Don't Call it Sci-Fi, Call it SF: ROBERT SILVERBERG 'A FORMAT SCIENCE FICTION Paperbacks
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2024
- Author of '100 Must Read Science Fiction Novels' Stephen E Andrews talks you through an unholy thirteen of Silverberg's novels and collections, outlining the key themes the author returns to again and again, while providing the opportunity to feast your eyes on some handsome mass market paperbacks issued from the late sixties to late eighties. #robertsilverberg #bookcollecting #sciencefictionbooks theoccupier.ba...
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Superb video, you really nailed Silverberg's charm. Such a precise writer, lean little books that carry you great distances in economical page counts. I'm curious if you have thoughts on The World Inside.
'The World Inside' is not one of my favourites though I'm extremely biased toward it as polemic. I've long felt that overpopulation is the root cause of almost all our problems in the world. Let's just say it's on the re-read list. Thanks for your kind comments.
Thank you so much for your suggestions! I read A Time of Changes and The World Inside and was blown away just how good Silverberg is! The transcendence in both novels was just delightful. That guy was on a whole other level!
Yes, at his best. Silverbob is THE MAN. There are plenty of other front rank works, check out the other Silverberg videos on the channel. Thanks for letting me know that you'r relishing his prose.
Great video! My introduction to him was Downward to the Earth. Then read The Man in the Maze. I’m now in the process of reading every book I can by him!
You started with two of the greatest ones! My first was 'Tower of Glass', then 'Man in the Maze'. He's so important in the period between 67 and 76. A great author!
Well now I want to re-read "Tower of Glass" ... so incredible to see such a great video about Silverberg!
Thanks Steve! More Silverberg to come as I say, 'Tower of Glass' is a great one.
Great overview. I totally agree that great SF has to challenge you, not coddle you with escapism.
Coincidentally, i just started A Time for Changes this morning. & then the youtube algorithm puts this gem of a video on my feed.
Well done.
Thanks Will, hope you enjoy 'Changes'. More Silveberg to come here- and there's a review of 'Dying Inside' and a similar book by another author in my recent bac klist- I'll be covering a bit more Bob in an upcoming Dystopias clip.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I am enjoying it so far. I also read The World Inside some months ago off of the strength of Matt (of Bookpilled)'s review. I have Dying Inside on my shelf too & look forward to reading that in the near future as well! Your content is informative and entertaining, thank you!
@@willp2877 -Yes, I know Matt is keen on 'The World Inside' (I've re-read it recently for the first time in around 20 years). 'Dying Inside' is another of the 'big four' by Silverbob. Do subscribe if you haven't already, for here you're getting a voice of experience!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal i am subbed and enjoying your stuff!! Hope you continue to recover from that nasty bug ya caught. Cheers.
@@willp2877 Many thanks!
Robert Silverberg is a true master of SF!
Honestly, I prefer him over Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and almost anybody. I've read more of his single SF books than any author with intent.
Wonderful overview! Silverberg is one of my top 3 favorite SF writers. I would include “The masks of time” among his best novels, although I noticed that it tends to receive less attention. It’s a magnificent book, maybe the Silverberg book with the highest number of hard-sf ideas per chapter, and extremely well-written. I’m also the only one who gave 5 stars to Son of Man on Goodreads : )
Yep 'Masks of Time' (aka 'Vornan 19') is a good one and so is 'Son of Man'. In that late sixties to mid 70s period, he rarely put a foot wrong. It's all good stuff, just a question of finding personal faves, I think.
hi, steve. i've read a bunch of silverberg but must admit it's been quite a while since i read anything by him. and thanks to this video i'm reminded of a few things that i haven't read but have been meaning to for years. i love that these are all singletons. i'm really sick and tired of the bloated books and endless trilogies that actually bring very little for readers to think about. i'll be going to a bookstore this weekend and looking for a few of these. as always, many thanks!
Not every sequel or series is bad, but when they are written for commercial rather than artistic reasons- and the former is the standard model today, you know it's wrong. The singleton is King.
