For nearly sixty years, Grandmaster Robert Silverberg has been a significant presence in the world of science fiction. As prolific as he is gifted, Silverberg has amassed a body of work unique both in its richness and its variety. That work has influenced generations of other writers and has enriched the lives of untold numbers of devoted readers.
In The Book of Silverberg, editors Gardner Dozois and William Schafer have assembled a tribute anthology fully worthy of the Master himself. The book begins with a pair of affectionate appreciations from Greg Bear and Barry Malzberg, and continues with a series of wonderfully original stories that inhabit and extend some of Silverberg's most memorable creations. In 'In Old Pidruid,' the late Kage Baker turns to the world of Majipoor in a humorous and moving tale of rivalry and reconciliation. Kristine Kathryn Rusch's 'Voyeuristic Tendencies' shows us the world of the 1972 novel Dying Inside from a wholly different perspective. Nancy Kress's 'Eaters' provides a bleak and harrowing conclusion to the classic short story 'Sundance.' In 'Silverberg, Satan, and Me or Where I Got the Idea for My Silverberg Story for This Anthology,' the incomparable Connie Willis offers what might be the only plausible explanation for the whole Silverberg phenomenon. And elsewhere in the anthology, some of today's most notable writers--Mike Resnick, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Elizabeth Bear, James Patrick Kelly, and Tobias S. Buckell--ring equally brilliant changes on a number of Silverberg's signature fictions.
Funny, tragic, provocative, intelligent and always richly imagined, the stories in The Book of Silverberg are all notable accomplishments in themselves. Together, they comprise an exhilarating--and altogether fitting--celebration of one of science fiction's indisputable masters.
