In the Beginning
Tales from the Pulp Era
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
The SF Grandmaster's follow up to the career retrospective Phases of the Moon is a glance back to the earliest days of his career. Included with pulp stories not reprinted in decades will be more of the commentary that made Phases so much more than just a collection.
"I have to confess, right up front here, that you will not find a great deal in the way of poetic vision in these stories, or singing prose, or deep insight into character. Nor are these stories that will tell you much that is new to you about the human condition. These are stories in what is now pretty much a lost tradition in science fiction, the simple and unselfconsciously fast-paced adventure story of the pulp-magazine era. They are stories from the dawn of my career, which began in the closing years of that era, and are straightforward tales of action, in the main, that were written partly for fun and partly for money."
--Robert Silverberg, from the Introduction
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
SFWA Grand Master Silverberg (Phases of the Moon) delivers 16 deliciously slam-bang short stories from early in his career, along with engaging commentary including autobiographical insights, glimpses into his creative process and a mini-history of SF's flaming pulp youth. Beginning at 18, Silverberg wrote furiously, churning out tales like the gently wry "Yokel with Portfolio" (1955) for small SF magazines he had in his high-minded mid-teens denounced as formulaic and drably degenerate. As a member of Howard Browne's Fantastic Worlds stable, Silverberg perceptively explored now traditional SF themes the poignancy of android existence in "Choke Chain" (1956), the world-saving hero in "Citadel of Darkness" (1957), the "amusing artifact" in the brief "New Year's Eve 2000 A.D." A predatory-alien story, "The Insidious Invaders" (1959), ended Silverberg's apprenticeship, the foundation of such later achievements as the mature novels Downward to the Earth and Hot Sky at Midnight. These are stories that he and his readers can justifiably look back on with affection, if not total admiration.
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