Robert Silverberg has been my favourite writer for a long as I can remember. Coincidently, my first two Silverberg books were "the man in the maze" and "the tower of glass". Great video, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thanks for that. You'll find a lot more and better Bob videos than this of late on the channel!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal nice, I'm working through the backlog 😊
One of my favourite authors silverberg never fails to fire the imagination . Think I’ll re read at winters end must be 25 years since I read that one . Really enjoyed this episode
Robert Silverberg's short fiction is also great to read and highlight.
Agreed- Bob is a master of short forms too!
Great video. You have a great voice, and are very knowledgable about this literature. Years ago I picked up The Book of Skulls on a whim, and I've been a Silverberg fan ever since.
Well yes, 'The Book of Skulls' is THE BUSINESS! I never called myself an expert until I was offered a book contract, though people started calling me that back in the 80s - wide reading, decades around books in my career, it becomes a habit and you just soak it up if you're interested- and I'm an obsessive!
First time I`ve read Silverberg I was 20 when I bought Time of Changes. Got it in the evening, but after reading the first page I was so hooked up, I finished it until mourning. My favourite author by far.
Amazing book, a fave of mine too. Lots of other Silverbob material here, good to hear from another devotee.
Spot on my friend ." Dying Inside " 👍 . One of my first . Along with Daniel Keyes ' Flowers for Algernon ' deals with losing self...and who we are . And yes check out his other works . I must say ' Up the line ' was a bit much.😏😂 . Thank you for the vid .
Cheers Sylvan! I enjoyed 'Up the Line' more the second time around. Love 'Flowers For Algernon' total classic!
I read about half of those when I was a young man and thoroughtly enjoyed them. Now I'm on a quest to read more.
Good move!
I just finished Downward To The Earth and really liked it and am here picking my next Silverberg. I had also recently read Midworld by Alan Dean Foster and absolutely loved it and there are some shared themes there. I think I have zeroed in on the type is SF that really appeals to me. I like these stories around transformation as well as communion with the “natural” and or alien/mysterious world. I am excited that Silverberg continues in some of these themes.
LOTS of Silverberg videos here- he returns to the themes of power, transcendence, transformation and redemption many times- check my videos on 'The Man In The Maze' ( entitled "Labyrinth of the Vile") and 'Tower of Glass' ("Another Robert Silverberg Masterpiece"). Between the late sixties and mid 1970s, he could do no wrong.
Tower of Glass was also the first (and so far only!) Silverberg I read too. I remember almost everything about it. So no idea why I haven't read any more. Will get on that straight away. Great video!
Thanks Rob. As I say, would strongly recommend 'The Book of Skulls', 'Dying Inside', 'A Time of Changes' and 'Downward to the Earth' all in print.
I found Downward to the Earth via Bookpilled, read it, and loved it. It explored ideas that have been on my mind for years. I think my next Silverberg will be Dying Inside-the concept is so striking to me. Great video!
That's probably his best book in a literary sense. Check out my videos on 'The Book of Skulls' and 'Tower of Glass'. There's a Silverberg playlist here on the channel.
OK,I:m turning up late for this party,but I just wanted to agree with many others on how you hit so many Nails on the head in this brief video,well done!
T
Many thanks. You're not late, just one of the very welcome souls who go beyond the Now and dig into the backlist- this is important to creators.
I just bought The Man in the Maze, Valentine’s Castle, and Majipoor Chronicles at a local used bookstore here in California. Looking forward to reading them.
The Majipoor books are colourful, inventive, well-constructed and imaginative, but not in the same league as his late 60s early 70s stuff, but they are still well worth reading. More Silverberg videos here to watch, including an indepth look at 'Maze'.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I’ve never read Silverberg but thanks to your channel I’ve been stockpiling.
I love Robert Silverberg, every novel is different.
Yep, he's so great. Should be better known outside SF circles I think.
Thank you, OB, you've inadvertently chastised me for not reading more Silverberg. Somehow, I left off in 1976 with Pocket Books' "Best of Robert Silverberg" and I never, ever got back to him! Shame on me. Life got awfully busy back then...Cheers.
I find Silverberg immensely rewarding. Despite excellent early experiences with his work - 'Tower of Glass', 'Man in the Maze' and 'A Time of Changes', I neglected a lot of his work until around 20 years ago. Since then I've regarded him as one of the most important US SF writers ever.
