novel, REVOLT ON ALPHA C had been published in l955. Early collaborative stories and novels with Randall Garrett were published in the leading ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION as were more than 20 stories by Silverberg alone in those years.

Silverberg was from the outset a prolific and highly admired science fiction writer - a Hugo for most promising new writer awarded in l957 at the London World Science Fiction Convention confirmed this - but when the pulp markets suffered near-collapse in l958 he turned from science fiction to non-fiction YA books and consumer magazine articles which made him prominent in those fields. "By the time I was 25," Silverberg has said, "I had sold more than l2 million words and felt that I had worn away my fingerprints." When he returned to science fiction in the mid-l960's he did so with an almost immediate flood of short stories and novels which established him as the finest science fiction writer of his generation and one of the greatest in the history of the field. (In l999, Silverberg finished sixth in the LOCUS MAGAZINE reader poll for the best science fiction writer; he was behind only Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, LeGuin and Phil Dick, third among living writers). Novels such as THE BOOK OF SKULLS, THORNS, THE MAN IN THE MAZE, UP THE LINE, DYING INSIDE, SHADRACH IN THE FURNACE, A TIME OF CHANGES (Nebula Award, l97l), DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH and THE STOCHASTIC MAN were high literary achievements; short stories and novellas like PASSENGERS (Nebula Award, l969), BORN WITH THE DEAD (Nebula Award, l975), THE FEAST OF ST. DIONYSIUS, GOOD NEWS FROM THE VATICAN (Nebula Award, l97l), ISHMAEL IN LOVE, were regarded as comprising the best such body of work in science fiction. Silverberg once again left the field, more briefly than before, in the late l970's but returned with the bestselling fantasy novel, LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE in l980 and with a subsequent series of novels (some of these sequels to LORD VALENTINE in the so-called Majipoor sequence; others such as THE ALIEN YEARS or TOM O'BEDLAM were self-standing) and short stories. These latter included award-winning work: SAILING TO BYZANTIUM won the Nebula for best novella in l985. GILGAMESH IN THE OUTBACK and ENTER A SOLDIER won Hugo Awards for best novelette. Silverberg lives in California with his wife, Karen.