 Robert Silverberg was born in New York City on 15 January 1935. His first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, was published in 1955.
He then started publishing short stories in the pulp SF magazines, turning them out at a tremendous rate and earning a Hugo award for his promise (the youngest person ever to do so).
In the summer of 1955, while still pursuing his education, Silverberg had moved into an apartment in New York that would profoundly change his life. Randall Garrett, an established science fiction writer, lived next door; Harlan Ellison, another promising young novice, also lived in the building.
Silverberg was writing so much, and selling so much of it, that he was obliged to publish under a number of pseudonyms to avoid oversaturating the market. Thus were born David Osborne, Ivar Jorgenson, and Calvin M Knox, among others.
Between 1957 and 1959, he published (using various names) more than 220 short works and eleven novels, most of which have never been reprinted.
In 1959, Robert Silverberg announced that he was retiring from science fiction. In spite of this retirement, books and stories continued to appear, mostly anthologies of collected stories written during the earlier days and expansions of previous short works into novels.
His writing in the early sixties was mostly outside the field of science fiction. He wrote many nonfiction books, starting with Treasures Beneath the Sea in 1960. Then, with Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations in 1962, Silverberg moved into the lucrative area of hardcover non-fiction for younger readers.
Between 1960 and 1972, he published approximately 70 nonfiction books, mostly in his pet fields of pre-history, archaeology, and exploration.
Frederik Pohl, then editor of Galaxy, is credited with drawing Silverberg back into science fiction by convincing him that a new, more literate kind of story would sell.
Silverberg's new stories showed a much greater depth of characterization and emotion than his earlier work. The plots deepened, the characters started to come to life. He started taking his examples not just from the most successful SF writers of the day, but from the best writers in all fields, from classical Greeks to modern masters.
The major works of this period are Nightwings, Dying Inside, Tower of Glass, Thorns, Downward to the Earth, The Book of Skulls,and Shadrach in the Furnace. Among the excellent shorter works are Sundance, Born with the Dead, Caliban, and In Entropy's Jaws.
Silverberg decided to retire (again) in 1973, but in 1978, he found himself working on what became Lord Valentine's Castle.
The 1980s brought some more changes: he divorced his first wife Barbara in 1986 and married writer Karen Haber the following year. He has collaborated with Ms Haber on a number of projects, notably the novel The Mutant Season. They have also edited several anthologies together.
Many of his best works of the 70s are now in print again, and 2003 brought the publication of Roma Eterna. [edit]
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