Excelent video! Your assessment of Silverberg and his work is spot on, brilliant critique! It's been decades since I last read him, but I guess it's about time I revisit his books. I remember enjoying many of the books you mentioned, including Man in The Maze and A Time of Changes, but I was a teenager then; wonder what the old man I've turned into will make of them...
Looking forward to checking out your other videos, especially the one on PKD, currently my favourite SF author.
More Silverbob here, there is a playlist looking at some titles in depth. My feeling is that with his key work, you'll appreciate them even more- his muscularity and vision are very special.
I Love Silverberg and I Love A Format style books from this era…Silverberg was and arguably still is overshadowed by PKD as you were referring to in this video…being more mainstream in part due to the cinematic aspect of some of his books being one reason…I do like PKD books a lot but Silverberg to me is as equal a favorite for me and still undervalued in the genre and I try myself to get more people to read his works but as you say most are not as easy to come by anymore so you have to really look for them…This was a wonderful video to see…it was extremely informative…I also watched your PKD video which was also wonderfully done…I look forward to more videos on these and other brilliant authors and books from this era…a truly great era in SF which deserves more praise and recognition from the BookTube world…Great video, keep up the good works 👏👍🏻
I think the problem is that the mainstream print media and Tv can only cope with the idea of one 'genius' in a form like Genre SF - in the USA, it's Dick, in the UK, it's Ballard. Even though I worship both, they both made the transition to mainstream acceptance via a film version (in PKDs case) and a mainstream novel (in Ballard's case). I believe that without these occurrences, they'd probably never have been canonised in the way they have. Having undergone this transformation, the mass media mainstream now feels it has done enough for genre SF and won't entertain the idea that there could be other geniuses - after all, why aren't Delany, Silverberg and Disch almost as famous as PKD? I can cope with this, but readers of the slipstream who won't step over the line and discover these writers are missing out!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Very well said and I couldn’t agree with you more…Again I am a new subscriber to your channel and still working my way through your videos and trying to catch up with your entire library…I am really enjoying the content so far…keep up the good work and Thank You for your dedication and love for all forms of SF 👍🏻
@@UncleMonk23 - Just finished editing a 50 minute bookbuying trip/haul overview video which will be streaming from saturday, in the last few minutes of it I address your PKD question. Hope you're enjoying it all!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I love book hauls and searching out book treasures in the wild it’s one of my favorite activities…these are some of my favorite videos to watch on BookTube…
I watched your introduction video to who you are and all of your shelfie videos I find it the best way to get to know a booktuber as a person and their reading preferences…to give you some context on myself and who I am so you know who you are conversing with in the future…I am from the States born and raised in upstate New York no where near NYC and I will be 55 next month so we are from the same era and time period though across the pond in two different countries…so I feel since we grew up in the same time frame we will connect and will be able to appreciate this era of SF and other genres…I appreciate your channel and sharing your vast knowledge and book background with myself and the BookTube world…Looking forward to the new video on Saturday…Take Care and be well…😊
@@UncleMonk23 -Yep, we have that generational thing going on!
Thanks Steve, erudite and informative as always! Though... 'Silverberg wrote the book on redemption?' That would raise some theologian's eyebrows!
...at least as far as SF goes :-)
Cool
Lots more Silverberg here, check out the SIlverberg playlist.
Just finished 'Downward to the Earth' - as you say, a very wise and compassionate book that does a huge amount in a short number of pages. I read 'The Man in the Maze' recently, also liked that a lot but both books have fairly cringey, hyper-sexualised female characters that reads awkwardly in 2023. I suppose it was a thing for SF and even literature in general of that time but it slightly detracts from the impact of some works I feel. Hoping not all Silverberg has that. Great video, thanks.
Glad you enjoyed these books, they have some profound stuff in them.
