Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935)
is an American author and editor, best known
for writing science fiction.
He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula
Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and
Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of
SF.
He has attended every Hugo Awards ceremony
since the inaugural event in 1953.
== Biography ==
=== 
Early years ===
Silverberg was born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn,
New York.
A voracious reader since childhood, he began
submitting stories to science fiction magazines
during his early teenage years.
He received a BA in English Literature from
Columbia University, in 1956.
While at Columbia, he wrote the juvenile novel
Revolt on Alpha C (1955), published by Thomas
Y.
Crowell with the cover notice: "A gripping
story of outer space".
He won his first Hugo in 1956 as the "best
new writer".That year Silverberg was the author
or co-author of four of the six stories in
the August issue of Fantastic, breaking his
record set in the previous issue.
For the next four years, by his own count,
he wrote a million words a year, mostly for
magazines and Ace Doubles.
He used his own name as well as a range of
pseudonyms during this era, and often worked
in collaboration with Randall Garrett, who
was a neighbour at the time.
(The Silverberg/Garrett collaborations also
used a variety of pseudonyms, the best-known
being Robert Randall.)
From 1956 to 1959, Silverberg routinely averaged
five published stories a month, and he had
over 80 stories published in 1958 alone.
In 1959, the market for science fiction collapsed,
and Silverberg turned his ability to write
copiously to other fields, from historical
non-fiction to softcore pornography.
"Bob Silverberg, a giant of science fiction...
was doing two [books] a month for one publisher,
another for a second publisher, and the equivalent
of another book for a magazine...
He was writing a quarter of a million words
a month" under many different pseudonyms.
=== Literary growth ===
In the mid-1960s, science fiction writers
were becoming more literarily ambitious.
Frederik Pohl, then editing three science
fiction magazines, offered Silverberg carte
blanche in writing for them.
Thus inspired, Silverberg returned to the
field that gave him his start, paying far
more attention to depth of character development
and social background than he had in the past
and mixing in elements of the modernist literature
he had studied at Columbia.
Silverberg continued to write rapidly—Algis
Budrys reported in 1965 that he wrote and
sold at least 50,000 words ("call it the equivalent
of a commercial novel") weekly—but the novels
he wrote in this period are considered superior
to his earlier work; Budrys in 1968 wrote
of his surprise that "Silverberg is now writing
deeply detailed, highly educated, beautifully
figured books" like Thorns and The Masks of
Time.
Perhaps the first book to indicate the new
Silverberg was To Open the Sky, a fixup of
stories published by Pohl in Galaxy Magazine,
in which a new religion helps people reach
the stars.
That was followed by Downward to the Earth,
a story containing echoes of material from
Joseph Conrad's work, in which the human former
administrator of an alien world returns after
the planet's inhabitants have been set free.
Other acclaimed works of that time include
To Live Again, in which the memories and personalities
of the deceased can be transferred to other
people; The World Inside, a look at an overpopulated
future; and Dying Inside, a tale of a telepath
losing his powers.
In the August 1967 issue of Galaxy, Pohl published
a 20,000-word novelette called "Hawksbill
Station".
This story earned Silverberg his first Hugo
and Nebula story award nominations.
An expanded novel form of Hawksbill Station
was published the following year.
In 1969 Nightwings was awarded the Hugo for
best novella.
Silverberg won a Nebula award in 1970 for
the short story "Passengers", two the following
year for his novel A Time of Changes and the
short story "Good News from the Vatican",
and yet another in 1975 for his novella "Born
with the Dead".
=== Later developments ===
After suffering through the stresses of a
major house fire and a thyroid malfunction,
Silverberg moved from his native New York
City to the West Coast in 1972, and he announced
his retirement from writing in 1975.
In 1980 he returned, however, with Lord Valentine's
Castle, a panoramic adventure set on an alien
planet, which has become the basis of the
Majipoor series—a cycle of stories and novels
set on the vast planet Majipoor, a world much
larger than Earth and inhabited by no fewer
than seven different species of settlers.
In a 2015 interview Silverberg said that he
did not intend to write any more fiction.Silverberg
received a Nebula award in 1986 for the novella
Sailing to Byzantium, which takes its name
from the poem by William Butler Yeats; a Hugo
in 1987 for the novella Gilgamesh in the Outback,
set in the Heroes in Hell universe of Bangsian
Fantasy; a Hugo in 1990 for Enter a Soldier.
Later: Enter Another.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame
inducted Silverberg in 1999, its fourth class
of two deceased and two living writers, and
the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America made him its 21st SFWA Grand Master
in 2005.
== Personal life ==
Silverberg has been married twice.
He and Barbara Brown married in 1956, separated
in 1976, and divorced a decade later.
Silverberg and science fiction writer Karen
Haber married in 1987.
They live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Before the age of 30, Silverberg was independently
wealthy through his investments and once owned
the former mansion of New York City Mayor
Fiorello La Guardia.
== Awards ==
Hugo Award
Most Promising New Author (1956)
"Nightwings" (Best Novella, 1969)
"Gilgamesh in the Outback" (Best Novella,
1987)
"Enter a Soldier.
Later: Enter Another" (Best Novelette, 1990)Locus
Award
"Born with the Dead" (Best Novella, 1975)
Lord Valentine's Castle (Best Fantasy Novel,
1981)
"The Secret Sharer" (Best Novella, 1988)Nebula
Award
"Passengers" (Best Short Story, 1969)
A Time of Changes (Best Novel, 1971)
"Good News from the Vatican" (Best Short Story,
1971)
"Born with the Dead" (Best Novella, 1974)
"Sailing to Byzantium" (Best Novella, 1985)
Damon Knight Grand Master Award (2003)
== Bibliography