A fair number of contemporary readers struggle with Silverberg's depiction of some women in some of his work- I'd say that as power and transcendence are two of his main themes, he sometimes utilizes women of a particular character to further these themes. It's worth noting that in this period, a significant number of female SF writers were not above displaying misandry in their works, so the boot fits both feet, I'd say. Silverberg's finest work does coincide with the rise and decline of the hippy counterculture and while of an older generation, he clearly found its influence liberating in allowing him to explore his themes further. I think the key thing to remember here is cultural and historical context and the fact that this is SF, not mimetic fiction that aimed to represent reality. Viewing non-contemporary works through a current lens is problematic, I feel, as my belief is that it is not works that become 'dated', rather that they are Of Their Time, and that what becomes 'dated' are our shifting mores- I look through the telescope from the other end, as it were.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I get that alright. As Lou Reed said, 'those were different times', and RS was getting down with the flower people. However, when I read 'Downward', a book with a really good central character, with interesting ideas about decolonization and cosmic consciousness, and come across things like, 'By the light of the two moons, he saw the deep cleft of her buttocks and thought she had chosen to greet him in the nude', I have the impression of stepping in a small piece of dog poo. From a chihuahua perhaps, no big deal, but it's there. I suppose stepping in dog shit is an existential life experience but anyway, yes, I'd still say it's an excellent book.
@@michaeldaly1495 -Greatly respect your POV Michael and I'd have to re-read that passage for full context, but could ti be that the intent was poetic/romantic? Just a thought. Have a great day, my friend.
@@michaeldaly1495 -Well, respect your POV Michael, but I'd have to re-read that section to see what I think of it in wider context - this could be interpreted as poetic and romantic (the latter in two senses). I've never found the expression of some character's particular male sexuality distasteful in my reading of Silverberg- and of course one is meant to be shocked by some of them in 'Up The Line', which I see as digs at Heinlein's prurience - which I found a bit pathetic even at 13 years of age. To quote an existentialist, 'Subjectivity is truth,' I guess. Have a good day, my friend.
Excellent vid.
Thanks! There'll be more Silverberg clips to come and there's a lot more like this on the channel, so please subscribe if you can!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal all ready did. And allied with the bell thingy.
@@Toracube Thanks very much!
Here is one for true Silverbergians:
That short story about prisoners from the future who are sent back to the pre- Cambrian era. The device was called a Hammer?
Please tell me the title.
"Hawksbill Station" is the story, later expanded into a novel with the same title (though some copies are retitled 'The Anvil of Time'). Easy.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Thank you! 😊 I read it several times in my youth. I was so impressed with the imaginative,
detailed, horizon-spanning picture that Silverberg painted. He also got his reader to survey the psyche of the lead character. Brilliant! 👏👏👏
Hi. I know this is an old video but noticed it after reading Up the Line. What is the deal with some of the more foul passages in Up the Line? Particularly I am referring to the section where Jud meets his mother. Am I not getting something? Some of them made me wish I never learned to read.
I've always seen this as a partially coded reference to the implications of time travel and the paradox of becoming one's own ancestor in Heinlein's story "By His Bootstraps" and also an ironic comment from Silverberg on the 'taboo breaking' focus of US New Wave SF- there are similar things in Farmer's stories in 'Strange Relations'.
its interesting to see the nigel versions of these books.
You're gonna have to translate 'Nigel Versions' for me...
"Is Vornan-19 truly the new messiah" - or is he just a very naughty boy?
Definitely the latter!
Is Kingdoms of the Wall worth reading at all
Yes.
I'm very disappointed, Steve. I'm sorry I feel compelled to say that, but you totally neglected to say anything I can take issue with.
Dying Inside is, I think, his absolute classic among so many great books. Ian R MacLeod told me recently that he was reading it it for the first time and thought it a masterpiece.
Apart from that I'm surprised that The World Inside didn't get at least a mention, even if you don't have it in A format, it's another of his finest from that period before he majipored himself.
Thanks James! Yep, I do have 'World' but not as an A. Someone else asked about it actually and it's not one of my faves, though I'm very sympathetic to its subject, which I think is very important. I will admit, however, to be going through a distracted period when I read it, so it will be tackled again.
Son of Man reminds me of Olaf Stapledon.
Yes, I can see that. Good call.
Thorns is an interesting read in the modern age. A selfish, amoral media baron brings two damaged individuals together for the cheap entertainment of an audience. Written at a time when predatory reality programming wasn't yet a thing. Quite insightful.
Agreed. Power is one of Silverberg's perennial themes, I find, and he always has an amazing way of examining it.
I would give Book of Skulls the edge, slightly, over Dying Inside.
This is a point I'm always considering with Silverberg: I think I'd say that I objectively think that 'Inside' is a better book, but that subjectively, I prefer 'Skulls', which I find sharper, more powerful and more radical.